Vaughan Williams’s Journey into Folk: 31 December 1904
‘Tom Block’, Mr & Mrs Truell, Gravesend, Kent
Tom Block sings of how he was wounded in battle aboard ship and has lost both his legs. He thinks it would have been better to have died at sea, for he has no friends, his family are all dead, and now he must beg for bread: ‘Pity a sailor, a poor old maimed sailor, O come pity a sailor’.
On New Year’s Eve Vaughan Williams travelled to Gravesend, on the south bank of the Thames, opposite Tilbury Docks. There he met the Truells: John, a cattle man, and his wife, Sarah, both in their early 70s. So far, I’ve not been able to discover why he went to the town and how he met the couple living in Perry Street. I assume that by the end of December the Vaughan Williamses had returned from Leith Hill to London, and he then travelled from there to Gravesend by train. He collected seven songs from the couple.
‘Tom Block’ appears in Volume III of a huge collection of song lyrics published in 1802 by West & Hughes, Paternoster Row, London in a volume titled: THE MYRTLE AND VINE OR COMPLETE VOCAL LIBRARY. CONTAINING A Judicious Collection of the most Popular and Captivating SONGS ON EVERY SUBJECT THAT CAN CHARM THE EAR OR ENLIVEN THE HEART.
The book credits by name many of the authors of lyrics and frequently includes instructions for the tunes to use – such as ‘Tom Bowling’; ‘Derry Down’, and ‘Hearts of Oak’. Singers famous for performing particular songs are identified, with sometimes less than complimentary discussions of their style: for example, the voice of Mr Dignum, who sang ‘The Flitch of Bacon’, and ‘George and Save England’, is described as ‘guttural and thin, a kind of counter-tenor…often lost in the wide-striding Theatre of Drury-Lane, and the embowering trees of Vauxhall-Gardens [the famous public pleasure gardens in London]’. Sadly, there is no similar information about the author or singer of ‘Tom Block’.
The last quarter of the book is headed-up as ‘The New Century’ (that is, the 1800s), indicating that the songs printed in the first section – including ‘Tom Block’ – date from before 1800. This sad tale of a sailor losing his legs in a naval battle alongside several other songs concerning Nelson and the wars with France, suggests the song dates from the 1790s.
Apart from Vaughan Williams’s notes, the Roud Index records only a handful of references to ‘Tom Block’ in publications circa 1800, and one much later collection of the words by Mervyn Plunkett circa 1957-1960 at Pease Pottage, Sussex. The melody sung by the Truells is the only one on record for these lyrics.
Vaughan Williams Memorial Library link : https://www.vwml.org/record/RVW2/3/43 and https://www.vwml.org/record/RVW2/1/216
Roud No. 3552
Next post: 7 January
HAPPY NEW YEAR!