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On this site you will be able to order copies of George Deacon’s study of the folk culture that John Clare recorded and it’s influence on his development as a poet. George has a limited number of signed copies of the hardback first edition available in addition to the paperback. You can also order copies of George’s recording of 17 songs from the collection.
Book Reviews Eric Robinson: The outstanding contribution made by George Deacon in his John Clare and the Folk Tradition to the study of this subject has placed all lovers of Clare in his debt. James Fenton: The New York Review In addition to his botanizing and his ornithology, Clare was a collector of folk music and ballads. George Deacon, whose study of this important aspect of Clare's achievement was first published in 1983, tells us that Clare is probably the earliest collector of the songs people actually sang in southern England. Deacon’s study gathers the tunes and songs that Clare collected and is well worth having. Tom Paulin: George Deacon’s study of Clare – it is also a very scholarly anthology – is a classic work, which brings us so close to Clare we can almost hear his living voice. We can also hear his father’s and mother’s voices, so that a vanished world and a neglected culture comes back with an eager and vital freshness. We return to the greenwood and feel free. Here, we watch Clare’s imagination grow in confidence, as he transcribes songs, adapts them and writes his own songs…In the annals of Clare scholarship, George Deacon’s work will always be celebrated – the son of singers and himself a singer, he puts us in close and living touch with the oral culture which formed Clare.
Times Education Supplement:
What should we not give, though, for a substantial clutch of songs-words and tunes-gathered from inside: recorded by one of "the folk", not collected from him? Much. And lo and behold, here it is: John Clare and the Folk Tradition, the extensive collection of songs and tunes made by the poet John Clare in and around his home village of Helpston in Northamptonshire in the early 19th century. Clare's father new "above a hundred" ballads Clare’s early biographer Martin describes the young poet learning songs from "Granny Bains, the cowherd of Helpston". Both parents contributed to the material printed here; of Granny Bains we cannot be sure, though Clare does mention her as a source of village traditions. In his very full and informative introduction Deacon quotes Clare's note in a fair copy manuscript of the songs, "I used to spend the long evenings with my father and mother and heard them by accident hum over scraps of the following old melodies which I have collected and put into their present form."
Sunday Telegraph:
This is a notable anthology of English folk song, as well as an important addition to the canon of Clare's poetry. A bargain.
British Book News:
George Deacon in this scholarly and fascinating book prints the song texts and tunes in Clare's manuscripts, with detailed discussion of each item, and a lengthy and cogent introduction surveying the entire question of Clare's engagement with tradition. In the space available he can give only a hint of the mass of material hidden in Clare's poetry and prose, but he can make perfectly clear the profound importance of Clare's work for the social historian and the folklore rest. For Clare's painstaking delineation of the social and cultural life of his village-Helpston, in Northamptonshire-is made from the inside, yet by a man is sufficiently apart, because of his gifts, to realise the importance of what he knew and tried to set it down. For publication of this material is well overdue and we must be grateful that it has found in George Deacon such an assiduous and sensitive editor.
Vic Gammon, Folk Music Journal:
George Deacon is owed a great debt of gratitude for making available to the public the richness of the poet John Clare's manuscripts relating to song dance, music, and custom. Readers will find powers of fascination between the dark covers of this book... No one interested in English tradition will want to be without a copy.
…
John Clare and the Folk Tradition is a rich, and diverse, if somewhat necessarily chaotic book. It is a work of social history, and literary study, a work of folklore, a song collection, a dance collection and a tune collection. It makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of an English poet neglected in his Day but increasingly gaining recognition now. Through the work of this man our knowledge of English traditional culture is enriched. Readers of this journal will want this book and George Deacon should receive a vote of thanks for having written and compiled it.
London Review of Books:
Encouraged by London literary friends after the success in 1820 of his first collection of verse, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, he began to write down anecdotes of local customs, sports and superstitions, and to collect songs he heard his father and neighbours singing with the intention of publishing what would have been a unique cultural history of a parish, assembled from the inside. This material is selected and analysed in George Deacon's John Clare and the Folk Tradition, one of the most informative and valuable studies of Clare's poetry yet to appear.
Ian Russell, Folklore:
George Deacon's thesis is that John Clare, the Northamptonshire poet (1793-1864) , was a product of the folk tradition. His evidence for this is largely taken from the Clare manuscripts at Northampton & Peterborough libraries. From these sources he has reproduced Clare's collection of song texts, his two tune books for the fiddle, and relevant references in his poetry, autobiographical notes, and correspondence, including mention of customs. These records are preceded by an important essay that successfully relates Clare’s poetry to the oral tradition in which he grew up, in which he participated, and of which he was an observer. Deacon asserts, "his poetry has a musicality redolent of the tunes he played and assiduously collected, while its rhythm and metre are as much a product of ballads and song as they are of a conscious attempt to innovate" (p 10). The book is a tour de force, meticulously edited and annotated.
Songs on the CD - Dream Not of Love
The majority of the songs are in Clare's papers are love songs and they formed the theme of this recording. As Clare knew only too well the path of true love is beset with many snares. His first love was Mary Joyce from the nearby village of Glinton but her parents stifled their relationship, he being below her degree. By 1820 he had married Martha Turner just two months before she bore their child. He undoubtedly came to love Patty but he never relinquished his first true love. Small wonder then that he should have identified with the lovers in these songs. Whether they were parted by proud parents or bore children whilst unwed, professed their undying love, or wandered forlorn their plight seems to have much in common with Clare's. Here then is a unique record of the love songs collected and written in one small village during the early years of the 19th-century. Our only documentary evidence of what was sung in East Northamptonshire and a rare opportunity to discover the songs that inspired one of our major poets-John Clare.
Here's a health unto thee bonnie lassie O
Clare wrote this sometime after 1840, modelling his song on either the traditional The Shearing's Not for You or Thomas Lyle's Kelvingrove. As a song to an absent lover we might see this either as a sequel to the traditional song or as a song to Mary Joyce who had died in 1838.
The Week before Easter
When this first appeared in print, as a broadside in the 17th-century, it had the title The Forlorn Lover; Declaring How a Lass Gave Her Lover Three Slips for a Tester and Married Another the Week before Easter. Clare collected this text from his parents and it is sung here to a tune collected in 1898 from Mr Copper of Rottingdean in Sussex.
A Brisk Young Shepherd
This is a song that Clare's mother sang, one of a family of songs descending from the broadside The Oxfordshire Tragedy it is interesting that Clare should have so radically changed the sentiments of the young unmarried mother in his song when he came to rewrite it. Here her shame is such that she wishes herself dead but her child born and smiling on its daddies knee.
A Faithless Shepherd
Clare’s extended version of the previous song, with its changed emphasis. In this version that child has been born but the young mother, concerned at the lot of a bastard child, wishes that they were both dead and our sorrows both away. It is worth noting that Clare's father was born out of wedlock giving him a real understanding of the consequences of bastardy. Both songs are sung to a tune collected from Joseph Taylor, at Brigg in Lincolnshire, in 1908.
Mary Neil
An unnamed man was the source for this text, which Clare described as an Old Ballad. Though he admits to having made some additions to the text, comparison with a broadside version reveals that these were fairly minor alterations. Clare used this as the basis for a poem written in the 1850s the text of which is given in John Clare and the Folk Tradition. The tune used here was sung by a Mrs Russell of Upwey, Dorset for a song entitled The Stealing of Mary Neil.
O Would I were the little Bird
The expression of a wish to be an animal, or as here a Bird, flower and insect, in order to secure one's love is fairly common in folk song though I believe this text to be substantially Clare's own work. Sung to the tune The Loyal Lover collected by Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould.
The True Lovers Farewell
Clare's manuscript says of this song this is an old Ballad which my father sings, he learned it when a child of his mother who knew it when a lass, therefore it cannot be much less than 100 years old . This is under the heading The Origin of Burns Red Red Rose. Clare did however produce a rewritten text of this himself. The tune was collected from Mrs Cranstone, Billingshurst, July 1907, by George Butterworth.
The Constant Sailor's Return
No title is given for this in Clare's manuscripts and I strongly suspect that he wrote the song himself. The theme of lovers parted by war and dramatically reunited is, however, common in the folk tradition where it is frequently accompanied by a test of fidelity and the broken token symbol. A not dissimilar song Claudy Banks, sung by Mr Frederick White of Southampton, provides the melody.
O Silly Love
Love renders a 30 year-old maiden incapable of carrying out her work as a domestic servant and disaster follows disaster. Clare described this as an Old Ballad though I feel sure that he wrote it himself. The tune was sung by John Edbrook at Bishops Nympton, North Devon in 1904 for the song The Tinker and collected by Cecil Sharp.
Bushes and Briars (1)
Clare's father, Parker Clare, sang this text of the song, which is fairly commonly encountered in the oral tradition. It is interesting to note how he imposed himself on the song in the third verse, changing the gender of the spurned suitor, despite the fact that this is essentially a song about a lovelorn maiden. The tune is that collected for Bushes and Briars by R. Vaughan Williams in 1903 from Mr Pottipher of Ingrave, Essex.
Bushes and Briars (2)
Once again we can juxtapose a song written by Clare with the text that inspired it. The two appear on the same page of his manuscripts without alteration. For John Clare this is still a song about a lovelorn maiden but he has extended the storyline until it almost parallels that of the rejected suitor in The Week before Easter.
The Maid of the Hall
Since Clare almost certainly composed the song himself it is tempting to identify the central characters as John Clare and Mary Joyce. However the song is not dissimilar to a 19th-century broadside -The Maid of the Mill -in its structure and rhyme scheme and we might presume some connection. Our source for the tune is Mrs Russell of Upwey, Dorset, who sang it in 1987 as the melody for The Cruel Mother.
Dream Not of Love
Both of Clare's parents sang this song though it is in truth no more than a collection of floating stanzas commonly encountered in a variety of songs. Somehow the piling of image on image throughout the song seemed to symobise the essence of this recording and it came to supply our title. The tune was collected from Mrs Cox, High Ham, Dorset, in 1905 by Cecil Sharp.
The Banks of Inverary
This song was issued as a broadside during the 19th-century and Clare must have either known it or known of it. He gave it the title above noting that the unnamed man from him the collected it knew it as Banks of Ivory. A version of the song was collected in 1905 from Mr Robert Barrett in Dorset (Hammond manuscripts) and it is his tune we have used.
The Winter it is Past
This text, sung by Clare's father follows the pattern of the 19th-century broadside versions - the young girl grieves for her absent lover having been forced to part from him by her rich parents. Though Mary Joyce's parents could not have been described as rich, this song must have struck a chord in Clare's mind - since it was they who forced them to part. The melody is taken from The Scottish Minstrel published in 1824.
Here's A Sad Goodbye
Clare described this as Scraps from my father & mother & compleated. It occurs earlier on this recording in a variant form as the True Lovers Farewell and in comparing the two it is clear to what extent Clare amended the song. The tune described as Red Red Rose (Old Set) in the Scots Musical Museum 1787 - 1803 has been used.
The Maiden's Welcome
Since this song is almost certainly the work of John Clare we might suggest that here is a bit of wishful thinking. Here a girl defies her parents wishes and pledges her love to a shepherd lad. With the material bought for the bridal dress and True Love returned it provides a happy note to end on. The verse structure and rhythm lend themselves beautifully to the tune High Germany the version used here being that collected from Mrs Locke, Muchelny Ham, in 1904 by Cecil Sharp.
The Performers
Having taken part in the BBC TV Series Give Us a Song, George Deacon became a professional folk singer in 1966 performing at festivals and clubs in the United Kingdom and abroad. Having published John Clare and the Folk Tradition he went on to complete a PhD on song and social history at the University of Essex In. He has written both scripts and music for BBC Radio 4 and was commissioned as period music adviser for Bill Douglas's film story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs: Comrades. He has recorded previously: Sweet William's Ghost (XTRA 1130 ). On this recording he plays his 1930 Martin 0017 guitar and sings.
Isobel Deacon plays a three octave, double row, portable, collapsible harmonium.
Christine Hodgkinson is a member of the Corelli players and a lecturer in music. On this recording she plays a gut strung baroque violin.
Futher Information
For more information about John Clare click on the following links: http://www.johnclare.org.uk/ www.johnclare.blogspot.com
For more information about the English Folk Tradition click on the following links: www.efdss.org www.folklore-society.com