Alfred Williams collected The Ripe and Bearded Barley from farm hand Henry Sirman of Stanton Harcourt, and printed it in 1923 in his book Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames. Martin Graebe gave an illustrated talk about Alfred Williams and his song collecting to an appreciative audience at Whitby Folk Week last month. The audience joined Martin in singing this song, and Shan Graebe too speculated that A.T. - who wrote the text - might be Alfred Tennyson.

Alfred Williams cycled 13,000 miles around the Upper Thames area between 1914 and 1916, collecting the words of nearly 800 songs sung by the men and women that he met there. More than 400 of these were published in a series of articles in the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard at the time and, of those, about half were printed in Williams’s book Folk Songs of the Upper Thames in 1923.

Martin’s new book contains the 205 songs that were not included, together with Williams’s original Introduction and Conclusion. For each song there are newly written notes on the song’s origin and other information about it. There are also biographical notes on some of the singers, a later essay on folk song by Williams, and an appendix outlining the correspondence between Williams and the Yorkshire-based collector, Frank Kidson.

The Forgotten Songs of the Upper Thames, Folk Songs from the Alfred Williams Collection (ISBN: 978-1-9161424-3-5) is available from the Ballad Partners website – https://theballadpartners.co.uk – price £15 plus £3.50 postage.