Folk Song in the North of England
Frank Kidson (1855-1926) was a key player in the explosion of interest in traditional song and music in late Victorian and Edwardian England, and his pioneering book Traditional Tunes (1891) was one of the three founding works of what became the first Folk Song Revival. As well as collecting songs in the field, he amassed a huge collection of printed and manuscript material, and his knowledge of the history of traditional and popular tunes was unrivalled, and always available to others through the Folk-Song Society and other organisations. He was one of the few researchers who concentrated on the northern counties, and was particularly associated with his home-town of Leeds, so it is most fitting that this meeting, which commemorates the centenary of his death, and celebrates his legacy, is organised jointly by the Traditional Song Forum and Leeds Libraries. The conference will also form a small part in the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Leeds as a city. https://leedsinspired.co.uk/blog/leeds-400
The venue is Leeds Libraries at Leeds Central Library, and the conference will be held on the 10th October 2026.
Entry to the conference is free, but prior booking is essential. To book, please complete this short form. https://tinyurl.com/yeym78a2
The speakers and their topics are detailed below:
John Baxter – Some obscure the corners of the Kidson Collection?
Frank Kidson (1855-1926) was a Northern polymath, widely recognised by his contemporaries as an expert not just on folk songs and their tunes, but also on Leeds Pottery and British music publishing. He was also an antiquarian, bibliophile, chess player, Dickensian, editor, local historian, painter, photographer, playwright, poet, and song collector.
Arguably his greatest achievement was his music library – he amassed thousands of books and manuscripts, many of which are extremely rare if not unique. Sadly, Kidson’s library was broken up after his death. Most of the material was purchased by the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, though Leeds Central Library does also have significant holdings. A great deal of the Kidson Collection has been described by earlier researchers, but there are a number more obscure strands of his work which are not widely known. In recent months I have been working with the librarians here at Leeds to investigate a collection of over 800 pieces of 17th and 18th sheet music which the library seems to have acquired under the influence of Kidson.
I will present our findings thus far, though the work is likely to be ongoing.
John Baxter is an amateur folksinger and a retired academic specialising in interdisciplinary studies at the Open University. He is undertaking a major project to explore the intersection of folksong and songs written for the Halls, you can explore it at http://folksongandmusichall.com/
Mossy Christian – Songs of the North Riding
In 1962 Colin Wharton, a PHD candidate at Leeds University, collected extensively in North Yorkshire. His recordings of traditional songs, which focussed largely on the Esk Valley area of the North Riding, constitute one of the most significant collections of such in the region; one which is geographically and culturally distinct from others in the UK.
This paper represents part of the author’s ongoing research into the musical traditions in and around the village of Goathland. It will provide an overview of the traditional songs of the Esk Valley as recorded by the collector and his contemporaries, presented alongside comparisons with the area’s earlier visitors, and the musical landscape of the area today. It will also discuss Wharton’s informants as well as his collecting methods.
Mossy Christian is a professional musician, singer, educator and facilitator specialising
in the musical traditions of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. In 2024 he took over as the Director of Veteran: the traditional music label, a nationally significant archive of traditional music recordings from across the UK. He is also a member of the Goathland Plough Stots, a traditional longsword dance team with whom many of Wharton’s singers were connected.
Nick Dow – Two sisters from Blackpool
Nick Dow visited two sisters Beth Bond and Alice Parkinson, (nee Swift) in Singleton near Blackpool. They had a repertoire of Traditional Folk songs, with some rarities. Nick will play some recordings and recount the details of the singers lives and examine their repertoire with reference to the existing collections in the area.
Nick Dow has been singing and collecting Traditional Folk Songs for over forty years. Nick has gleaned songs from the West Country and been given songs by the Travelling people with whom he has lived and worked. Nick Dow is trained in the dying art of Gypsy Wagon Painting, and has worked as a painter for a long list of celebrities, including Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones. Nick Dow’s field recordings consist of three or four hours of Lancashire material including memories and stories, children’s songs and Folk songs.
John Francmanis – Frank Kidson’s sources for Traditional Tunes: a re-evaluation
Frank Kidson is largely remembered today as a pioneering folk song collector whose Traditional Tunes (1891) resulted from field work in the northern counties, and particularly his home city of Leeds. By specifically targeting the urban equivalent of the rural ‘folk’ – as has been suggested – had Kidson uncovered a flourishing song tradition in the industrial West Riding which warranted further exploration?
This presentation aims to consider who Kidson’s informants were, as well as the nature of their connections to both him and each other.
John Francmanis worked in Counter Terrorism and Immigration intelligence prior to retirement and subsequently as Director of a building company. A number of his articles on Frank Kidson and his place in the first Folk Song Revival have been published. Along with Vic Gammon – who supervised John’s PhD on Frank Kidson – he was instrumental in getting a blue plaque erected in Kidson’s memory in Chapeltown, Leeds.
He plays instruments of the violin family and their mandolin equivalents in both acoustic and electric form. He has never lived outside of the former West Riding of Yorkshire.
Vic Gammon – Frank Kidson and the Vitality of Melody
Frank Kidson had a diverse musical interest which demonstrated itself in his extensive knowledge and in some of the pioneering work he undertook. He believed in compiling accurate information. Kidson’s inclination was to collect and catalogue things, to treasure things from the past that might otherwise be lost, be they traditional tunes, broadsides, books, information on music publishers, or pieces of Leeds Pottery. What he lacked in musical skills (by his own admission), he more than made up for in interest and enthusiasm.
It is notable that a number of Kidson’s published works relate to tunes and melody, often using these and related terms in his titles; these musical elements were obviously crucially important to Kidson. In this presentation, I want critically to explore some of Kidson’s ideas about tune and melody, in particular what he called in a 1907 paper, ‘The Vitality of Melody’, and try to assess critically the significance of these ideas in Kidson’s own time and for us today.
Vic Gammon is a writer, researcher, podcaster and active musician. He served on the Editorial Board of the Folk Music Journal for 37 years and has written extensively on aspects of traditional and vernacular song and instrumental music. He has composed and provided music for stage and radio plays. He still performs regularly although tends to restrict this to his local area in recent years He sings and plays the anglo-concertina, tenor banjo, tenor guitar and melodeon. Archives of some of his various audio recordings (music and speech) and writings are freely available at https://archive.org/search?query=Vic+Gammon and https://newcastle.academia.edu/VicGammon. Along with John Francmanis, he was instrumental in getting a blue plaque erected in the memory of Frank Kidson, in Chapeltown, Leeds
Katie Howson – Thirsty Work – traditional singing from the North on BBC Radio, 1940-41Between April 1940 and March 1941 a little known radio series called ‘Thirsty Work’ broadcast seven programmes of singing from pubs across England, including Ambleside in Westmorland, Redmire in the Dales and Harome on the North York Moors. Recordings were made and archived for the first two of these programmes, but the latter (the last in the series) was a victim of wartime exigencies and seems never to have been archived. Discovered initially through the Radio Times archive, subsequent visits to the BBC Written Archives and investigations into family, local and folk history then revealed the fascinating story of what the men not called away to war were singing to amuse themselves and their pub audiences – and also thousands of radio listeners including local soldiers far away from home.
Katie Howson is well known for championing the music, song and dance from the eastern counties of England as a performer and event organiser and as a researcher, writer and speaker. In 2000, she and her husband John Howson founded the East Anglian Traditional Music Trust, from which they retired in 2017. In 2010 both were awarded the EFDSS Gold Badge Award. Katie is the author of ‘Blyth Voices’ and ‘Before the Night Was Out’ and co-author of ‘The Brightest of Entertainers’ (shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Award, 2019). Most of her research focuses on microstudies of song, music and dance communities, including the social history of stepdancing and the dulcimer in East Anglia. Her current preoccupation is with a much larger subject: the history of women instrumentalists, a topic explored for her 2026 Roy Palmer Lecture ‘A Dove Amongst a Flock of Old Crows: Women Traditional Musicians’.
Chris Nickson – Frank Kidson
The talk will cover the musical life (perhaps lives – his interests were varied and moved from collecting and publishing folk songs to broadside ballads and classical music as well as a history of Leeds pottery) of Frank Kidson, his upbringing and slightly eccentric life, as well as his role as one of the pioneering Victoria folk song collectors and being a founding member of the English Folk Song Society.
Chris Nickson is a novelist and music journalist who for many years has focused on roots music. He’s written about Frank Kidson for publications like fRoots and included him, along with his niece, in a novel, The Tin God
Brian Peters – Jone o’ Grinfilt: Protestor or Patriot?The Lancashire dialect songs relating the exploits of ‘Jone o’ Grinfilt’ have been much analysed by scholars of the social history of the early industrial revolution, from E. P. Thompson onwards. The original comic ballad, describing the misadventures of a poor weaver on volunteering to fight against the French, was written by an Oldham man and became a huge hit locally through public performance and the broadside press. It spawned many successor ballads describing the further exploits of its hero, some highlighting poverty and injustice and leading to ‘Jone’ being characterised as ‘the most famous figure of protest in Lancashire during the nineteenth century’. This paper attempts to resolve some of the confusion and misinformation surrounding the ballads, and to explore the development of the central character to suit different political purposes.
Brian Peters has been a professional performer and educator in the field of traditional song and music for 40 years, and in recent times has presented and published a growing body of original research. In a series of articles challenging previous scholarship, he has offered a detailed and balanced account of Cecil Sharp’s work, including critical analyses of Sharp’s expeditions to the Appalachian Mountains, his practice as a collector in England, the development of his folk song theories, his relationships with colleagues, and his politics.
Brian has also studied the origins and evolution of the song ‘The Wild Rover’, the relationship between the 1960s folk song revival and traditional performance, and the fieldwork of Maud Karpeles in Appalachia. Brian has contributed several talks to the Traditional Song Forum, is a regular reviewer for the Folk Music Journal, and is currently working on a major project concerning radical vernacular song in North-west England during the 1800s.