Exhibition celebrates Cecil Sharp’s Singers

Cecil’s Singers: view of the exhibition

An exhibition of photographs from the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library’s archives, featuring photographs taken by Cecil Sharp of the people who sang to him.

Cecil Sharp, who died 100 years ago this year, collected almost five thousand songs from across England and the Appalachians, and played a key role in the effective 1904 relaunch of the Folk Song Society (which merged with the English Folk Dance Society in 1932 to form the English Folk Dance and Song Society). As he travelled around seeking songs, he often photographed the singers who performed for him; these images now reside in our archives, and the collection is one of our treasures.

We chose to focus on the English singers for this exhibition, most of whom lived in Somerset. 

Sharp was one of the only song collectors to take photographs of his singers, and in doing so he has left us a rich insight into the lives of his overwhelmingly working-class subjects — what they wore, where they lived, and sometimes even glimpses of them as people. We selected images which we felt, when married to the story of their subject, achieved this the best.

Whether agricultural labourer, gardener, glover, collar worker, sailor or miner, we see this as a celebration of the ordinary people who made the folk revival possible through their art. Our building carries the name of the collector, but our corridors ring with the voices of these people.

Each link takes you to Sharp’s notebook transcription of one of the songs collected from each singer, and two recordings in the case of Priscilla Cooper.

Curated by Tiffany Hore, Library & Archives Director With thanks to Malcolm Barr-Hamilton, Alex Burton, Nick Wall and Peter Craik, and to David Sutcliffe for his invaluable assistance.

Eli Bollen (1827–1912)

Sharp met Eli Bollen in Ilchester, five miles north of Yeovil, on 1 August 1904, when he was 78. Bollen was born in Ashington in 1826, the eldest of seven children of Charles Bollen, a butcher, and his wife Hannah.

At the time of the 1851 census he was married to Mary, a glover. Eli was listed as a road labourer. They had four children but Mary died in September 1860 and Eli would stay in the same house for the next 30 years and raise his children there. He never remarried.

By 1901 he had moved into the Almshouses in the town, which is where Sharp found him, and collected from him three songs: ‘Umbrella Courtship’, ‘Forty Long Miles’, and ‘The Rover’. Eli died in June 1912 in Yeovil.

From the archives: Forty Long Miles

Harry Richards (1840–1925)

Richards was the fourth of six children of a labourer, John, and his wife Ann, and was baptised in Curry Rivel church in March 1840. His mother died when he was seventeen and he subsequently went out on his own as an agricultural labourer. He had nine children, two of whom died young, from his 1862 marriage to Ellen Dewdney. By 1881 he was a stone quarryman, still in Curry Rivel.

It was there that he met Cecil Sharp in July 1904 at the age of 64. He sang 17 songs, the first three of which, ‘The Trees They Do Grow High’, ‘Erin’s Lovely Home’ and ‘Just as the Tide was A-Flowing’, made it into Sharp’s Folk Songs from Somerset series. He was tall with a deep bass voice and was apparently a religious and strict father. Ellen died in 1913 but Harry lived on until 1925, aged 85.

From the archives: The Trees They Do Grow High 

Emma Glover (1854–1929)

Emma Glover was a Romani, reputed to have arrived in Huish Episcopi from Long Load and living in a caravan. She and her husband, a stonemason, lived between the two villages but by the census of 1901 she was a 47 year old widow living in Huish Episcopi with five children. Two were of working age: William, a gardener, and Herbert, a foundry labourer.

Sharp may have been introduced to her by Rev. Stubbs, the vicar of Huish Episcopi from 1882, who baptised three of her children. He took down 30 songs from her, starting in August 1904 when she was 50, and returned seven times after the initial meeting. She died in June 1929.

From the archives: Cornish Young Man

Elizabeth Lock (1840–1915)

Sharp was introduced to Elizabeth Lock in Muchelney by a local farmer’s wife whose brother, a doctor at Guy’s Hospital, had met Sharp and put them in touch. Elizabeth was a glover, the daughter of a shoemaker, Robert Hodder, and his wife Jemima. She was a spinster of 39 when she married George Locke, a farmer, and was unable to sign her name in the register. They did not have children and devoted their time to caring for George’s elderly mother. George died in 1910; Elizabeth survived him by five years, dying aged 76. She left £303.

Two of her songs, ‘High Germany’ and ‘Hares on the Mountains’, were published in Folk Songs from Somerset Vol.1. They both subsequently appeared in Folk Songs for Schools in 1906.

From the archives: Billy Barlow

Susan Williams (1832–1915)

Susan Williams, of Haselbury Plucknett near Yeovil, was 73 when Sharp heard her sing in 1905. She would give him 22 songs over five visits. In the Musical Times of 1 January 1907 Sharp described Susan as ‘one of the most delightful singers and pleasant companions it has been my good fortune to meet... I cannot reproduce the charm of her voice — sweet and pure as the note of the woodland thrush’. He published two of her songs in Folk Songs from Somerset Vol.3, ‘Farewell Nancy’ and ‘The Keys of Heaven’, the latter in tandem with the singer Harriet Young.

Susan was the daughter of a shoemaker, and married John Williams, an agricultural labourer with whom she had six children. In all the censuses from 1871 to 1901 Susan was listed as a ‘web weaver’. Flax and hemp grown locally had been processed in factories in Crewkerne and West Coker to produce sailcloth and ropes for naval ships. In the 1911 census she made a mark rather than sign her name, so she was probably illiterate. Susan lost her husband in February 1886 and was thus widowed for nearly 30 years. She died in March 1915 aged 83.

From the archives: Keys of Heaven

William Nott (1830–1907)

William Nott sang 31 songs to Cecil Sharp in Meshaw, North Devon, over six visits from 8 January 1904 to 6 January 1905. At the start
of this process he was aged 74. Nott was born in c.1830, the son of a farmer. He became a farmer himself, and by 1881 had 160 acres
of land next door to Meshaw Rectory, where Sharp used to stay with Rev. Alex de Gex.

Nott was clearly an accomplished singer: Sharp went to check one of Nott’s songs (‘Jan to Joan’ FT99 and FT439*), and wrote that the
song was ‘tested on the piano by de Gex and self while Nott sang the song twice through, during the whole of which he never lost pitch’.

William died on 19 January 1907 and his wife Mary Ann died within weeks of him. In his will, William Nott of Parsonage Farm, Meshaw left £2,760 (equivalent to £334K today) to son William Jr (one of five children). Rev. de Gex was also a benefactor.

From the archives: The Dandy Man

Betsy Pike (1833–1917)

Betsy Pike, nee Culliford, lived in Somerton when Sharp met her for the first time aged 74 in 1906. She sang nine songs over three visits, and Sharp received a further seventeen through her daughter Ellen (Snow) and her granddaughter Alice (Snow). Two of her songs, ‘A Farmer’s Son so Sweet’ and ‘Bold Fisherman’, were selected for Sharp’s Folk Songs from Somerset Vol 3. In his field notebook Sharp wrote that Betsy Pike had said she was ‘a teetotaller but I drink cider, for cider don’t count’.

Betsy was the daughter of an agricultural labourer, and the 1851 census listed her as a glover. She gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, Ellen, in 1856, and had a further three children from her marriage to widower James Pike in 1863. By 1881 Betsy had been widowed and was a charwoman with three teenage daughters working in a local factory. By 1901 she was working as a laundress, and living with Florence Pike, the daughter of her stepson William. After Florence’s marriage in 1910 she lived alone until her death in 1917 at the age of 78.

From the archives: Lord Rendal

Lily Porter (1895–1969?)

Lily Porter of Bridgwater was 11 when she first met Sharp. She provided him with 12 singing games across 1906–7. The first two, ‘Jenny Lengle’ and ‘Three Dukes Came a Riding’, came three days after Sharp’s first experience of the genre with Alice Snow in Somerton, and were the first examples of singing games he actually credited to children. Sharp sought out many more examples in Somerset, noting that the country was poorly represented in Alice Bertha Gomme’s Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland of 1894 and 1898, and then co-published with her sets of singing games for the Novello School Songs series of 1909–1912. Lily was thus an important inspiration for Sharp.

Lily was the sixth child of Elizabeth, another singer, who gave Sharp ‘The False Bride’ several days later. Her father, Walter, was a bricklayer. She was the immediate neighbour of Jack Barnard, one of the most prolific singers Sharp collected from, and who may have recommended her to him. Lily married Albert Came, a master mariner on Christmas Day 1913, and probably died in June 1969 at the age of 74.

From the archives: Three Dukes Came a Riding

Lizzie Welch (1868–1952?)

Sharp met Mrs Lizzie Welch of Westport, Somerset, when she was 36 in April 1904. She went on to give him 15 songs over four visits. Elizabeth Woodland was the youngest child of six born to Samuel and Mary Ann Woodland in Puckington. In the 1881 census she
was aged 14 and listed as a collar worker like her older sisters Mary Jane (19) and Rosa (17). Mary Jane would also go on to sing for Sharp
as Mary Jane Ree. At the age of 18 she emigrated to Australia with her new husband, William Walter Barratt, who must have died a few years thereafter.

By 1891 she was back in Westport as a widow with two sons of four and two. A year later she married for the second time, to widower and farm labourer George Welch. They had four children together, which, along with their existing children (she had two and George three) must have made for a crowded household. The small child in Sharp’s photo of her is probably Ernest Mark (baptised 1901).

From the archives: The Dark Eyed Sailor

Lucy White (1849–1923)

Lucy White, from Westport, was 54 when she first met Sharp. She would sing him 46 solo songs, along with 19 with her half-sister Louie Hooper. Both singers gave credit to their mother Sarah for teaching them songs and this probably happened during the long hours of gloving that earned women a vital income in mid-19th century South Somerset villages.

Lucy was the illegitimate daughter of agricultural labourer John Bridge, who was not identified at her baptism. When Lucy was six, Sarah married widower William England, who brought two small children of his own to the family. They went on to have four children together, one of whom was Louisa, who became Louie Hooper. Lucy had three children out of wedlock, one of whom died in infancy, before marrying engine driver Jonathan White in 1875, with whom she had a further seven children. She died in 1923 at the age of 74.

From the archives: The Rambling Sailor

Jim Proll (1833–1910)

‘James Prole’ (or Proll) was baptised in June 1833 in Huntspill, the third son of Henry, an agricultural labourer, and his wife Sarah. According to the censuses of 1861 and 1871 he was a miner, who had likely moved to Coombe Cross for the new work offered by iron ore mining in Raleigh’s Cross, three miles away. By 1881 however, he had switched to agricultural work, presumably due to the closure of the mine by the Ebbw Vale Iron Ore company in 1879. He was married to Sarah, née Lyddon, who had borne him eleven children. In 1901 he was still living in Coombe Cross with his wife and their grandchild Ellen. Sarah was admitted to Cotford Asylum at some point thereafter and died there early in 1907, five months before Sharp met Jim in September 1906.

Jim was 75, and gave Sharp seven songs, including ‘Sweet Lovely Joan’, which was published in Folk Songs from Somerset Vol. 4 in 1908.

From the archives: Sweet Lovely Joan

Oliver Shuttler (1837–1916)

Oliver Shuttler [Shutler] lived a troubled life. He was the only child of a modest farmer, John, and his wife Ann who died when Oliver was 12. Four years later Oliver was sentenced to six months in Wilton Gaol for cattle stealing. Aged 22 he married a widow twelve years older than him, Mary Ann Hollard. She had no children from her earlier marriage, and she and Oliver would have no children either. He was appointed a local constable in 1870, but in 1871 was sentenced to six weeks’ hard labour for violent assault. He was also fined at least three times for poaching-related or gun offences in 1876. Despite his brushes with the law, he was elected a parish councillor in 1894, and was re-elected annually until 1898 when he stood down.

His wife died in 1903 at the age of 80. At this point, Oliver was forced to sell his house and lived rough, often near to starving. He spent the winter in Langport Union workhouse and did stone breaking in the summer. Oliver died in 1916, having fallen from the hayloft at Cook’s Farm, where he was living. He was 78.

He is remembered for the two songs he gave Cecil Sharp, ‘Lord Bateman’, and ‘The True Lover’s Farewell’.

From the archives: Lord Bateman

John England (1865?–1940)

John Henry England was the singer of the first folk song ever collected by Cecil Sharp, ‘The Seeds of Love’, on 22 August 1903. At the time, Sharp was staying with his long-time friend Rev. Charles Marson at Hambridge vicarage in Somerset, and John was his gardener. He was mowing the lawn with a horse-drawn mower as he sang.

John was the only child of a father who died young and his wife Mary Ann. By 1881 she was a buttonholer, while 16 year old John had become an agricultural labourer. John married Rose Morris, the daughter of the sexton of Barrington, in 1886 and by 1891 he was a ‘gardener’ with two sons, who were followed by a further son and a daughter by 1901.

He and Rose lived in the house behind the church, and John became sexton of the parish. The family emigrated to Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1911, where John died in 1940 and Rose in 1957.

From the archives: The Seeds of Love

Shadrach Haden (c.1829–1916)

Sharp encountered Haden [Hayden?], who was always known as ‘Shepherd’, in Bampton, Oxfordshire, in 1909 and returned to hear him sing several times, collecting from him 29 songs. His version of ‘John Barleycorn’ is very different from the other 15 collected by Sharp, and was the one to appear in the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs in 1959. Sharp had already published two other versions in Folk Songs from Somerset, but it is Haden’s which has become the ‘standard’.

We know little about Haden’s working life, but more about his family. He married Jane Neale in 1849, and they produced two children. Henry moved away but Alice remained close to home; indeed when her first husband died in 1880, she and her three infants moved in with her parents. She moved away upon remarrying in 1883, but her son Harry stayed on with Shadrach into adulthood, even after his marriage in 1898. By the time Sharp met him in 1909, he and Jane shared their home with four great grandchildren. The child in the photograph is probably one of them, Ivy, aged three. Jane died in 1910, and Shardrach in 1916, at the age of 91. He is buried in Bampton Churchyard.

From the archives: John Barleycorn

Betsy Holland (1880–1960)

‘Talk of folk-singing! It was the finest and most characteristic bit of singing I had ever heard’. Thus declared Cecil Sharp in a letter to his wife, Constance, on hearing 26 year old Betsy Holland near Simonsbath, Somerset, in August 1907. She had sung ‘Execution Song’, or ‘James Macdonald’, which he would publish in Folk Songs from Somerset Vol. 4. He followed her into Devon four days later to note down three more.

Betsy Holland was one of eight children of Thomas, a ‘licensed hawker’. The family were Romani and moved around a great deal in the border country between Devon and Somerset. In 1881 and 1891 we find them in a caravan, first in Cannington and then in Raleigh Cross and the children were baptised in a range of different villages. By the time Sharp met Betsy, she was married to Maurice Isaacs and had given birth to the first of their five children. In the 1911 census they are listed as living ‘in a tent’ in Huish Champflower with their children, alongside her father and his whole family.

From the archives: Execution Song

Emma Overd (1838–1928)

Emma Overd was 65 when Sharp met her in Langport, Somerset, in 1904. He returned on ten occasions, collecting 46 songs from her, several of which he published in the Folk Songs from Somerset series. Emma was the fourth child of an agricultural worker. Her mother died when she was eight and she was subsequently raised by her paternal grandmother. She was able to sign her name, suggesting some rudimentary education. She married an agricultural worker, William Overd, at the age of 22, and they had nine children together, three of whom died young. In the 1891 census she was listed as a ‘willow-peeler’.

Fox Strangeways’ 1933 biography of Sharp states that he sought her out owing to her ‘great reputation as a singer’. He located her outside a pub, where she cried out ‘lor, girls, here’s my beau come at last’, shocking the vicar who was travelling with Sharp. Emma’s grandson Herbert was interviewed by David Bland in 1974, and stated that Emma ‘was known to go down every Friday to draw her OAP pension at the Post Office and then call in the Railway Hotel… if she had half a pint or a pint, she’d sing’.

From the archives: Wassail Song

Eliza Woodberry (1829–1909)

Eliza Woodberry sang nine songs to Cecil Sharp over five visits, the first of which came in August 1907 when she was 78. Eliza was born in Ash Priors, five miles northwest of Taunton, Somerset, the daughter of a farmer, William, and his wife Mary. She married agricultural labourer Isaac Woodberry in 1851 at the age of 21 and the couple remained in Ash Priors for their whole married life, raising nine children.

Eliza seems to have had some basic education, for she was able to write Sharp a letter in October 1907 to confirm three extra verses to the song ‘The Cruel Mother’ which she had sung to him on 31 August in an incomplete form. He published the song in Folk Songs from Somerset Vol. 4 in 1908 along with her song ‘Come all you Worthy Christian Men’. She died the following year at the age of 80, and was buried in Ash Priors, the village of her birth and where she lived her entire life.

From the archives: The Cruel Mother

Lydia Wyatt (1828–1916) and George Wyatt (1822–1907)

On the first of his visits to their house in West Harptree, in April 1904, Sharp collected from George Wyatt, but not his wife Lydia. When he returned in August, and subsequently in 1906, both sang to him. The Wyatts provided him with 13 songs in total, with two of George’s, ‘Rambling Sailor’ and ‘Blackbirds and Thrushes’ appearing in the Folk Songs from Somerset series.

Lydia and George were both the children of labourers, and married in 1849. In the censuses of 1851 and 1861, George was listed as an agricultural labourer. In 1871 both he and his two sons were ‘miners’ but had reverted to working the land ten years later. They had nine children together. When George died in 1907, he left Lydia alone in their two roomed house. She lived on parish relief of 2/6d and a loaf of bread, and died at Clutton Workhouse in 1916.

From the archives: 
Holly and the Ivy (Lydia Wyatt) / Forty Long Miles (George Wyatt)

John Short (1839–1933)

Short supplied Sharp with 57 sea shanties across four visits to Watchet, Somerset, in 1914 while the latter was staying with Rev. AA Brockington, the vicar of nearby Carhampton. Short had been a sailor, often employed as a ‘shantyman’ to keep the crew working in rhythm on voyages to North America, East Asia and round Cape Horn to Peru. Short’s ‘deep, resonant and powerful voice’ gave Sharp 46 of the 60 tunes featured in his book of the same year, English Folk-Chanteys.

John’s father, Richard, had also been a sailor and it is likely John went to sea with him in the coastal trade of the Bristol Channel as a child. He married his first wife Ann Marie, the daughter of another sailor, in 1873, and had three children; two did not survive into adulthood, and the other, George, went on to work in the paper mills. In retirement John became the town crier for Watchet and it was said that you could hear his voice two miles away. He married again in 1906, and by the time he met Sharp eight years later was caring for his second wife who was crippled with rheumatism. She died in 1918 and John lived on until 1933.

The Times carried his obituary, which was written by Rev. Brockington. A statue of him sculpted by Alan Herriott was erected on Watchet seafront in 2008.

From the archives: Roller Bowler Capstan Chanty

Priscilla Cooper (c1865–?)

Priscilla Cooper was recorded on a phonograph by Sharp on New Year’s Day 1908 near Colyton, Devon, singing ‘Basket of Eggs’ and ‘American Stranger’. The results can be heard on the VWML website through the links below.

Cooper was a Gypsy, and the details of her life are sparse due to the peripatetic nature of her existence. We do not know her maiden name or anything of her upbringing, but she does appear in two census records, those for 1901 and 1911, which both have her living at Colyton with her husband Thomas. In 1901, Thomas was a 30-year-old ‘travelling Gypsy’ with a wife called ‘Pricilla’, aged 35, who was born in Bournemouth. For ‘occupation’, it is written ‘here for a time, buying daffodils, primroses etc for London market’. No children are listed. In 1911, Thomas was described as a ‘licensed hawker’. Research by local historian Ken Clifford found that Thomas left London with his brother-in-law in around 1900 in search of ferns which would keep fish fresh by warding off flies. They found these plants near Colyton and packaged them off to London. Priscilla, it is said, helped her husband in his sideline of collecting rags, and at Christmas sold holly wreaths and mistletoe.

From the archives: Listen to Priscilla singing:
Basket of Eggs / American Stranger

Louie Hooper (1860–1946)

Louisa Hooper, of Westport, Somerset, was undoubtedly one of the most important singers in the career of Cecil Sharp. He was introduced to her when he first visited Rev. Charles Marson at Hambridge Vicarage in August 1903 and returned on many occasions, collecting from her 37 solo songs, as well as 19 duets with her half-sister Lucy White (also featured in this exhibition).

Louie is said to have been born with a disabled leg, which meant that she attended school infrequently. Her mother Sarah, who died in 1892, was a renowned singer.

In 1884 Louie married labourer George Henry Hooper, but he died just weeks after their wedding, aged 30. Three babies with unknown fathers were subsequently baptised to her. In the 1891 census, she was living with her parents in Westport, but in 1901 she was listed as ‘Head of House, Widow, age 40 shirtmaker at home’, with daughter Flossie Hooper, age 15, Buttonholer, and Archie Hooper, age eight. She attracted coal charity money every Christmas, as distributed by Rev. Marson.

Rev. Etherington’s unpublished biography of Marson includes a letter from Louie: ‘…when I was still very young, all the women in this village did glovemaking… I used to cut off the ends for them, and… while they worked, they would sing the old songs and I learnt them all, and would sing them over to myself and listen over and over. And that’s how I got them’. She was recorded by the BBC in 1942, and died four years later at the age of 86.

From the archives: The Farmer’s Boy