Still Growing. English Traditional Songs and Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection

Folklore, April, 2005 by Eddie Cass

Still Growing. English Traditional Songs and Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection. Edited by Steve Roud, Eddie Upton and Malcolm Taylor. London: The English Folk Dance and Song Society, 2003. 121 pp. 12.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk). ISBN 0-85418-187-3

2003 was the centenary of the collection of "The Seeds of Love" by Cecil Sharp. When Sharp heard it, the song was being sung by John England, gardener at the vicarage, Hambridge, Somerset where the Revd Charles Latimer Marson, later one of Sharp's collaborators, was the perpetual curate. Sharp's hearing that song, sung while England was mowing the vicarage lawn, was a defining moment in the history of English folksong collecting. It set Sharp off on his lifetime's work, collecting some five thousand folksongs and, later, the collection of Morris and sword dances. The meeting of Sharp and England in August 1903 was celebrated last year by the Cecil Sharp Centenary Conference in Ilminster, Somerset and the Cecil Sharp Centenary Festival of Folk Dance and Song in Hambridge itself. A more permanent record of the event is this book.

The core of the book consists of some fifty songs and tunes from the Sharp collection. The songs are, however, immeasurably enriched by the accompanying biographical details and, wherever possible, photographs of the singers from whom Sharp collected the songs. The song collection thus becomes a social document of considerable importance. The book also contains a preface by Shirley Collins and a brief biography of the Revd Marson by David Sutcliffe. The final section, by David Atkinson, is described as "Cecil Sharp and Folk Song: A Select Bibliography." Whatever the limitations on the length of this section that were imposed by the needs of the book, the bibliography will be an essential starting point for anyone coming fresh to Cecil Sharp and his work.

In the past thirty years or so, the role of Sharp and his collecting during the first folk revival has been the subject of much debate. Some of that debate has been more than a little acrimonious. An important part of this book is the introduction by Vic Gammon, which, at twenty-one pages, represents one-sixth of the total content. Gammon is not uncritical of Sharp. However, in this piece he gives a short overview of the collector's life and work, and reviews the literature on Sharp that has emerged as the debate has progressed. This review of the literature is elegant in its construction and fair-minded in its approach. In my view, it is one of the best-balanced pieces I have read on Sharp and his methods. The whole book is an essential purchase for anyone with an interest in Sharp, folksong, or the first folk revival.

Eddie Cass, National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield, UK