Regarding the parish clerk Pardon, by coincidence one of Granddad Tom's great granfathers turned out to be just that. These comparisons help me to understand more of Pardon's origins I think. I could not believe this, unlike his kids and their kids he was not a miner, but a garden labourer on a commercial plant labourer, so not quite ag lab like Pardon's family, but close. Moreover they were all Methodists as far as I knew. When I enquired, I was told by somebody that in all probability his parish clerk duties, this being a small place, would have consisted of digging graves. That figures, given his day job. So maybe this is what Brown Pardon did in Knapton?

Mike Yates mentions Methodism in his MUSTRAD piece on the political songs etc known by Pardon, the one headed by a Marx quotation, so I am not the only one to think it necessary. My own people were Methodist in the generation after the Parish Clerk, as were many working people, and also Labour when that came in, but I doubt all Mudcatters would approve of that .

Interestingly, the Methodists in Knapton were originally Primitive Methodists, a branch of Methodism that arose in the UK because of
American influences and was taken up by Hugh Bourne and others. A key bit of this was revivalist type camp meetings and lots of singing. These details help us to imagine the sort of soundscape one might have encountered in early Knapton.


I hope I have given some interesting background on Knapton in a non combative manner.

Hootenanny: I'll have to get back to you with a ref on that. I thought initially Abbot and Seroff but if it is (and it may well be) I cannot locate a precise ref. I hesitate to go down a blues track as I know that is another area where tempers can flare and definitions are controversial. But I know that music publishing was for a long time after they started issuing records a bigger money maker than the discs. There is even a story, which I believed when I read it, about Leadbelly (again from memory) buying some sheet music for the lyrics and then asking a woman who could play piano to give him the tune. I know I am right, I didn't make it up, but for a ref... that may take longer.