286 Rev. S. Baring-Gould on [May 11, 



AVEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, May 11, 1894. 



Sir James Criohton-Browne, M.D. LL.D. F.R.S. 

 Treasurer and Vice-President, in the Chair. 



The Eev. S. Baring-Gould, M.A. 



English Folk Song. 



It has been a received commonplace that we English have no folk 

 music of our own. Nothing can be more erroneous. We have had 

 our folk song and music as truly as the Scots, the Irish, the Welsh and 

 the Germans. Unhappily, though there have been many collectors 

 of English ballads and of old English music, such collectors have 

 not gone to the people themselves, but to the shelves of the British 

 Museum, or have entrusted second-hand booksellers to gather for 

 them at sales such sheets of broadside or engraved and printed music 

 as came into the market. It is one thing to go into the reading- 

 room of the British Museum, and in a few days to pick out a 

 sufficient number of ballads to form a book of English ballads, or of 

 airs engraved in old music books, to form a volume of English song ; 

 it is quite another thing altogether to hunt up old singers, few and 

 far between, only to be heard of after diligent search, and, when found, 

 to win their confidence, overcome their reserve, and get them to 

 disclose the treasures buried in the inmost recesses of their memories. 

 Not only is this difficult, and a matter of much time and tact, but it 

 is also expensive work, requiring long journeys and lodging at inns, 

 entertainment of the singers, and also much patience under disap- 

 pointment. Yet this is positively the only way in which the folk 

 song of the English peasantry can be got at. The songs published 

 in collections purporting to represent the folk airs of England are 

 precisely those they do not sing. The songs of our peasantry have 

 been, till quite recently, as little printed as have been those of the 

 lark, the blackbird and the thrush. 



Folk airs go through strange mutations. An old English 

 melody has crossed into Ireland and comes back as " The Wearing 

 of the Green " ; " Paul's Steeple " has passed the border, and also 

 St. George's Channel, and has become in one place " John Anderson, 

 my Jo," and in the other " The Cruiskeen Lawn " ; " The Pride of 

 Kildare " has become extremely solemn as " The Story of the Cross," 

 sung in Holy Week ; and there is a hymn in Ancient and Modern 

 I never like to hear, as the melody is that of the schoolboy song, 



