Want info: re "The Wild Whistle" & Ted Tarling

Subject: Ted Tarling
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 29 Nov 25 - 08:30 AM

I just picked up a fascinating paperback/pamphlet in our local Oxfam shop, called The Wild Whistle: Ballad Airs for Whistle and Other Melodic Instruments. It was published in 1983 by The Sonus Press and is credited to Ted Tarling. Despite the title, it contains numerous melodies and words for songs, as well as instrumental tunes.

The Internet tells me that Ted Tarling was a jazz musician from Hull, who was a friend of Philip Larkin. He founded the Sonus Press himself, but I can find no information about this book. Frustratingly, there is also nothing at all in the book itself to explain the origins of any of the songs.

This is a shame because some of the songs are very interesting. Many are versions of well-known traditional songs, some of which are localised to the Hull area. But I was very surprised to find versions of 'The Two Sisters', 'The Famous Flower of Serving Men' and 'The Cruel Mother' among them, all under different titles. As far as I'm aware the first two of these have rarely been collected in England, so if these are from Yorkshire tradition I'd have thought that was fairly remarkable.

There are also several songs that I've not come across before anywhere: 'Mrs Kathleen Stevens', 'I'll Be No Submissive Wife' and 'Oxfam Peg'. Were these from local tradition? Did Ted Tarling write them himself?

Does anyone here remember Ted Tarling, or know anything about these songs?

Subject: RE: Want info: re "The Wild Whistle" & Ted Tarling
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 29 Nov 25 - 01:22 PM

Coincidentally there is currently a display of Ted Tarling's work and connections with Larkin, in the Hull History Centre. I also have a copy of the book and was at one time intrigued by what it contained. I now have a copy of Ted's obituary and have passed it on to the appropriate archivists. I never knew him when he was showing interest in folksong and I also know no-one on the local folk scene at time who had come across him. I'm assuming as far as folksong is concerned he was working in isolation. As a local folksong collector I'm absolutely certain those folksongs in the book are Ted's own adaptations (and why not) and the rest of the material is from his own pen.
He moved from Hull to Cambridge in 1994 and died there in 2004 having been born in Stoneferry, Hull, in 1938.