Vaughan Williams’s Journey into Folk: 4 December 2023
120 years since Vaughan Williams collected ‘Bushes and Briars’
One hundred and twenty years ago today, on the 4 December 1903, Ralph Vaughan Williams heard Charles Potiphar of Ingrave, Essex, sing ‘Bushes and Briars’, and his life changed.
I’m getting in touch to remind you that the circa forty ‘Vaughan Williams’s Journey into Folk’ posts are still available. If you enjoyed travelling with him last time, you might like to revisit his journey, starting from today.
I’ve taken this opportunity to add one more song to the collection: ‘Kishmul’s Galley’. Those of you who’ve read my book, The Captain’s Apprentice, will know the significance of the song to me.
‘Kishmul’s Galley’ wasn’t collected by Vaughan Williams but by a contemporary collector in Scotland, Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, and was published in Boosey & Co.’s Songs of the Hebrides in 1909. The original Gaelic words were supplied by Mrs Maclean from the island of Barra, and the air from the singing of Mary Macdonald of Mingulay, south of Barra - but Kennedy-Fraser, working with the Revd Kenneth MacLeod, turned what had been a traditional ‘waulking song’ into an art song with English words suitable for the Edwardian parlour. Please click on the link above if you’d like to hear me singing the version my mother taught me.
If you haven’t read the book yet, it’s now available to buy in paperback.
I hope you enjoy revisiting the journey.
Wishing you a peaceful New Year
Caroline Davison