History Group

At the March meeting of the group, chairman Mike Lester, a musician himself, gave an informative and at times humorous talk about the origins of the collecting of folk songs in this area.

In the early 1900s, a movement began among educated people to record the traditional songs still sung by the working classes that had been handed down the generations. As agricultural workers drifted to towns because of industrialisation, the collectors, fearing that rural songs would be lost, recorded their songs, first by writing the words and musical notes down with pen and paper, then using the phonograph invented by Thomas Edison in 1905.

Mike played an early 1908 recording of Joseph Taylor of Lincolnshire singing Brigg Fair (a song which was later used by composer and collector Percy Grainger, who sent it to Delius who then wrote his orchestral variations). These early recordings conveyed the tonal quality of the singing that was missing from written manuscripts.

For some years it was thought that Yorkshire did not have many local songs. This was proved wrong by Nigel and Mary Hudleston who travelled Yorkshire recording a large amount of songs. The tapes of the songs were transcribed and then used by Scarborough musicians Mark Gordon and Richard Adams to produce a sizeable volume of songs that was published by Pindars in 2001. These include some from the vast repertoire of Jack Beeforth of Cook House Farm, Fylingdales, recorded when he was an old man in bed in 1974, his memory prompted by his daughter Ethel Pearson. Mike played a recording of one of his songs. These songs, learnt from family members and other singers that Jack sang unaccompanied at various local venues such as the Flask Sports and pubs, were the basis of a university PhD thesis by David Hillery who gave Mike permission to access and use his work. Jack Beeforth’s grand-daughter, Gail Agar was at the meeting and identified some of the locations of photographs of Jack.

Another local singer, Robert Beadle of Ewe-field Farm, Stoupe Brow, had his songs written down by Mary Neal and Clive Carey in 1911. They were actually in Yorkshire to record the dances and tunes of the Flamborough Sword Dance team, and it is not known how they came to hear about Beadle. The famous composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was a song collector and his own music was often influenced by the type of songs he heard in Westerdale and Robin Hood’s Bay when in Yorkshire.

The speaker at the next meeting on Tuesday April 21, 7.30pm, at Staintondale Village Hall, will be Julie Galliard whose talk ‘The Power of Whitby’ is about famous people born in Whitby or visiting Whitby whose lives were heavily influenced by the town. All are welcome to this talk.