Folk Music Journal: Volume 12 Number 2

Volume 12 Number 2 (2022) contains the following pieces 

Articles

Gwilym Davies ‘Step it Away’: Mouth Music for English Step-Dancing

Mouth music – tunes that are sung rather than played on an instrument – is universal and often used to accompany dancing. In some countries, such as Scotland and Ireland, it has been developed to a high art by professionals and non-professionals alike in competitions, concert performances, and recordings. The English equivalent, known as diddling, or tuning, is sparsely documented and much less well known. It is used almost exclusively to accompany a dance, usually a solo step-dance. The majority of examples noted in the last fifty years have been from the Gypsy community.

Rod Howell Eli Coleman and his ‘Box of Bells’

Eli Colman (1842–1919), a carpenter in Pitminster, Somerset, was a passionate bell-ringer and an able musician. His main occupation was the construction of coffins, but with his interest in music and his woodworking skills he created his ‘Box of Bells’, a unique type of box zither that he developed from an earlier instrument usually known as a bell harp. He built instruments of different sizes and with variations in the stringing. This article briefly explains the history of the bell harp and describes three different instruments made by Eli Colman, two in my possession, and details of a third that I was shown in 1988. Also included are some insights into the life of the man, taken from census returns, other written records, and dialogue with two people who knew him.

John Howson Edward Rushton (1756–1814): Radical Liverpool Poet and Ballad Maker

Edward Rushton, born in Liverpool in 1782, went to sea at an early age. He lost his sight at the age of nineteen and then followed a number of trades, as well as campaigning for the abolition of slavery and founding the Liverpool Blind School. He also turned to writing poetry and in 1806 a collection of forty-five of his poems was published. Broadside printers at this time were hungry for texts and many of Rushton’s poems soon appeared on major broadside printers’ sheets, usually without accreditation. This article outlines Rushton’s life story and catalogues the use the broadside trade made of his poems.

Chloe Middleton-Metcalfe The Suffolk Christmas Dance in Adrian Bell’s The Cherry Tree (1932)

This article is an exhumation of the village dance given in Adrian Bell’s autobiographical novel The Cherry Tree (1932). Bell’s account of a rural dance in Suffolk in the inter-war years provides a vivid pen-portrait of a community event. Its minutiae elucidate areas of practice that were once so common as to elude reference elsewhere, such as the inclusion of competitions, a class-based system of patronage, same-sex dance pairings, and the singing of the national anthem. Particular consideration is given to Bell’s references to dance style and the execution of ubiquitous couple dances such as the waltz, polka, and foxtrot.

Resources in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
Keith Gregson Can You Shed Any Light? Correspondence between Roy Palmer and Keith Gregson, 1976–87

This is an autoethnographic piece based on correspondence between Roy Palmer (1932–2015), collector, collator, and prolific writer on folk-related issues, and the author. During the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 the correspondence, dating from in the 1970s and 1980s, was sorted and catalogued and deposited in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. The article aims to contextualize the correspondence and to provide personal comments on its potential value to present and future researchers in the field, as well as to stand as a tribute to the insights and generosity of its subject, Roy Palmer, who was also a long-serving member of the Editorial Board of Folk Music Journal.

Reviews – Books

The Routledge Companion to English Folk Performance (ed. Harrop and Roud) Paul Cowdell

Printed Musical Propaganda in Early Modern England (Mann) Jenni Hyde

Sailor Song: The Shanties and Ballads of the High Seas (ed. Smyth) Jim Mageean

Printers, Pedlars, Sailors, Nuns: Aspects of Street Literature (ed. Atkinson and Roud) Chris Wright

Trad Nation: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Irish Traditional Music (Slominski) Katie Howson

Becoming an Irish Traditional Musician: Learning and Embodying Musical Culture (Cawley) Conor Caldwell 

A Living Voice: The Frank Harte Collection (ed. Moylan) Macdara Yeates

Dance Legacies of Scotland: The True Glen Orchy Kick (Melin and Schoonover) Theresa Buckland 

Waltzing through Europe: Attitudes towards Couple Dances in the Long Nineteenth Century (ed. Bakka, Buckland, Saarikoski, and von Bibra Wharton) Derek Schofield

Catch It, Bottle It, Paint It Green (Davies) Andy Turner

The Folk Singers and the Bureau: The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party, USA 1939–1956 (Leonard) Malcolm Taylor

Ón gCos go Cluas – From Dancing to Listening (ed. Doherty and Vallely) Elaine Bradtke

Spinning the Child: Musical Constructions of Childhood through Records, Radio and Television (Maloy) Josephine L. Miller

The Press and the People: Cheap Print and Society in Scotland, 1500–1785 (Fox) David Atkinson

Music-Making in the Hertfordshire Parish, 1760–1870 (Kilbey) Vic Gammon

Music in North-East England, 1500–1800 (ed. Carter, Gibson, and Southey) Jude Murphy

The Ballad-Singer in Georgian and Victorian London (Cox Jensen) Steve Roud

Dundee Street Songs, Rhymes and Games: The William Montgomerie Collection, 1952 (Bennett) Julia C. Bishop

Two Bold Singermen and the English Folk Revival: The Lives, Song Traditions and Legacies of Sam Larner and Harry Cox (Lindsay) Ian Russell

Locating Women in the Folk (ed. Roud) Sophie Parkes-Nield

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy: Urban French-American Fiddling from the 1930’s–1950’s (ed. Ferrel) Paul Burgess

Music and Heritage: New Perspectives on Place-Making and Sonic Identity (ed. Maloney and Schofield) Matt Simons

Who Killed Cock Robin? British Folk Songs of Crime and Punishment (Sedley and Carthy) Andy Turner

Again With One Voice: British Songs of Political Reform, 1768–1868 (Holdstock) Alison Morgan

Collecting Music in the Aran Islands: A Century of History and Practice (Ní Chonghaile) Fintan Vallely

Reviews – CDs

Last Man Standing: Conserving the Endangered Songs of the Irish Traveller Community in the UK (Thomas McCarthy) & Comfort (Thomas McCarthy) John Moulden

Wait Till the Clouds Roll By: Part 3 of the Old World/New World Trilogy (comp. Yates) Steve Roud

Doughboys and Molasses, Oh! Traditional Songs from the Gros Morne Region Brian Peters

Obituaries

Peter Rich Cooke (1930–2020) Ian Russell

Cover illustration: Eli Coleman’s ‘box of bells’

Editor: David Atkinson