The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #49409   Message #746378
Posted By: IanC
11-Jul-02 - 07:43 AM
Thread Name: Who is Cecil Sharp?
Subject: RE: Who is Cecil Sharpe? (Cecil Sharp)
This is something like what you want

Kimber was born in 1872. He was a bricklayer from the village of Headington Quarry, which provided Oxford with stone, and stonemasons, for generations. His father and grandfather had formerly danced in the village's morris team (which had virtually ceased performing after the 1887 Jubilee). That Christmas, Kimber and some friends revived it. As he explained in a subsequent interview, most of the dancers normally worked in the building trade, but unusually bad weather "froze us all out." So, they decided to dance on Boxing Day and "see if we can't get a bob or two." Kimber described the half-sovereign that Sharp gave him as "a Godsend."

Sharp incorporated some of Kimber's tunes into a suite for strings, but paid no further attention to the dances. Then, in September 1903, he visited a musical friend from his Adelaide days. Charles Marson was now the perpetual curate of Hambridge in Somerset, a Christian Socialist, and a trial to the local bishop. It was from Marson's gardener, appropriately named John England, that Sharp noted down The Seeds of Love the first of over 300 Somerset folk songs he collected and published.

From here.

:-)
Ian