Folk Song in England [antikvár]

PREFACE This is a book for beginners not specialists. For all that, it says some things not said elsewhere. It could hardly fail to, seeing how meagre commentary on English folk song is. Collections abound, but information about who made the songs, and how, and for what purpose, is hard to come by. Cecil Sharp's English Folk Song: Some Conclusions remains a soUtary beacon and a towering one, but it was lit sixty years ago and its glow is fading. It would be pleasant to think this book you are holding might help Some Conclusions to shine clearer, if only by putting a little fat in the fire. Along with such splendid pioneers as Lucy Broadwood, Vaughan Williams, Hammond, Grainger, Kidson, Cecil Sharp was a founder of the folk song revival in the early years of the century. Fruitful as that revival was, many young people of the time resisted it, suspecting that a 'tradition' was being imposed on them for their own good and against their inclinations. However, within the last twenty years or so a new interest in folk song has arisen, nourished by the former revival, but coming from below now, not imposed from above, affecting a broader section of society, employing a wider repertory, and involving a greater variety of uses and usages than were ever imagined in Sharp's time. It is to the enthusiasts of this second revival, for the most part young people searching for something more sustaining than the mumbled withdrawals or frantic despair of the pops, that this book is chiefly addressed. The work has its history. In America, late in the Depression and early in the War years, traditional song and its topical imitations were coming into vogue, particularly among young radicals, as a consequence of the stresses of the time, and the rumble of newly-found or newly-made 'people's songs' was rolling towards us across the Atlantic. The Workers' Music Association, that admirable but over-modest organization, sensed that similar enthusiasm might spread in England, and they were eager to help in the re-discovery of our own lower-class traditions. They commissioned me to write a brief social-historical introduction to folk song, titled: The Singing Englishman. It was put together mainly in barrack-rooms, away from