I agree with Brian Peters about Hillery's thesis; I have said it is good a number of times and if I had not started this thread asking for information on research on Pardon then who knows when and if Mudcat would have found out about it. He did it some years ago.

Brian is right that Hillery compares the singers, and he can do this not least because he is able to write about their singing as music. So he can for example discuss Pardon's approach to ornamentation in some detail. He can compare the modes Pardon and the others use for the same song. He can discuss Pardon's use of tune rhythms which do not fit the natural rhythms of the 'poetry' ie words of the tunes.

In contrast Jim Carroll at one point tried to convince me that Pardon did not use any ornamentation at all. I had to find a song and point him to the actual bit of it where this occurred.

I disagree about whether Walter had 'a style'. For example, this business of dropping down the scale at the end of lines is idiosyncratic and I do believe I have read that he said it was his own thing. On that basis, Walter himself believed that he had a style. Once again, Hillery has ideas to offer, in this case on the subject of style and I am somewhat glad to see that some of them confirm things that I had thought.

Having done a bit more digging I am certain that the Brown Pardon who was Parish Clerk in 19th century Knapton was Walter Pardon's great grandfather. He was born in Bacton and his wife in Suffield, both places in Norfolk. I have found three different Brown Pardon's and am guessing that they may be relatives, given how unusual the name is, but only information on Pardon's direct ancestor seems relevant here.

Brown and his wife Sarah may be found on the Knapton census returns for 1941, 61, 71 and 81. I'll look again for 51. The age column on the census allow us to estimate his d o b as 1813/14.

Another contrast brought out by Hillery is that between Jack Beechforth, and Walter in that for Jack some of his songs served specific social functions within the context. So for example he did both hunt and sing about it, at gatherings of huntsmen. In this case one gets some sense of a 'tradition', of the singing being part of the social context. Hillery comments that in the case of Pardon the songs do not seem specifically linked to Knapton, coming from outside it. He suggests that this is one reason that Pardon does not sing them using lexical and grammatical features of dialect, whereas Beechforth does.

I have been reading a piece Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie wrote about Pardon for an anthology. I do get exasperated at poor grammar and incorrect use of capital letters in published work, but am persevering nevertheless.

I read what Brian Peters writes with interest, though I do not always agree with him. Regarding his recent post, I do not think one can attribute all scepticism about the dogmatic positions and narratives of some folklorists to Dave Harker. NB I have not yet read him but the library are getting me a copy via their inter-library loan system. One of the first things I ever learned about folk song collectors was that Cecil Sharp altered the words to take out the rude bits. I was taught this by some grammar school boys who had been invited to bring their guitars to our youth club, so very early 1960s. As I understand it, Harker would call this 'mediation' and this is a valid term. As I have said, Hillier uses it in connection with 2nd wave revivalist research. Put simply, his point appears to be that the more involved a 'researcher' gets with his or her subjects the greater are the chances of 'mediation' ie the selection of bits and pieces of data that fit with the needs/interests/philosophy of the researchers.

To develop this last point, it is basic GCSE history to interrogate primary and secondary historical sources. Similarly it is GCSE English Language to read and assess texts critically, and this would include

critical reading and comprehension: identifying and interpreting themes, ideas and information in a range of literature and other high-quality writing; reading in different ways for different purposes, and comparing and evaluating the usefulness, relevance and presentation of content for these purposes; drawing inferences and justifying these with evidence; supporting a point of view by referring to evidence within the text; identifying bias and misuse of evidence, including distinguishing between statements that are supported by evidence and those that are not; reflecting critically and evaluatively on text, using the context of the text and drawing on knowledge and skills gained from wider reading; recognising the possibility of different responses to a text

For a sophisticated discussions of this sort of skill in the context of folk music, people might go to some of the work of David Atkinson, for example.