|
Showing 1 - 12 of
12 matches in All Departments
This broad-based collection of essays is an introduction both to
the concerns of contemporary folklore scholarship and to the
variety of forms that folk performance has taken throughout English
history. Combining case studies of specific folk practices with
discussion of the various different lenses through which they have
been viewed since becoming the subject of concerted study in
Victorian times, this book builds on the latest work in an
ever-growing body of contemporary folklore scholarship. Many of the
contributing scholars are also practicing performers and bring
experience and understanding of performance to their analyses and
critiques. Chapters range across the spectrum of folk song, music,
drama and dance, but maintain a focus on the key defining
characteristics of folk performance - custom and tradition - in a
full range of performances, from carol singing and sword dancing to
playground rhymes and mummers' plays. As well as being an essential
reference for folklorists and scholars of traditional performance
and local history, this is a valuable resource for readers in all
disciplines of dance, drama, song and music whose work coincides
with English folk traditions.
Shortly before his death, the Devonshire-born cleric, writer and
antiquarian, Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) wrote: 'To this day I
consider that the recovery of our West Country melodies has been
the principal achievement of my life.' Though there have been a
number of biographies of this Victorian polymath, none has looked
in detail at his role as a leading figure in the English folk song.
Most of Baring-Gould's childhood was spent travelling in Europe
with his family. Away from the influences of a conventional
education he explored the mythology, romances and folklore of
northern Europe and took particular delight in the Icelandic sagas.
He entered the church at the age of thirty and became a curate in
Yorkshire where he accumulated folk tales, riddles and the first of
the thousands of traditional songs he collected during his long
life. He inherited the Lew Trenchard estate in Devon to become both
squire and parson of this little parish. It was in 1888 that a
chance remark at dinner prompted his hunt for old songs in the area
around his home. From Lew Trenchard he travelled around Devon and
Cornwall to meet the singers in their pubs and their cottages and
to coax them to part with their old songs. He used his celebrity
status as a leading novelist and writer to bring the folk songs of
the West Country to a wider audience through his publications,
lectures, costume concerts and the first folk opera, Red Spider,
based on one of his novels and on songs he had heard. The books of
songs that he published have been criticised for the way in which
he edited them for publication, striking out coarse material or
rewriting songs but, in doing so, he was acknowledging the limits
and demands of public taste of his time. Martin Graebe has been
fascinated by Baring-Gould for many years, but the re-discovery of
a large quantity of his personal papers in 1992 propelled him
towards a re-evaluation of Baring-Gould's work on folk song. What
he has uncovered is a fascinating collaborative project between
Baring-Gould and the musicians, singers and ordinary members of the
public in Devon and Cornwall. He also looks at his relationships
with other folk song collectors such as Lucy Broadwood, Ralph
Vaughan Williams and Cecil Sharp. This book will be of interest,
not just to enthusiasts for English folk song, but also to those
who wish to know more about their place in the lives of the
ordinary people of the late nineteenth century.
In recent years, the assumption that traditional songs originated
from a primarily oral tradition has been challenged by research
into 'street literature' - that is, the cheap printed broadsides
and chapbooks that poured from the presses of jobbing printers from
the late sixteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth.
Not only are some traditional singers known to have learned songs
from printed sources, but most of the songs were composed by
professional writers and reached the populace in printed form.
Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North
America engages with the long-running debate over the origin of
traditional songs by examining street literature's interaction
with, and influence on, oral traditions.
This broad-based collection of essays is an introduction both to
the concerns of contemporary folklore scholarship and to the
variety of forms that folk performance has taken throughout English
history. Combining case studies of specific folk practices with
discussion of the various different lenses through which they have
been viewed since becoming the subject of concerted study in
Victorian times, this book builds on the latest work in an
ever-growing body of contemporary folklore scholarship. Many of the
contributing scholars are also practicing performers and bring
experience and understanding of performance to their analyses and
critiques. Chapters range across the spectrum of folk song, music,
drama and dance, but maintain a focus on the key defining
characteristics of folk performance - custom and tradition - in a
full range of performances, from carol singing and sword dancing to
playground rhymes and mummers' plays. As well as being an essential
reference for folklorists and scholars of traditional performance
and local history, this is a valuable resource for readers in all
disciplines of dance, drama, song and music whose work coincides
with English folk traditions.
In recent years, the assumption that traditional songs originated
from a primarily oral tradition has been challenged by research
into 'street literature' - that is, the cheap printed broadsides
and chapbooks that poured from the presses of jobbing printers from
the late sixteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth.
Not only are some traditional singers known to have learned songs
from printed sources, but most of the songs were composed by
professional writers and reached the populace in printed form.
Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North
America engages with the long-running debate over the origin of
traditional songs by examining street literature's interaction
with, and influence on, oral traditions.
Longlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize England was once
dubbed 'the land without music', but in the early twentieth century
collectors and enthusiasts such as Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan
Williams and Percy Grainger discovered a vital heritage of folk
song, vibrant and alive among working men and women. Yet after more
than a century of collecting, publishing and performing songs,
there are still many things we don't know about England's
traditional music. Where did the songs come from? Who sang them,
and where, when and why? Why did some songs thrive, and did the
collectors' passions and prejudices determine what was preserved,
and what was lost? In answer to these questions, acclaimed
folklorist Steve Roud has drawn on an unprecedented range of
sources to present an intricate social history of folk song through
the ages, from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. It is
an absorbing and impeccably researched account that gives a
sonorous voice to England's past.
The definitive collection of folk music - one of the great English
popular art forms One of the great English popular art forms, the
folk song can be painful, satirical, erotic, dramatic, rueful or
funny. This magical new collection brings together all the classic
folk songs as well as many lesser-known discoveries, complete with
music and annotations on their original sources and meaning.
Published in cooperation with the English Folk Dance and Song
Society, it is a worthy successor to Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.
L. Lloyd's original Penguin Book of English Folk Songs.
This enthralling book will take you, month-by-month, day-by-day,
through all the festivities of English life. From national
celebrations such as New Year's Eve to regional customs such as the
Padstow Hobby Horse procession, cheese rolling in Gloucestershire
and Easter Monday bottle kicking in Leeds, it explains how they
originated, what they mean and when they occur. A fascinating guide
to the richness of our heritage and the sometimes eccentric nature
of life in England, The English Year offers a unique chronological
view of our social customs and attitudes
London is a city with almost as many ancient legends and
deep-rooted customs as it has streets and landmarks, and here a
leading folklorist brings together an astonishingly rich selection
of them--tales of ghosts and witches; stories about fabled events,
heroes, and villains; and accounts of local supersitions and
beliefs. Beyond simply retelling these stories it also delves
through layers of hearsay and speculation to investigate how and
why they arose. In the process, it shows how the story of Dick
Whittington and his cat has connections with the ancient Middle
East, explains why lions rather than ravens at the Tower of London
were once felt to be inextricably bound up with the city's fate,
and pinpoints precisely where the story of Sweeney Todd, the demon
barber of Fleet Street, was first recorded. Exploring everything
from local superstitions, to ghost stories, to annual customs,
this""is an enchanting guide to the ancient legends and deep-rooted
beliefs that can be found the length and breadth of the city.
For centuries, street literature was the main cheap reading
material of the working classes: broadsides, chapbooks, songsters,
prints, engravings, and other forms of print produced specifically
to suit their taste and cheap enough for even the poor to buy.
Starting in the sixteenth century, but at its chaotic and
flamboyant peak in the nineteenth, street literature was on sale
everywhere - in urban streets and alleyways, at country fairs and
markets, at major sporting events and holiday gatherings, and under
the gallows at public executions. For this very reason, it was
often despised and denigrated by the educated classes, but remained
enduringly popular with the ordinary people. Anything and
everything was grist to the printers' mill, if it would sell. A
penny could buy you a celebrity scandal, a report of a gruesome
murder, the last dying speech of a condemned criminal, wonder
tales, riddles and conundrums, a moral tale of religious danger and
redemption, a comic tale of drunken husbands and shrewish wives, a
temperance tract or an ode to beer, a satire on dandies, an
alphabet or "reed-a-ma-daisy" (reading made easy) to teach your
children, an illustrated chapbook of nursery rhymes, or the
adventures of Robin Hood and Jack the Giant Killer. Street
literature long held its own by catering directly for the ordinary
people, at a price they could afford, but, by the end of the
Victorian era, it was in terminal decline and was rapidly being
replaced by a host of new printed materials in the shape of cheap
newspapers and magazines, penny dreadful novels, music hall
songbooks, and so on, all aimed squarely at the burgeoning mass
market. Fascinating today for the unique light it shines on the
lives of the ordinary people of the age, street literature has long
been neglected as a historical resource, and this collection of
essays is the first general book on the trade for over forty years.
This dictionary is part of the Oxford Reference Collection: using
sustainable print-on-demand technology to make the acclaimed
backlist of the Oxford Reference programme perennially available in
hardback format. An engrossing guide to English folklore and
traditions, with over 1,250 entries. Folklore is connected to
virtually every aspect of life, part of the country, age group, and
occupation. From the bizarre to the seemingly mundane, it is as
much a feature of the modern technological age as of the ancient
world. BL Oral and Performance genres-Cheese rolling, Morris
dancing, Well-dressingEL BL Superstitions-Charms, Rainbows,
WishbonesEL BL Characters-Cinderella, Father Christmas, Robin Hood,
Dick WhittingtonEL BL Supernatural Beliefs-Devil's hoofprints,
Fairy rings, Frog showersEL BL Calendar Customs-April Fool's Day,
Helston Furry Day, Valentine's DayEL
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|