Folk Song in Cumbria: a Distinctive Regional
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FOLK SONG IN CUMBRIA: A DISTINCTIVE REGIONAL REPERTOIRE? A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Susan Margaret Allan, MA (Lancaster), BEd (London) University of Lancaster, November 2016 ABSTRACT One of the lacunae of traditional music scholarship in England has been the lack of systematic study of folk song and its performance in discrete geographical areas. This thesis endeavours to address this gap in knowledge for one region through a study of Cumbrian folk song and its performance over the past two hundred years. Although primarily a social history of popular culture, with some elements of ethnography and a little musicology, it is also a participant-observer study from the personal perspective of one who has performed and collected Cumbrian folk songs for some forty years. The principal task has been to research and present the folk songs known to have been published or performed in Cumbria since circa 1900, designated as the Cumbrian Folk Song Corpus: a body of 515 songs from 1010 different sources, including manuscripts, print, recordings and broadcasts. The thesis begins with the history of the best-known Cumbrian folk song, ‘D’Ye Ken John Peel’ from its date of composition around 1830 through to the late twentieth century. From this narrative the main themes of the thesis are drawn out: the problem of defining ‘folk song’, given its eclectic nature; the role of the various collectors, mediators and performers of folk songs over the years, including myself; the range of different contexts in which the songs have been performed, and by whom; the vexed questions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘invented tradition’, and the extent to which this repertoire is a distinctive regional one. Analysis of the corpus reveals a heterogeneous collection of songs on a wide range of themes, but with certain genres predominating, notably hunting songs and songs in dialect - songs which, like ‘D’Ye Ken John Peel’, have been mobilised to reinforce ideas of regional identity and pride over many years. i CONTENTS Abstract i Contents ii List of illustrations v List of abbreviations vi Chapter 1: John Peel, folk song and Cumbria 1 (a) D’Ye Ken John Peel? 1 (b) Emerging themes 12 (i) Defining ‘folk song’ 14 (ii) Regional distinctiveness 19 (iii) The place of self: the researcher as participant-observer 22 (iv) Folk song collectors and folk revivals 24 (v) The Cumbrian corpus 25 (vi) Performance contexts: singers and audiences 26 (c) Methodology 26 Chapter 2: Folk song collectors, revivals and scholarship 31 (a) Context and history 31 (i) Early antiquarian and literary interest 31 (ii) The Victorian and Edwardian folk revival 36 (iii) The second folk revival: continuity and change 41 (b) Folk song revivals and collectors in Cumbria 46 (i) Early twentieth century: Westmorland 48 (ii) Early twentieth century: Cumberland 57 (iii) Mid twentieth century: Cumberland and Westmorland 66 (iv) Later twentieth century: Cumbria 73 (c) Late twentieth century re-appraisals 78 ii Chapter 3: The Cumbrian folk song corpus 84 (a) Construction and terms of reference of database of songs 84 (b) Analysis of the corpus 88 (i) Geographical distribution 88 (ii) Chronology 91 (iii) Sources of songs and methods of transmission 95 (iv) Themes and subjects of songs 111 (v) Songs in dialect 130 (c) Summary of findings 132 Chapter 4: Dialect poetry as folk song 137 (a) Dialect literature and the Cumbrian poets 137 (b) Robert Anderson 150 (c) Regional folk song in dialect 161 (d) Dialect as signifier and performance 172 Chapter 5: Contexts of song performance 179 (a) Introduction 179 (b) Performance contexts 182 (i) Informal 183 (ii) Semi-formal 192 (iii) Formal 201 (c) Expressions of regional identity and staged authenticity 216 Chapter 6: Cumbrian folk song: some conclusions 224 (a) The songs 224 (b) Mediation: the role of self and others 230 iii (c) Questions of authenticity and invention of tradition 236 (d) A distinctive regional voice 238 (e) In conclusion 241 Bibliography 244 Appendix 1: Cumbrian folk song corpus database 266 Appendix 2: Carlisle Library collection of broadside ballads 291 Appendix 3: Texts of ‘D’Ye Ken John Peel’ 294 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors at Lancaster University, Prof Angus Winchester and Dr Thomas Rohkramer, for their support and patience during the researching and writing of this thesis. All views and interpretations expressed here as well as any errors are, however, my own. Others I should like to acknowledge for their invaluable assistance include Steve Roud, whose Folk Song and Broadside Indexes have proved a vital resource; Malcolm Taylor, former Director of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, and Carlisle Library’s Local History Librarian Stephen White. Finally, I should like to thank my children Thomas and Hannah and my friends, especially Margaret Maxwell, for their encouragement over so many years. iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1 Key to database fields in the Cumbrian folk song corpus 86 Figure 2 Geographical distribution 88 Figure 3 Sources of songs by date of collection or publication 91 Figure 4 Sources of songs / methods of transmission 94 Figure 5 Primary subject matter – by number of songs 111 Figure 6 Primary subject matter – by percentage 111 Figure 7 Subject matter of songs from street literature sources 113 Figure 8 Most commonly found songs 134 v ABBREVIATIONS BBC British Broadcasting Corporation CASCAC Cumbria Archive Service: Carlisle Archive Centre CASKAC Cumbria Archive Service: Kendal Archive Centre EFDSS English Folk Dance and Song Society VWML Vaughan Williams Memorial Library vi Chapter 1: JOHN PEEL, FOLK SONG AND CUMBRIA (a) D’Ye Ken John Peel? Few people today regard Cumbria and the Lake District as a repository of traditional music, the landscape and Romantic heritage of the Lakes Poets having historically outshone any musical heritage.1 Writing shortly after the county of Cumbria came into being in 1974, folk music record producer Paul Adams of Fellside Recordings in Workington bemoaned the fact that, in contrast with the rich musical traditions of Lancashire, the Borders and Northumberland, Cumbrian traditional music seemed to have been ‘virtually extinguished’, leaving just some hunting songs and ‘scraps’ of other local songs.2 As a singer and musician recently returned to my native county and looking for Cumbrian material to perform, I took this as a call to arms and set about researching the county’s folk songs for myself. I was one of a number of singers at folk music sessions in the Sun Inn, Ireby, at that time who were keen to find local repertoire which, we felt, had to be more wide-ranging than the single song so long lodged in local and national consciousness as Cumbrian: ‘D’Ye Ken John Peel’ (sometimes just ‘John Peel’). Despite having family connections to John Peel himself I had never considered singing the song myself, believing the song a community and school one, much reproduced in print and having a known composer - and therefore not a ‘folk song’. My view today could not be more different: not only do I now believe ‘John Peel’ to be a folk song, but I think that an examination of the 1 The county of Cumbria came into existence in 1974, following the Local Government Act of 1972, taking in the former counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, the Furness district of Lancashire and a small corner of the Yorkshire Dales. It encompasses not only the fells and dales of the central Lake District, but also the northern Pennines, the agricultural plains of the north of the county, the fertile pastures of the Eden Valley, industrial areas on the west coast and many market towns. Despite such heterogeneity, the area has always had a great degree of cultural coherence, as explored in Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Third Series, 11 (2011), which devotes a whole section to regional identity from the medieval period until 1960 (pp. 11–111). 2 Paul Adams, 'The Neglected Corner', Folk Review 4 (1975), pp. 6-7. 1 song’s journey over time, since its composition around 1830, serves well to illustrate some of the themes explored in this thesis: folk song definitions, the origins of such songs and how they change over time, who sings them and in what contexts, who ‘collects’ and disseminates the songs, and how certain ones become a focus of regional identity. The subject of the eponymous song, John Peel, was born near Caldbeck in the northern fells of Cumberland in 1777 and eloped to Gretna Green with his sweetheart Mary White, on horseback; the marriage subsequently blessed at Caldbeck Church. The couple settled in the northern fells on a small farm at Ruthwaite, near Ireby, belonging to Mary’s family, and went on to have thirteen children. A farmer and horse-dealer as well as a huntsman, for fifty-five years maintaining a pack of hounds and two horses and reputedly had ‘a faultless knowledge of the country and of hunting’, as well as a reputation as a ‘coarse, heavy-drinking, rather selfish man’.3 My own great-grandmother always spoke of him in disparaging terms: ‘Ah divvent knaw why ivverybody meks sek a fuss aboot John Peel: he was nobbut an owld drunkard!’4 By the time he died in 1854, aged 79, Peel and his legendary hunts were widely known and celebrated, almost entirely because of the song written about him by his hunting crony, John Woodcock Graves, which also helped to create and diffuse an image of Cumberland which caught both the local and national imagination.5 It should be noted here that Lakeland fox hunting was, and remains, a very different style of hunting from the popular image of the quintessential English ‘sport’ 3 Albert Nicholson and S.