Songs of the West Folk Songs of Devon & Cornwall Collected from the Mouths of the People

Dorothy Osborne, in a letter to Sir William Temple, in 1653, thus describes her daily home life. "The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o'clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep or cows, and sit in the shade singing ballads. I go to them and compare their voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of, and find a vast difference there; but trust me these are as innocent as those could be. I talk to them, and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that they are so. Most commonly, when we are in the midst of our discourse, one looks about her, and spies her cows going into the corn, and then away they all run as if they had wings to their heels." ("Letters of Dorothy Osborne," London, 1888, p. 103.)

Before that Sir Thomas Overbury, in his "Character of a Milkmaid," had written: "She dares go alone and unfold her sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none: yet, to say truth, she is never alone, she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones."

During the reign of Queen Mary, the Princess Elizabeth was kept under close guard and restraint, but was suffered to walk in the palace grounds. "In this situation," says Holinshed, "no marvel if she, hearing upon a time, out of her garden at Woodstock, a certain milkmaid singing pleasantlie, wished herself to be a milkmaid as she was; saying that her case was better, and life merrier." So Viola, in Fletcher's play, "The Coxcombe," 1647:

"Would to God, my father Had lived like one of these, and bred me up To milk, and do as they do! Methinks 'tis A life that I would chuse, if I were now To tell my time again, above a prince's."

The milkmaid, and the girls guarding sheep and cows are things of the past, and with them have largely departed their old ballads and songs. Tusser, in his "Points on Huswifry," in 1570, recommends the country housewife to select her maids from those who sing at their work as being usually the most painstaking and the best.

"Such servants are oftenest painsfull and good, That sing at their labours, like birds in a wood."

Nowadays, domestic servants sing nothing but hymns, and the use of ballads and folksongs has died out among farm girls, and these are to be recovered only where there are village industries as basket weaving, glove sewing, and the like.

But the old men sing their ancient ditties, or did so till within the last fifty years. Now they are no longer called on for them, but they remember them, and with a little persuasion can be induced to render them up. When I was a boy, I was wont to ride over and about Dartmoor, and to put up at little village taverns. There I was sure in the evening to hear one or two men sing, and should it be a pay day, sing hour after hour, one song following another with little intermission.

There was an institution at mines and quarries called a fetching. It occurred every fortnight. The men left work early, and went to the changing room; stone jars of ale were brought thither from the nearest public house. Each man filled his mug, and each in turn, before emptying it, was required to sing. On such occasions many a fine old ballad was to be picked up. There was also the farm-supper after harvest, at which the workmen sang. Now the suppers have been discontinued. Ringer's feasts, happily, still remain, and at them a good old ditty may be heard. But most of the old singers with their traditional ballads set to ancient modal melodies have passed away.

In "Poems, etc.," by Henry Incledon Johns, published by subscription, Devonport, 1832, is the following interesting passage. He is describing a night spent in an inn on the borders of Dartmoor; he met farmers and labourers. "One of the party I observed never took any share in the conversation, but appeared to have been invited there for the sole purpose of singing to them. He sang a great number of ballads, making up in loudness for what he lacked in melody. I thought it betrayed rather a want of courtesy that his auditors continued to talk while he sang, and no less remarkable, that they never expressed either applause or disapprobation of his strains. Now and then, one or two of them would join in a line of chorus, but it seemed to be done in a sort of parenthesis, and the thread of the conversation was immediately resumed as vehemently as ever.... I gleaned the following scraps of the border minstrelsy of Dartmoor:

'There was an old man as blind as blind could be, He swore he saw the fox go up a great tree.'

'There was one among them all That's slender, fair and tall, With a black and rolling eye, And a skin of lily dye.'

'A bonny lass I courted full many a long day, And dearly I loved to be in her sweet company.'

(The lover then describes the progress of his suit, which proves unsuccessful, and concludes thus:--)

'Go, dig me a pit, that is long, large, and deep, And I'll lay myself down, and take a long sleep. And that's the way to forget her.'

"The air to the latter was rather plaintive, and from the lips of some siren might have been entitled to an encore, but the voice which now gave it utterance only added another to many previous proofs that the English are not a musical people. The minstrel was in appearance one of the most athletic men I have ever seen, and although seventy-five years of age, would still, as I subsequently learnt, perform a day's work better than most of the young men of the parish. He was a pauper, but in great respect among the neighbouring rustics for his vocal powers. His auditory were moor-farmers with countenances as rugged and weather-beaten as the rocks among which they live."

It is not a little interesting to know that some seventy years after this recorded evening we were able to recover two of the songs which Mr. Johns gives somewhat inaccurately; and both are included in this collection. The first is "The Three Jovial Welshmen," No. 75; and the last is "The False Bride," No. 97.

One of my old singers, James Olver, was the son of very strict Wesleyans. When he was a boy, he was allowed to hear no music save psalm and hymn tunes. But he was wont to creep out of his window at night, and start away to the tavern where the miners congregated, and listen to and heap up in his memory the songs he there heard. As these were forbidden fruit they were all the more dearly prized and surely remembered, and when he was a white-haired old man, he poured them out to us.

Some forty or fifty years ago, it was customary when the corn was cut, for the young men of a parish to agree together, and without telling the farmer of their intention, to invade his harvest field, work all night and stack his corn, whilst he slept. It was allowed to leak out who had done him this favour, and in return, he invited them with their lasses to sup and dance and make merry in a lighted barn. Then famous old songs were sung. But all that good feeling is at an end, and in its place exists a rankling hostility between the tiller of the soil and his employer. Blame assuredly attaches to the farmer for this condition of affairs, in that he has done away with the farmhouse festivities in which workmen and employer took part.

One evening in 1888, I was dining with the late Mr. Daniel Radford, of Mount Tavy, when the conversation turned to old Devonshire songs. Some of those present knew "Widdecombe Fair," others remembered "Arscott of Tetcott"; and all had heard many and various songs sung at Hunt-suppers, at harvest and sheep-shearing feasts. My host turned to me and said: "It is a sad thing that our folk-music should perish. I wish you would set to work and collect it--gather up the fragments that remain before all is lost!"

I undertook the task. I found that it was of little use going to most farmers and yeoman. They sang the compositions of Hooke, Hudson, and Dibden. But I learned that there were two notable old singing men at South Brent, and I was aware that there was one moorland singing farmer at Belstone, I was informed of this by J.D. Prickman, Esq., of Okehampton. This man, Harry Westaway, knew many old songs. Moreover, in my own neighbourhood was a totally illiterate hedger, in fact, he could neither read nor write. He enjoyed no little local celebrity as a song-man. His name was James Parsons, aged seventy-four, and a son of a still more famous singer called "The Singing-machine," and grandson of another of the same fame. In fact, the profession of song-man was hereditary in the family. At every country entertainment, in olden times, at the public-house almost nightly, for more than a century, one of these men of the Parsons' family had not failed to attend, to sing as required for the entertainment of the company. The repertoire of the grandfather had descended to old James. For how many generations before him the profession had been followed I could not learn. James Parsons' ballad tunes were of an early and archaic character. In fact, with few exceptions his melodies were in the Gregorian modes. At one time Parsons and a man named Voysey were working on the fringe of Dartmoor, and met in the evening at the moorland tavern. Parsons boasted of the number of songs he knew, and Voysey promised to give him a glass of ale for every fresh one he sang. Parsons started with "The Outlandish Knight," one song streamed forth after another, one glass after another was emptied, and these men sat up the whole night, till the sun rose, and the song-man's store was not then exhausted, but Voysey's pocket was. I could hardly credit this tale when told me, so I questioned Voysey, who had worked for my father and was working for me. He laughed and confirmed the tale. "I ought to remember it," he said, "for he cleared me clean out."

Many a pleasant evening have I spent with old Parsons, he in the settle, sitting over the hall fire, I taking down the words of his ballads, Mr. Sheppard or Mr. Bussell noting down his melodies.

But one day I heard that an accident had befallen Parsons. In cutting "spears," i.e., pegs for thatching, on his knee he had cut into the joint; and the village doctor told me he feared Parsons at his age would never get over it. I sent for Mr. Bussell, and said to him: "We shall lose our old singer, before we have quite drained him. Come with me, and we will visit his cottage, and see what more we can get from him." We went, and very pleased he was to sing to us from his bed. "Old Wichet," No. 30, was one of the songs we then acquired from him. Happily, the sturdy constitution of the man caused his recovery, and he lived on for three years after this accident.

One day in November, I got a letter from the Vicar of South Brent, in which he informed me that Robert Hard, a crippled stone-breaker there, and one of my song-men, was growing very feeble. Without delay I took the train, and arrived at South Brent Vicarage, just as the party had finished breakfast. "Now," said I to the Vicar, "Lend me your drawing room and the piano, and send for old Hard."