Georgina Boyes let me know that the new edition of her book, The Imagined Village, is now available. Thislong-awaited revision of her influential book has some lovely illustrations as well as some other newmaterial. You can see details and buy the book at the No Masters website.
In response to my request for news Mike Tristram has written to say:You ask for news – my exciting news is that I have got to know a lovely man called Ron Johnson who is agrandson of John Johnson of Fittleworth (d. 1941). I decided to see if I could find John Johnson’s exercisebook in … Read more
The series of Cecil Sharp’s diaries covering the years 1915 – 18 when he visited America to collect songsin the Appalachian Mountains can now be viewed on the EFDSS website. To view the diaries, go here. Dotake the opportunity to have a look at the slide show about Sharp’s work and the diaries prepared by … Read more
Talking of the Internet Archive on Archive.org, I discovered the other day that a new tranche of texts bySabine Baring-Gould has been added to the archive, bringing the total to 377 (though some areduplicates). One of the new texts is the 1891 edition of Songs and Ballads of the West’ – the first versionof the … Read more
Members may be interested to hear about a book recently published by the Essex Record Office tocelebrate the centenary of Vaughan Williams collecting in Essex. The book, called ‘That Precious Legacy’,has been written by Sue Cubbin and includes 30 songs as well as background on the singers and thecollection
As reported in the notes of the recent meeting, great progress has been made with the ‘Yorkshire Garland’website, which is steadily increasing its content. Rather than me tell you about it, why don’t you takea look at http://www.yorkshirefolksong.net/ where you can hear some old Yorkshire favourites sung by WillNoble and John Greaves and read about … Read more
We were saddened to hear the news of the death of Tom Munnelly on August 30th, after a long illness. Itwas a great pleasure for us to have him speak at the ‘Life and Times’ meeting a year ago and his passingis a great loss to folk music enthusiasts on both sides of the Irish … Read more
The recent death of Peter Kennedy is the first of a founder member of the Traditional Song Forum and I feel it important that it should be recorded and an appreciation of his contribution given. There have been a number of obituaries and tributes to Peter and these have covered his life and work and … Read more
Malcolm Douglas has told me about another of his enterprising pieces of work – a full transcription of Henry Burstow’s ‘Reminiscences of Horsham’. This can be found here. If you do not know it you should have a browse through this interesting memoir , published in 1911 by a remarkable Sussex singer. As well memories … Read more
Not strictly song, but a very good use of material from the Carpenter collection by a webcast called‘Bringing in the May’ presented by Jennifer Cutting of the American Folk Life Center at the Library ofCongress. The fifteen minute programme looks at the history of may customs (particularly the maypole andmorris dancing) through material from England … Read more