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SAM LARNER A GARLAND FOR SAM Songs and Ballads of Sam Larner of Winterton, Norfolk

1. Alphabet Song 2. Merry Month of May 3. Napoleon’s Dream 4. London Steamer 5. Bonny Bunch of Roses 6. Barbara Allen 7. The Smacksman 8. The Lofty Tall Ship 9. Raking the Hay 10. Will Watch 11. The Outlandish Knight 12. Haisboro Light Song 13. Old Bob Ridley-o 14. The Bold Princess Royal 15. In Scarboro’ Town TSDL244

of your arse.’ After four years peggying, Sam got a of our time, Sam Larner, born in Winterton, Norfolk, berth as a deck-hand in the sailing lugger Snowflake, inThis 1878. record Winterton celebrates is just one northof the of finest Yarmouth, folk singers on done eight years in sailing boats and then we were and he began to feel himself a real fisherman. ‘I A Garland for that, half a century ago, within a few square miles, Sam shelteredthe coastal a edgeremarkable of a stretch nest ofof flatsinging watery birds, country aboard of sailing boats – knot, splice, mend the nets, Songs and fully qualified, we could do anything there was to do Ballads of set a rigging in, serve a rigging, all that. The more you Sam Larner done things aboard a boat, the more enlightenment of Winterton, including Harry Cox of Barton (later Catfield), Ted you got.’ Towards the end of the century, herring Norfolk Goffin of Catfield, Bob Miller of Sutton, and Jimmy 02 Sutton (called ‘Old Larpin’) of Winterton. The in 1899 Sam got a job in one of the new fangled steam hecomposer missed ESam J Moeran Larner, noted who wasfine perhapssongs from away all atthese sea. driftersfishing techniques the Lottie. wereHe said undergoing ‘There’s something a revolution, human and men during and shortly after the first world war, but about a sailing boat, how they answer. But as regards The Life the work, that was like heaven when we got into the When Sam was a boy, Winterton was a busy place with more than three hundred men working at the ‘The steam drifters were ideal for the job, never be beaten.drifters, Theyabsolute were heaven.’ like a house And another at sea, and fisherman: they’d lay left school, it was sea or gaol for them.’ For himself, at at a net like an old shoe.’ herring fishery. He declared: ‘When Winterton boys a 40 ton sailing boat, the Young John, and a hard time When the drifters came in, that was the start of the twelve years old, he signed as ‘peggy’ (cabin boy) in the Faeroes and across to the Norway Deeps. ‘Rough andhe had ready of it, you fishing were the put Minch through in winter,the ropes’, running he said. up to good money.fishing, andSam the recalled years thatup to as the the first men world started war to shootwere a their boom two time mile for long driftermen. stretches Plenty of drift of net, fish they’d and

harbour‘My uncle you’re Jimmy, pleased, he used heart to flog up. me, But and when he used you’re to goingcry after to seahe’d again, done you’reit.’ And: on ‘When the knuckle you’re bones coming into ‘I’vecry: ‘Heaveseen where nets inyou the could name walk of the across Lord!’, like the tunny fishermen off the coast of Sicily. He declared: TSDL244

Yarmouth Harbour jammed right chock-a-block in boats. Herrin’, ain’t nowhere to put the herrin’ on 1960 the noble old man, through his songs and reminiscences,edited a disc of providedhis songs muchfor Folkways), of the backbone and in of when that was good.’ The boom lasted less than a the outstanding MacColl-Seeger-Parker radio ballad, the quay. That’s when the drifters first came. That’s A Garland for Singing the Fishing. Incidentally, most of the direct Sam herring grew scarce, markets were poor, and already speech quotations in this Note come from recordings Songs and quarter-century, when the fishing declined. The Ballads of in 1921, well before the general depression, they made during the preparation of the radio ballad. Sam Larner The songs on this record are from Philip Donnellan’s of Winterton, cards. And after 1930, the really bitter years set in. recordings deposited in the Sound Archive of the BBC. Norfolk said they were paying off fishermen with the stamp 03 longer stand the hard trips, and he left the drifters The Songs andIn 1933, improvised when Sam a living was asfifty best five, he his could, health on wouldand off no Musicality, life experience and zest made Sam the dole, in and out of odd jobs, breaking stones on Larner the singer he was; a splendid example the road, planting trees for the Forestry Commission, of the ‘showman singer’. The term was used by whatever was going, he’d do. Poor end for a man pioneer folklorists as something of a put-down; who’d spent a lifetime learning the run of the sea, the their theory was that the good traditional singer gave an impassive, objective performance, and that shoals of herring were by the sight of a whale’s blow, open expressiveness was unseemly. But in fact that byhandling the grouping of drifters, of birds, who bycould the findcolour where and thethickness good prized impassivity could as well be a sign of decay, of the water. of the loosening hold of the tradition, of the singer’s diminished involvement in the songs. Anyway, Such was the working life of this notable singer, it’s a matter of temperament, and Sam Larner’s well known in his locality but unheard of beyond it, temperament was such that he vividly savoured every till in 1958 when Sam was touching eighty, he was line he sang; songs excited him, and made him laugh ‘discovered’ by the BBC producer Philip Donnellan, right out, or snort with indignation, or murmur with who recorded him again in 1959. Ewan MacColl and sympathy. He loved to comment at the end – and Peggy Seeger also recorded him intensively (they sometimes between verses too – and his remarks TSDL244

were always pointed and aimed to reinforce the sense composition by Dibdin’s contemporary, Cory (Sam’s of the song. version shows remarkably little difference from the one printed in The Universal Songster, or The Like Harry Cox, Larner had a sizeable repertory of Museum of Mirth about sixty songs ready on the tip of his mind, with A Garland for of Larner’s songs were broadside lyrics, whether Sam many others lurking half-submerged in the depths. historical, such as of The 1832). Bonny As Bunch expected, of Roses the majorityor the Songs and Probably, earlier on he had a larger number of ‘ready’ rare Napoleon’s Dream, (Sam was fascinated by Ballads of pieces; after all, he wasn’t recorded till he was an old Sam Larner of Winterton, man with limited chances of airing his repertory. He kind of The Grass Cut Very Dry (Merry Month of May) Norfolk learned most of his songs from his father, or from his andBonaparte’s The Girl downfall),Raking the rusticHay, or love pathetic encounters melodramas of the 04 neighbour, ‘Old Larpin’ Sutton, or from shipmates on such as the remarkably widespread Scarborough Dear the luggers and drifters. Town, or The Drunken Lover.

In composition, his repertory may be taken as This exemplary old singer, who loved life however standard for his part of coastal-cum-Broads Norfolk. hard it treated him, died on 11 September 1965. He had a handful of broadside versions of ‘classic’ ballads of the kind shown on this record by The Outlandish Knight, Barbara Allen, and Henry Martin First published by Topic in 1974 (The Lofty Tall Ship). Inevitably he has many sea Produced by Tony Engle songs such as Coil Away the Trawl-warp, Boys (The Recorded by Philip Donnellan for the BBC, 1958/59 Smacksman) and Windy Old Weather (Haisboro Light Sleeve design by Tony Engle Song), a song made widely known of recent years Notes by A L Lloyd through the singing of the East Coast spritsailbarge Front cover photograph by courtesy of the National skipper Bob Roberts. Sam Larner hadn’t many stage Maritime Museum, Greenwich. pieces on tap, though he enjoyed singing Old Bob Ridley, introduced into England by the blackface Christy Minstrels in the 1850s; also he was stirred by the drama of Will Watch, the Bold Smuggler, a TSDL244

A Garland for Sam Songs and Ballads of Sam Larner of Winterton, Norfolk

TOPIC TSDL244 www. topicrecords.co.uk