MRG on SB-G
This page contains some of the articles that I have written in recent years for various magazines and journals together with some material that has formed the basis of talks or which has not been published elsewhere. It is arranged with the most recent articles to the top of the page.
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September 2000 |
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September 1999 |
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April 1999 |
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June 1998 |
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February 1998 |
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April 1995 |
(Published in the newsletter of the Sabine Baring-Gould Appreciation Society No 34, September 2000)
In preparing to talk about Sabine Baring-Gould's trip to Iceland in 1862 for the Baring-Gould Festival in October I have been particularly fascinated to read the account of the first part of the journey which he gave in a series of letters to his mother. These are the expected mixture of description and anecdote with some lovely little drawings by Sabine. One of the anecdotes, though presented as a factual story, is a transparent tease, and a demonstration that old jokes never die. This was written while Sabine was on board the 'Arcturus', sailing for Iceland.
"There is a Yankee on board whom I fear I offend by uttering an exclamation of delight at hearing of a Federal defeat. I did not suspect that we had an American on board. He is a nice quiet gentlemanly fellow, who travels all over the World sketching for Harper’s Magazine, New York. He gives me some interesting details about a curious animal found in his native county, California. It is called the Guyoskutos and it has the legs on one side far shorter the those on the other side so that it revolves round a hill in ascending it and revolves backwards coming down. It is naturally bloodthirsty and ferocious to a fearful degree. One was advertised for exhibition in New York and crowds went to see it, paying 25c a head. The exhibitor gave a preliminary lecture detailing all the natural qualities of the brute, it’s frantic passion for blood, its voracious appetite for human flesh which it got and then chewed the cud to keep the taste as long as possible in its mouth. Then., the lecture concluded, the exhibitor retired behind the curtain to bring the brute forward. Just at that moment a fearful succession of howls and yells thrilled through the exhibition booth and the lecturer broke forth drenched in blood, shrieking to the audience to escape fore their lives as the Guyoskutos had broken loose. Away rushed the people and the exhibition adjourned to the next town. I believe there is nothing about the Guyoskutos in Buffon*."
Martin Graebe
August 2000
Baring-Gould's Drawing of the Guyoskutos
* George-Louis Leclerc, Count of Buffon was, with Linnaeus, pre-eminent in the field of Natural History during the Eighteenth Century. His Historie Naturelle was a 44 volume encyclopedia describing everything known about the natural world
(Published in Shreds and Patches issue 17 (Autumn 1999)
It may not be everyone’s idea of fun but searching through old manuscripts can be an adventure into the unknown. When, in 1992, I started to investigate the Baring-Gould manuscripts at Killerton House near Exeter I would never have dreamed that I would still be feeling, after 8 years, that I had only scratched the surface. During those 8 years a lot has been achieved. The Baring-Gould Heritage Project was set up to photograph and then publish the newly discovered folk song manuscripts and popular literature as a microfiche edition for distribution to major libraries in Devon as well as the Vaughan-Williams Memorial Library. My colleagues and friends Marilyn Tucker and Paul Wilson of Wren Trust have led a community programme in Baring-Gould’s old parish of Lewtrenchard to bring the songs back to life in the community that has the best possible claim to ‘own’ them, if anybody does. We have also done concerts and talks in many parts of England to share the songs with new audiences, not all of them ‘folkies’. Meanwhile my own work of research into the boxes of musty old paper continues and every so often something previously unseen emerges from them to surprise and delight and to tell us more about a remarkable figure in the history of the Folk Song Revival.
Sabine Baring-Gould died in 1924, a few days short of his 90th Birthday. He was already 54 years old when he ‘discovered’ Folk Song and, over the next 15 years, put an astonishing amount of energy into the collection of songs from the ordinary people of Devon and Cornwall. Cecil Sharp consulted him before undertaking his own collection and recorded his admiration for the man who pioneered the collection of folk song and established some of the key methods followed by later collectors. One of the most important principles that he set was that he was careful to record the details of the singers from whom he collected and to attribute the songs to their owners. In addition he frequently recorded little anecdotes about them or their comments about the songs. Because he was a writer he also gave us, in his books, a number of word pictures that bring the men and women from whom he collected the songs back to life in our minds.
When Baring-Gould died in 1924 his house at Lewtrenchard passed to his son Edward who lived there until the death of his wife in 1931, when it was let. During the war the Army took it over and then it was neglected until 1948 when it was re-opened as a hotel, as it is today. The miracle is that during all this period Baring-Gould's books and private papers remained in relative safety in the house, their existence overlooked by two generations of his biographers and folk-song scholars.
In the early 1970s it was decided to remove the contents of Baring-Gould's library to the care of the National Trust at Killerton House which the Trust had just been given by the Acland family and which had an empty library. The books were packed up and sent to Killerton where the best were cleaned up, roughly sorted and put on the shelves, safely anchored in place with fishing line to prevent the curious from handling them. The damaged books and odd papers were re-packed into boxes and consigned to the basement at Killerton where they were to lie undisturbed for another twenty years.
The existence of the Baring-Gould material at Killerton was an open secret. One or two people had seen the books and papers but their significance does not seem to have been recognised. When I first saw the library in the early 1980s on a family visit to Killerton my interest was aroused but the apparent bureaucracy of getting the necessary permissions from both the Trust and the Baring-Gould family seemed like a hill too big to climb.
My own interest in Baring-Gould had started in the 70's when I bought my copies of his published song collections and a number of his books. I have to admit that I assumed (always dangerous!) that the manuscripts had been studied to death and that all was known that was worth knowing. By 1992 I was less sure. It was a chain of co-incidences that led to the choice of Killerton as the venue for a live recording of the show that I did on Baring-Gould with Wren Trust to mark the Centenary of the publication of 'Songs of the West'. When, in a break from recording, I was shown the manuscripts I realised how wrong that assumption had been. Now all hesitation about hill-climbing was abandoned and I soon had both the permission and the enthusiastic support of Baring-Gould's great- granddaughter Merriol Almond.
Much of the work of the last few years has been spent in understanding the collection and in cataloguing and indexing the folk song and popular literature. This has been the substance of 'The Baring-Gould Heritage Project'. During the course of this a number of previously unrecognised manuscripts by Baring-Gould have come to light which help us better to understand him and to examine his work more critically. Along the way I have been able to find, decipher and then perform some lovely songs which had been locked into paper for 100 years. Several 'new' songs also found their way onto the 'Dead Maid's Land' CD (Wildgoose 292CD) with Paul Wilson, Marilyn Tucker, Tim Laycock, Chris Bartram and others. The microfiche edition was officially launched at an event held in Lewtrenchard in November 1998 when we had a series of concerts featuring Songs from the collection, a talk by one of Baring-Gould's biggest fans, the botanist David Bellamy, a service in Baring-Gould's church and presented a set of the microfiches to Merriol Almond to take back to America for the Library at Harvard University.
I still hope that yet more material will turn up in some forgotten box or cupboard. So far I have found only one notebook with Baring-Gould's field notes in - there may be more. There is the mystery of the whereabouts of the songs he is believed to have collected in Yorkshire. Original photographs of the singers have not yet been found though a few were published. We do not have the letters written by Cecil Sharp to Baring-Gould. I intend to keep 'digging for Gould' for some time yet!
The Notable Victorian - Sabine Baring-Gould
.(Published in Folkwrite Issue No 71, April 1999
If you have heard about Sabine Baring-Gould in the past it was probably for one of two reasons. You might have seen his name in your hymn book as you sang one of his hymns like 'Now the day is over' or, more likely, 'Onward, Christian Soldiers'. Or you might have heard that this was the Parson from the posh family who collected old songs and then changed them. You might not have known that he was one of the top ten novelists of Victorian times and that he remained in print until the 1960s. That he also wrote a huge number of non-fiction books, sermons and articles that has put him at the head of the league table in terms of number of publications listed by the British Library. Or that he has been credited with being the inspiration for Shaw's version of the Pygmalion legend because of his unconventional marriage to a mill-girl and is said to have influenced Conan Doyle in writing 'Hound of the Baskervilles'. He was also one of the leading archaeologists of Dartmoor at the end of the last century. He also rebuilt his home, his church and the estate at Lewtrenchard as well as being the father of fifteen children. When he died in 1924 a few days short of his ninetieth birthday his obituary in the Morning Post was headed 'A Notable Victorian'. Yet of all the things that he did with his life, the one Baring-Gould himself valued most highly was the collection of the folk songs of Devon and Cornwall, a quest which started at a dinner table in Tavistock when Baring-Gould was already 54 years old and which was to last for 30 years.
As a churchman and a novelist Baring-Gould brought a different point of view to the collection and presentation of songs to other collectors. Though some of his methods and the presentation of his material fall short of what is expected of the modern collector it is worth remembering that this was, as Cecil Sharp put it, "The first serious and sustained attempt to collect the traditional songs of the English peasantry". Because he was trying something new Baring-Gould did it his way and brought into his work all the prejudices and conceits that marked his character as well as the scholarly interest, phenomenal memory for detail and ability with words that make it an exceptional collection.
He also brought his deep interest in people and in 'characters'. His published work contains many word pictures of the singers from whom he collected and these accounts give us a unique insight into the lives of the men and women from whom he collected. We can learn about James Olver's childhood, when he would sneak out of his bedroom at night to listen outside the pub to the songs that his strictly Wesleyan father would not allow into the house. We also find his love of old rogues like William Houghton, one-time smuggler, then Harbourmaster at Charlestown or John Woodrich, the blacksmith who had deserted his wife and children to roam Britain in search of songs and seen the inside of several gaols in the process. And we can hear about the evening he arranged for Robert Hard and James Helmore to sing for a company of ladies and gentlemen when their robust version of 'The Molecatcher' proved too much for Victorian ears.
In recent times some attempts have been made to find out more about these old singers. Peter Kennedy recorded from the Bill and Harry Westaway as Baring-Gould had done from their father, Harry. Cyril Tawney interviewed Edmund Fry's son Bill at the age of 90 and learned that the boy had been with his father on one occasion when he had passed on a song to him. In the last couple of years we have made contact with the families of Sally Satterley and Robert Paddon but the trail is cold after 100years and mostly we have to content ourselves by supplementing Baring-Gould's descriptions with census details and parish records.
The criticisms most often laid at Baring-Gould's door are to do with his editing of songs and tunes and of his treatment of these 'robust' songs. Cyril Tawney, writing on this subject in the 1970s pointed to the struggle that Baring-Gould faced between his broad-minded and enquiring nature and the role required of him as a clergyman and public figure. Though from our end of the century we may criticise Baring-Gould for the material he took out he was criticised when he originally published his collections for songs like 'Three Drunken maidens' for what he left in. Cyril was one of the first people to make an extensive study of the manuscripts that Baring-Gould gave to Plymouth Public Library in which can be found many of the original versions of the songs. These papers included Baring-Gould's 'Fair Copy' of the songs he collected together with some of the notebooks in which he and his colleagues noted down tunes and words in the field - the 'Rough Copy', complete with mud stains.
It was believed that everything else had been lost or destroyed in the years following Baring-Gould’s death in January 1924. It has now been established that a large quantity of manuscript material had survived at Lewtrenchard Manor, Baring-Gould’s home. The house had been tenanted from the time of Baring-Gould’s death and run for most of that time as a hotel. Contrary to expectations this seems to have been a relatively safe environment because it was not until the 1970’s that, following water damage due to a leaking roof, it was decided to remove the contents of the library to a more secure location. There was an empty library at Killerton House, near Exeter, and an agreement was reached between the Baring-Gould family and the National Trust that the books from Lewtrenchard would be moved there. In 1992 an examination of the contents of the library revealed three manuscript volumes of songs. Subsequent study showed these to be Baring-Gould’s Personal Copy of the songs that he collected and the source from which he had transcribed the songs in the Plymouth Fair Copy.
The need to make this material available for study was recognised and, in 1995, The Baring-Gould Heritage project was created with the object of raising funds to photograph and then publish on microfiche the whole of Baring-Gould's song collection from the manuscripts at Plymouth, Killerton and Harvard. It was also decided to include a large quantity of ballads and other popular literature from Baring-Gould's library. This microfiche edition was published in November 1998 and sets of these microfiches are being placed in the main public Libraries in Devon, at the Vaughan Williams Library, in the British Library and in the Houghton Library at Harvard. The microfiche edition is also available for sale and the surplus money raised will be used for conservation of the manuscripts. The project team included Merriol Almond, Baring-Gould's great grand-daughter and owner, on behalf of the family, of the manuscripts, Paul Wilson and Marilyn Tucker of Wren Trust, the Devon-based community arts organisation who undertook project management and fund-raising and Ian Maxted of Devon Libraries. Martin Graebe acted as project director and lead researcher.
Apart from the microfiches November also saw the launch of 'Dead Maid's Land' by WildGoose Studios (WGS 292) featuring previously unrecorded versions of traditional songs from the Baring-Gould manuscripts by a number of artists (reviewed in the last edition of Folkwrite). Wren Trust has published a collection of tunes collected by Baring-Gould from William Andrews, a fiddler from Sheepstor (The William Andrews Tunebook, Ed Chris Bartram and Paul Wilson, from Wren Trust, 1, St James Street, Okehampton, Devon, EX20 1DW). A collection of songs from the manuscript will be published by Wren Trust Spring 1999.
Book Review - The Moor' by Laurie R King
(Published in the newsletter of the Sabine Baring-Gould Appreciation Society No 27, June 1998)
When first I heard about this novel the notion of Sherlock Holmes having married the much younger woman who has replaced an elderly Watson as his assistant seemed unlikely. I could almost hear the sound of the Sherlockians revolving gently in their comfy chairs. To have Baring-Gould introduced as Sherlock's Godfather and life-long friend seemed likewise destined to cause heart murmurs among the readership of this magazine. Relax Ladies and Gentlemen - it works!
The Moor is a harsh mistress and a fickle friend - but she can be a delightful companion. Like Sabine Baring-Gould I fell in love with her as a teenager and, during school holidays, explored her alone and on foot. She was the reason I went to work in Devon and, now I've moved away, I return to her as often as possible. Dartmoor is, without doubt, one of the most strongly drawn characters in this book. It is a great achievement that Laurie King has captured her brooding personality as successfully as Baring-Gould did in his writing and to a degree that Conan Doyle never managed in 'Hound of the Baskervilles'.
In 'The Moor' Laurie King has achieved a dynamic balance between three leading characters. Firstly her heroine, Mary Russell, young wife of Sherlock Holmes, a tall, bespectacled Oxford academic in her twenties. Secondly the character of Dartmoor herself and finally Sabine Baring-Gould. I omit Sherlock Holmes from this list because he never quite comes to life as the others do and does not grow far beyond the constraints that Conan Doyle placed on him.
The plot is simple and well constructed. Sherlock has been called to Devon by Baring-Gould to investigate a haunting and suspicious death involving the appearance of Lady Howard and a spectral hound. This was the story of the song 'My Lady's Coach', that Sabine's nurse, Mary Bickell sang to him and which can be found in 'Songs of the West'. Mary Russell is summoned by Holmes to help and to enable him to disappear from the narrative for long periods on an errand for Mycroft. Russell is thus freed to get to grips with the mystery while finding out at the same time about Baring-Gould and about Dartmoor and learning to appreciate both. Needless to say there is a crime involved and unexpected links to the earlier dog mystery. The climax brings the forces of good to a satisfying confrontation with the villains and Russell, of course, saves Holmes' life. An interesting mechanic of the storytelling is the use of Baring-Gould's own books as a way to introduce key elements of the plot, as well as for the chapter headings.
For me the plot was secondary to my interest in the characterisation. The picture of Baring-Gould that emerges is well drawn. King has done her homework and, like her heroine, has taken the time to soak up the atmosphere of Lewtrenchard and of Dartmoor. The novel is set in the closing months of 1923, a few weeks before Baring-Gould's death. The picture of the man that emerges is very credible and fits both with my knowledge and preconceptions. The descriptions of Lew Manor and its surroundings are good and, of course, one of the corpses makes its debut in the Quarry - It would have been a struggle to resist its appeal as a location for dark deeds.
The thanks given at the beginning of the book record that Laurie King sought the help of a number of members of the Society and its friends, including our President, Merriol Almond. It is obvious that she visited the area and took the time to read a number of the appropriate books written by Baring-Gould and to talk to people about him. This is obvious from the level of detail that emerges and I would have to say that I felt that, having read the book, I had got a better understanding of the man. There were a number of anecdotes that were new to me. There is also the underlying, if apocryphal, belief that Conan Doyle visited Baring-Gould at Lewtrenchard and conceived 'Hound of the Baskervilles' during that visit.
So! Did I enjoy the book? Yes, though the second reading was necessary to overcome the basic unease that I started with. Would I read another book by Laurie King? Yes, I would like, some time, to try the other books in this series, 'A Letter to Mary', 'A Monstrous Regiment of Women' and 'The Beekeeper's Apprentice'. Would I recommend members of the Society to read them? Yes! Beg, borrow or buy a copy . Is it great literature? No, but then neither was most of What SBG wrote and like his books in their time it's excellent entertainment. Now, how about Baring-Gould, George Bernard Shaw and 'Pygmalion' - but that's another story!
'The Moor' by Laurie R King is published by St Martin's Press, New York at $23.95. It is not anticipated that it will be published in the UK for some time but you can buy it on the Internet through Amazon Books( www.amazon.com) at a discounted price that will trade off the cost of having it sent by air from the USA. For those who do not have Internet access you might try 'Murder One' on Charing Cross Road who have imported some copies for sale to discerning readers. I learnt this from an Internet site devoted to Mary Russell - 'The Beekeeper's Holmes Page' which can be found at www.goldennet/~rebeccaj/beekeepr.html
I have, since writing this review, read two more of the books mentioned, 'A Monstrous Regiment of Women' and 'The Beekeeper's Apprentice' and enjoyed both of them. By coincidence the part of Sussex in which Russell and Holmes first meet is where my Father used to take me out when I was a boy and so, again the sense of place is strong for me. If you want to find out more about the Mary Russell novels and the background to them then I recommend a visit to the Beekeeper Holmes pages at:
http://www.golden.net/~rebeccaj/beekeepr.html
Devonshire Fiddling 100 years ago
(Published in the newsletter of the Sabine Baring-Gould Appreciation Society No 26, Feb 1998)
Devonshire and fiddle music are relative strangers to each other. This becomes rapidly obvious whenever folk musicians in the County gather for a session. They love their squeeze-boxes and the memory of Bob Cann still drives the rhythm forward. The free reed instrument, though, is a relative newcomer and the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, collector of folk songs and many other unconsidered historical trifles tells us a little about Devonshire fiddlers of the 1890s when he was actively collecting folk songs.
Baring-Gould knew at least two fiddlers. Peter Isaacs was introduced to him by Miss Bertha Bidder of Stoke Fleming. Isaacs earned his living by repairing saddles and harness on the farms of South Devon. Though lame he lived on the road, sheltering in farm outbuildings as he made his rounds and picked up songs and tunes as he travelled. Baring-Gould paid Isaacs a small wage to collect tunes for him but the arrangement does not appear to have been particularly successful since Baring-Gould's manuscripts only record two tunes as having been provided by Isaacs; a version of ‘General Wolfe’ and ‘Follow my Love’.
The other, and even more interesting fiddler was William Andrews of Sheepstor. Baring-Gould first visited Andrews in 1890 with his musician colleague Henry Fleetwood Sheppard. On this occasion they were not very successful in obtaining anything of interest from him. Baring-Gould went back, though, in 1892 with his other collaborator Frederick Bussell. This time the magic worked and Baring-Gould writes: ‘his shyness was broken down and we spent two hours with him, noting down his old airs. We might have got more but the Rector kindly came in and insisted on our going to tea with him. We could not refuse and then had to hasten to catch our train to return and, as we passed, more than an hour after having left the old man, we heard him still fiddling’.
Baring-Gould recognised that the old man had a valuable store of old tunes. Andrews explained how, when he had played for dances in the farm houses of the area, all the young folk sang as they danced and the ‘burden’ or refrain served to mark the turns in the dance. Baring-Gould was therefore puzzled that he wasn’t able to remember more than a few lines of any song. Andrews supplied the explanation saying that he ‘minded his viddle more than them zingers’ and so never really listened to the words of the songs that he was playing along to - a sentiment with which many present day folk musicians would be sympathetic.
In his cottage at Sheepstor the old man had a rack in the ceiling that was full of music including a number of ancient church music manuscripts as well as secular tunes. Luckily, he lent one of his manuscript tune books to Baring-Gould and from this 21 tunes were copied. These can now be found in volume 14 of the Rough Manuscript that Baring-Gould donated to Plymouth Library. This small collection is the only known record of traditional fiddle playing in Devonshire at the end of the last century. One of Andrews’ tunes, though, was given new life by Baring-Gould who reconstructed a set of words from the old man’s telling of what the song had been about, remembered from when he had played along to it years before. This song was ‘Old Adam the Poacher’ which can be found in the 1905 edition of ‘Songs of the West’. This is a strange little tune of unusual construction. As Baring Gould wrote ‘One would like to know what was the dance performed to it’. No matter - it is a beautiful little tune and a wonderful memory of the man who was one of the last of the traditional fiddlers of Devonshire.
Since I wrote this article I have made two further interesting discoveries about Peter Isaacs. The first discovery lies in the letters from SB-G to Lucy Broadwood, another collector of folk songs. In March 1893 he wrote:
"My poor old fiddler, Peter Isaacs of South Fleming has been in Exeter Gaol! Locked up because he slept in a barn and smoked there! The singing birds are not, I am sorry to say, a very reputable lot - but I love them and I am sure they love me."
The other discovery is the belated recognition on my part that the story 'Daniel Jacobs' in Baring-Gould's Dartmoor Idylls is based on Peter Isaacs and is probably a good word picture of him. Those who are interested can read the story using this link:
Daniel Jacobs
Songs of the West Rediscovered
.Published in 'English Dance and Song' Vol 57 No 2 1995
The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould has been regarded by the Folk world in almost equal parts as hero and villain. Hero for his strenuous efforts to preserve the folk songs of Devon and Cornwall. Villain for his rewriting and ‘cleaning up’ of those songs. He was not insensitive to the significance of the changes he made, however. He wrote that;
"Our object was not to furnish a volume for consultation by the musical antiquary alone, but to resuscitate, and to popularise the traditional music of the English people. As, however, to the antiquary everything is important, exactly as obtained, uncleansed from rust and unpolished, I have deposited a copy of the songs and ballads with their music exactly as taken down, for reference, in the Municipal Free Library, Plymouth." .
For many years it has been believed that the Plymouth manuscripts, in the form of the hand written fair copy of 203 songs as well as the field notes and other papers were the definitive record of his song collection.
My own interest in Baring-Gould stretches back over many years and I will confess that, despite spending a fair bit of time working with them, I had been underwhelmed by the Plymouth manuscripts. Though they go beyond the acceptable face of Victorian Folk Song as in ‘Songs of the West’ they do not, for me, live up to the promise Baring-Gould held out of a complete and unedited record showing what lay behind the mask of respectability. Moreover, there are many songs that had been collected and published by Baring-Gould that don’t appear in the Plymouth manuscripts.
I knew that part of Baring-Gould’s library from Lewtrenchard had been used to stock the Library at Killerton House near Exeter when the National Trust took on responsibility for that house and had seen that there was a comprehensive collection of Baring-Gould’s own books as well as those that he used as references, including a good range of folk song and ballad collections. I had also heard tales of there being some manuscript songs there as well.
In 1992 I was working with the Wren Trust on a recording of a concert that we had put together to celebrate the centenary of the publication of ‘Songs of the West’. We had been offered the chance to record a live performance in the library at Killerton, surrounded by Baring Gould’s books. In the course of this we were shown three manuscript volumes of songs whose contents appeared very similar to the Plymouth manuscripts.
Since then I have visited Killerton several times to work with the manuscripts with the permission of the owner of the manuscripts, Merriol Almond, who is Baring-Gould’s Great-granddaughter and the National Trust who are their custodians. It is now clear that these three volumes are Baring-Gould’s own fair copy of the songs he collected, written up from his rough notes. They contain some 620 songs together with some variants that are listed in more than one place in the manuscript - a significantly greater number than the Plymouth Ms.
Each of the books is made up of lined foolscap with a vellum binding. Baring-Gould refers, in a letter to Cecil Sharp (16th July 1904), to his "vellum covered book", having used it as the reference to solve a problem with a tune. An interview with the Rev James Dunk for "The Methodist Recorder" (17th Feb 1898) found by Jacqueline Patten in Baring-Gould’s papers gives the following description.
"Upon touching the question of folk-melodies he literally leaped from his chair into the shadows of his long library, and came back with a bulky volume in his hand. ‘I have four of these - full,’ he said; ‘there you have on one page the words of the folk song, and on the opposite page the music; sometimes in two or three versions.’ These volumes are all in MS., done by Baring-Gould’s own hand."
The fourth volume referred to is probably that which is currently kept with the other three and is of similar appearance which does not, in fact, contain songs but details of Baring-Gould family history.
The layout of the three books of songs is identical to that used for the manuscripts that Baring Gould gave to Plymouth Library as the public record of his folk song collecting. On the left hand page he used red ink for drawing the stave lines for the music, probably with a ruler, but usually, it seems, in haste so that the right-hand ends of the lines start to bend and drift. He then used black ink for the notes and for the words, which he wrote on the facing page. In most cases he has recorded several variants of the tune and also of the words, with the source of each being recorded next to it.
Sometimes he has used pencil - often in short notes to himself to refer back to another song or, occasionally, seeming irritated with himself for making a mistake. Over ‘Lord Arthur’ in volume 2, for example, he has written "I never took down the words opposite. They do not belong to this tune or fit it." In a few instances the pencil indicates uncertainty. For the song ‘In the Winter of Life’ which he collected from Charles Arscott the singer would not allow him to take down the words, only the tune. Baring Gould reconstructed the song from memory but wrote it into the manuscript volume in pencil. Two years later, on a subsequent visit to South Zeal, Arscott relented and Baring Gould was able to write over his pencil marks in triumphant black ink.
Volume 1 of the song manuscripts is, essentially, the fully detailed collection notes for the first edition of ‘Songs of the West’ There are some differences and, as with the other volumes, Baring-Gould has economically filled the last few pages with additional songs which do not appear in the published volume. In the second and third volumes SBG decided to leave adequate space between songs to be able to insert variants as he obtained them. In fact this was not necessary by the third volume as he was not collecting as actively and was usually only getting one or two variations of each song. He must have taken a pragmatic decision at some point not to start a fourth volume and, instead, to fill in the spaces as new songs arrived. This, of course, meant that his numbering system no longer had any meaning and he stopped numbering the songs altogether. This, together with several errors in numbering songs and pages makes reference to songs by page number and song number difficult. Because of this I have developed a numbering system identifying volume, page and song number by which each song can be found and have used this in producing a full index for the manuscripts.
It seems that Baring-Gould continued adding songs and annotating earlier entries until about 1912. The main activity seems to have been between 1888 and 1894 with a renewed burst of activity between 1901 and 1906. Much of the material that is written in the second and third volumes was actually collected much earlier. This suggests that Baring-Gould was adding to his fair copy from his original collecting notes as well as with new material collected by him or sent to him by others. It is interesting to see that, as time passes, he includes a number of songs that would not have met his earlier definitions of a folk song and many that he would not have published because they were risqué.
Baring Gould records a number of songs that were supplied to him by various correspondents. In the main these were people who had remembered songs and who supplied them from memory without their having been noted from a named or known singer. There were one or two correspondents who were clearly passing on a number of songs that they had collected from local singers. such as Miss Wyatt-Edgell of Upton Pyne and Miss Bidder of Stoke Fleming. Baring-Gould certainly visited Miss Bidder and there are a couple of songs from her informants where he has recorded himself as the collector. The majority of songs, however, were collected by Baring-Gould and his two partners, Dr Frederick Bussell and the Rev H Fleetwood Sheppard. From these manuscripts it has proved possible to identify more than 150 singers in Devon and Cornwall from whom Baring-Gould collected songs.
One of the most interesting discoveries in the manuscripts has been the confirmation that Baring-Gould entertained other collectors at Lewtrenchard and that song collecting was part of that entertainment when they visited him. Lucy Broadwood noted two tunes for SBG on September 7th 1893 and the manuscript records that Dr Gardiner collected a number of songs in and around Launceston in February 1905. In a letter to Cecil Sharp dated July 18th 1904 Baring-Gould wrote:
"There is an old man named Dingle near here I will get him to sing to you. But we have never used his tunes, either because we had them already or because he was not sure. However I have no doubt that he has others he has not sung to us and he may sing them to you ....... When shall you be here? I hope soon. I have a musical daughter (married) coming here the week Aug 6 - 13."
According to the manuscript Cecil Sharp visited John Dingle at Coryton on August 12th 1904 when he noted a tune for ‘Come all you worthy Christian men’. He visited Baring-Gould again in 1905 when, on September 12th, he collected two more songs from John Dingle and also visited John Woodrich from whom he collected a tune for ‘Jacky my son’.
There are, of course, a few problems to be dealt with when working with the manuscripts. I have already mentioned the problems of numbering, pagination and duplication of songs. Of greater significance is the difficulty of dealing with Baring-Gould’s hand writing. Unlike the Plymouth manuscript, this was a private record and he was not always as careful as he might have been had he known that we would be reading the work 80 years later. Familiarity and practice make it easier, but there are some words where only a guess is possible. The same applied to the tunes. There are a number of occasions when we cannot be sure that what is written was what was sung because it makes no sense musically. Again, there are times when it is necessary to solve the difficulty with common sense and a feeling for what is ‘right’. If this approach seems unscholarly then I suppose the justification has to be that it is what Baring-Gould himself would have done in this situation.
It is worth reporting that, as well as the song manuscripts there are a number of other interesting items in the library. Baring-Gould’s personal copies of his published collections ‘Songs of the West’ and ‘A Garland of Country Song’ have bound into them a number of additional hand-written pages with notes and variants of tunes, There is also Baring-Gould’s own copy of Sharp’s ‘English Folk Song - Some Conclusions’ with an inscription from the author under his printed dedication of the volume to Baring-Gould.
Another interesting footnote is that, when I embarked on this project, I was also shown more than 30 boxes of letters and other papers related to Baring-Gould which were in the basement at Killerton. Jacqueline Patten has spent some time working with these papers and they have now been transferred to the Devon County Records Office in Exeter. It is going to take a long time to work through all this material but it is already clear that there is much here of interest to admirers of Baring-Gould and his work.
The song manuscripts are of great interest and importance and it is essential that they are studied and that the songs are made available to be sung again. The National Trust is only able to grant access to the manuscripts for study on a very restricted basis because of the lack of suitable facilities at Killerton and because the manuscripts can only be studied when the house is closed to the public. I am now discussing with Merriol Almond how we might get microfilmed copies of the manuscripts made and placed in the West Country Studies Library at Exeter and in the Vaughan Williams Library. She is extremely enthusiastic about this idea, as have been all the people I have talked to so far about it. Having established the feasibility of the project the next step is to get some financial help and this is now being followed up. The intention is that the original manuscripts should remain at Killerton where, with the rest of Baring-Gould’s library, they will form the best possible record of the achievements of this remarkable man.
So far few of the songs have been sung in public. The only project that has been undertaken using the manuscript so far was that, to celebrate the centenary of Baring-Gould having visited South Zeal in August 1894. This was an event that Baring-Gould had described vividly in his writing and we extracted a number of the songs that were sung to him by the singers of South Zeal and included them in a concert for the Dartmoor Folk Festival. One of the songs that we performed was the one that old Charles Arscott had been so reluctant to pass on - ‘In the Winter of Life’. It seems appropriate to append this robust little song as an example of the wonderful material to be found in the Killerton manuscripts.
Song: Winter of Life (to be added to website later)
Updated 3rd December 2000
