The singer, walking amongst bushes and briars, hears his lover lamenting that if she tells him of her feelings, he will abandon her.
On December 4th 1903 Vaughan Williams wrote down ‘Bushes and Briars’ and was propelled into an intense period of folk song collecting. He wrote that hearing the song sung by Charles Potiphar was almost his first discovery of a folk song in its ‘native conditions’ - he had heard such music on the family estate as a child: this was the first time as an adult that he sat down to note a tune from a working-class singer.
Two daughters of the vicar of Ingrave played a vital role in Vaughan Williams’s new enthusiasm for collecting. They had attended a series of lectures on folk song that he delivered at nearby Brentwood in early 1903, as part of an educational outreach scheme. As the composer admitted later, at this point in his career he was fond of folk songs he had learned from books but was not fully convinced of their value: his ‘faith was not yet active’. The Heatley sisters were inspired to talk to the older people of their parish and found that there was a rich tradition of singing in the vicinity. Georgiana Heatley wrote down the words of several songs, made lists of singers and where they lived, and organised a tea party where Vaughan Williams could meet them. On December 4th he collected nineteen songs including six from Mr Potiphar (Vaughan Williams wrote ‘Pottipher’), four from a Mrs Horsnell, and five from a Mr Bloomfield (Vaughan Williams wrote ‘Broomfield).
When later asked about the origin of the tunes he sang, Potiphar answered, ‘If you can get the words the Almighty sends you a tune’. The lyrics for ‘Bushes and Briars’ can be found on early 19th century printed ballad sheets and broadsides (cheap printed sheets of news, gossip and verse) but probably date from before that. The archaic word ‘trepan’ in one of the verses - ‘For they are so false hearted/Young women to trepan’ - is a 17th century slang word for ‘ensnare’ or ‘entrap’.
About Potiphar’s performance Vaughan Williams wrote ‘It is impossible to reproduce the free rhythm and subtle portamento effects of this beautiful tune in ordinary notation…’ It has been argued that this song (coupled with ‘The Captain’s Apprentice’) was vital to his future ‘musical thought’ in ‘aspects of melody, rhythm, form and pace’. When he published it with piano accompaniment in Folk Songs from the Eastern Counties (1908) he included numerous timing and expression instructions such as lento e molto espressivo (Slow with great expression) and appassionato (with passion). When I performed it with a small a cappella group several years ago, we stretched the phrasing and rhythm freely and included trills and other ornamentation as well as harmonies. But on December 4th 1903 Vaughan Williams wrote only lento (slowly), with pauses indicated at the end of each phrase: I have sung it this way to reflect the manuscript record as closely as I can.
Vaughan Williams Memorial Library link: https://www.vwml.org/record/RVW2/4/3
Roud No.1027
Next post: 7 December
[NB. Notes on how I chose the songs for this project, and on useful sources of information, can be found on the updated first post]