turbulent priest (‘on broadbury down the ravens croak...’)

from horsemouth's visit to the second hand bookshops of walthamstralia a biography of sabine-baring gould - folksong collector, author of the hymn onward christian solders and the book of werewolves.

horsemouth has read it in its entirety already (which shows what can be achieved when he puts his mind to things). with a huge family to feed baring-gould was a prolific author (1240 titles), sometime novelist, a biographer of similarly crazed north devonshire priest harker of morwenstowe, writer of religious tracts and exhaustive encyclopedias of saints, designer of estate houses for his tenants, collector and chronicler of the antiquities of dartmoor.


but it is his role as folksong collector (and indeed promoter of a show involving folksong and dance and his many daughters that toured devon and cornwall) in the pre-cecil sharp era that interests horsemouth. between 1888 and 1890 baring-gould interviewed and took down songs from fifty plus ‘old singers’, from miners in zell in cornwall, and two men from south brent, richard hall and john helmore. marilyn tucker and paul wilson have sung many of them. there's a festival of his songs at oakhampton in october.

he wrote new words for some - boadbury gibbet (about the last man to be hanged in devon, a murderer called welland, ‘on broadbury down the ravens croak...’) and to a tune collected from wiliam huggins, a mason of lydford, the last of the singers. he writes in a letter,

‘... we have a fine body of traditional music. it is full late now to collect. all my old men are dead but one.’