Alfred P Graves - info, please

Subject: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: nutty
Date: 02 Feb 04 - 07:03 AM

I have just had my 60th virthday and friends bought me a copy of Irish Songs and Ballads (1880) by Alfred P. Graves.

I was interested to read in the preface that he lived in Huddersfield at the time the book was published and would like to know more about him, but apart from a few of his songs and poems the internet has very little information on the man himself.

Can anyone help ........ who/what was he? I'd love to know

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 Feb 04 - 07:32 AM

Happy Belated Birthday, nutty! Nice friends.:-)

You've probably already seen this, but it does list his autobiography, which sounds like it would be worth finding:

Alfred Percival Graves 1846–1931, Irish poet. An inspector of schools, he was also twice president of the Irish literary society. He compiled several volumes of Irish music and folksongs. Included among his own writings are Irish Songs and Ballads (1880) and Father O'Flynn (1889).

See his collected poems (1908); his autobiography, To Return to All That (1930). Robert Graves is his son.

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: sian, west wales
Date: 02 Feb 04 - 07:51 AM

There's also a reference to Graves in this thread.

Sian

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: nutty
Date: 02 Feb 04 - 12:42 PM

Thanx Kat .... I had looked but had missed the bit about his auto-biography. I shall try to find it.

Thanx Sian .... I had been through all the Mudcat threads and also used Google although I got a little more info from entering A.P.Graves rather than his full name.

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: nutty
Date: 02 Feb 04 - 12:47 PM

I may have to wait for another birthday to get the auto-biography.

Bookfinder are offering a used copy at $225

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 02 Feb 04 - 12:49 PM

Nutty

If you've tried Google, you may well have seen This.

Regards

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: nutty
Date: 02 Feb 04 - 02:31 PM

Thanks Martin I did have that information but I'm trying to find out about the man himself.

What was he doing in Huddersfield? He gives his address as 20, Greenhead Road. I know he was educated in England but did he live here for long??

It's just idle curiosity but these are the things I am interested in.

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: GUEST,bigJ
Date: 02 Feb 04 - 03:28 PM

This is a radio script I used last year for Manx Radio:

A.P. GRAVES       (Born 22nd July 1846)

Today is the one hundred and fifty-seventh birthday of a man who had a considerable influence, not only on Celtic music generally, but on Manx Song (of a particular type) in particular. His name was Alfred Percival Graves.

CD332 TR3 - Father O'Flynn

One of the songs composed by A.P. Graves who was born in Sneem, County Kerry, the son of Dr Charles Graves the Anglican Bishop of Limerick who himself was married in Kirk Malew, in the Isle of Man in 1840.
Graves is most notable as a 19th century poet who began collecting Irish folk melodies but, unfortunately, ignored the lyrics that accompanied them. He is quoted as having said, 'Irish lyrics are not worth collecting', and he extended this attitude to Welsh and Manx repertoires. 'They are worthy of only peasants' he said (which is rather missing the point, I would have thought).

CD333 TR1 - Trotting to the Fair (another of Graves' songs)

In 1875, A.P. Graves was appointed an inspector of schools attached to the Manchester District which, for some reason was itself responsible for the inspection of Manx schools, and it was on an inspection trip to the Isle of Man that he first heard Manx songs - in Manx - at Cronk Y Voddy School. Also on that trip he met the local folk song collector, Dr John Clague of Castletown.
Subsequently Graves met the two brothers Gill who were gathering together the material for the Manx National Song Book with a view to publishing it - indeed Graves was instrumental in introducing Clague and the Gills to the music publishers Boosey and Co.
From a Manx point of view, Graves made by far the greatest contribution of lyrics to the Manx National Song Book, cherished by so many local singers. Eleven out of fifty two of the song-words are attributed to him.
Among the songs for which he supplied words were
She Sang to her Spinet.
Lament of the Duchess of Gloucester.
Robin and Betsy.
Two Lovers - which contains the deathless lines
        Two lovers thro the land - Went ling'ring hand in hand
        The skylarks danced and sung - The swallows glanced and swung
        And blithe the sheep-bells rung - From green dell to dell.
(just proving that poetry does not make folk song)
And then, of course there was this one :

MD TR1 - The Wreck of the Herring Fleet.

Since the Manx National Songbook was published in 1896, A.P. Graves would have been in his late 50's when writing the lyrics for his songs there.
Graves was a great supporter of the Pan Celtic movement - the union of the Celtic countries, so much so that he wrote a Pan-Celtic anthem called the Heather Song here's the first verse.
        
        A blossom there blows - That scoffs at the snows
        And faces, root fast - The rage of the blast,
        Yet sweetens a sod - No slave ever trod,
        Since the mountains up-reared - Their altars to God,
        The flower of the free - Is the heather, the heather;
        It springs where the sea - And the land leap together.

It wasn't adopted.

While talking about A.P. Graves I should mention that Mona Douglas the Manx collector was his secretary for some years when he was living in Harlech.
But here we must introduce a West Country barrister from Bath by the name of Fred Weatherley, he was a prolific song writer who composed and published more than 1,500 lyrics for popular songs, one of which was this tremendously popular one.

MD TR - Roses of Picardy - Peter Dawson.

Fred Weatherley - the author of those words was a friend of Alfred Percival Graves, or at least he was up to the time that he wrote the words of the song Danny Boy in 1910.
For the tune of the song he used one called The Londonderry Air - you may remember I played you Percy Grainger's arrangement of it last week. The tune had come to Weatherley from his sister in America, and the song caught on after being published by Boosey and Co.
However Graves - Weatherley's friend - had already written two lyrics to the melody and felt that Fred had poached the folk tune from him and never spoke to him again as a result.
Weatherley wrote; After my song had been accepted by the publisher I got to know that A.P. Graves had written two sets of words to the same melody - Emer's Farewell and Erin's Apple Blossom and I wrote to tell him what I had done. He took up a strange attitude. I am afraid my old friend Graves did not take my explanation in the spirit which I hoped from the author of those splendid words, Father O'Flinn.

So Alfred Percival Graves who was born 157 years ago today and died in 1931, was also a rather touchy customer.
Well this should irritate him even more.

CD348 TR10 - Danny Boy - De Danann

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: nutty
Date: 03 Feb 04 - 03:50 PM

Refreshing in case anyone else knows more ....... thanks to all those who have contributed so far.

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Jan 16 - 09:05 PM

Well, it has been some twelve years since the last post on this thread, which could do with a lot more information!   No doubt the Internet has much more on the subject than it had before. That is where I am looking.

The question was raised about Huddersfield.
A. P. Graves lived for a time in Manchester, then relocated to Huddersfield. He was doing the same work in both places: school inspector.

He was twice married, and each marriage gave issue to five children. The well-known poet Robert Graves was a son of the second marriage, and it would seem he was closer to his German-descended mother than to his father.

The Welsh language was one of his interests, and remarkably he was made a bard -- by what process I would have to look in more depth -- in Wales.

Graves' Irish lyrics include one humorous one called "Fan Fitzger'l'." This was set to music by the same Anglo-Irish composer, Alicia Adelaide Needham, who composed the "Dark Rosaleen" setting sung by John MacCormick.

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: Thompson
Date: 04 Jan 16 - 01:36 AM

Abebooks has a copy of the autobiography for £48. Surprising that it isn't online; shouldn't it be out of copyright by now?

Personally I'd prefer any number of "peasant" lyrics to AP Graves' ladylike frills, but horses for courses.

Ricorso about him.

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: Thompson
Date: 04 Jan 16 - 01:45 AM

More copies starting at $49 (£33).

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Jan 16 - 06:34 AM

Re last but one post: in interests of accuracy, the great Irish tenor whose work covered the spectrum from folk to grand opera was called John MacCormack [not -ick]. He was, among other things, a Papal Count -- google 'Papal Nobility' -- so is often called 'Count', esp by other Irish singers... I am reminded of the time the great Dublin street singer Margaret Barry, who rose to prominence on the 1950s London folk scene, was asked in an interview by Karl Dallas where she had learned her influential version of She Moved Through The Fair -- was it, he enquired, from family, or from other singers while travelling on the road? "Oh no," she replied blandly, "I got it off a gramophone record by Count John MacCormack".

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: GUEST,CM
Date: 29 May 17 - 10:23 PM

I am working on a dissertation about the Celtic Association of which A.P. Graves was a member. I have read the Autobiography for free thanks to the Harvard Library where he says that he moved to Huddersfield when he became a full inspector in Yorkshire and established a lawn tennis club. He left due to his wife's pooe health and moved in 1882 to Taunton. His wife died in 1886.

A.P. Graves was inducted as a bard in the Gorsedd of the Bards of Britain which held their annual ceremony during the National Eisteddfod in Wales for his work on folk-song collecting all over Great Britain. But, he had called for a Welsh folk-song society and worked on Welsh poetic measure.

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 30 May 17 - 04:58 AM

A very interesting family because of their extreme diversity in writing styles and mindsets. Plenty of material on the Net nowadays. The "P" stands for "Perceval" with an "e", his grandmother's maiden surname.

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 May 17 - 05:16 AM

At least in the United States, the book is available at Google Books and at archive.org

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 30 May 17 - 07:11 AM

More free books on Hathi. The 1930 autobiography, however, is probably copyrighted everywhere (- correct me if I'm wrong); Google Books gives away short snippets.

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 30 May 17 - 07:19 AM

Just found it for free.

Subject: RE: Alfred P Graves - info, please
From: GUEST,Bill Boland
Date: 17 Oct 18 - 06:55 PM

A P Graves became a school inspector in charge of the west riding district of yorkshire he lived with his wife and children at no 20 Greenhead Lane Huddersfield. His wife had health problems and the winter and spring time proved to severe and he managed to get three vacant school districts to select from and relocate.

In the spring of 1882 he moved with his wife and four children to a new home on Haines hill, Taunton. The West Somerset district helped his wife to recover her health and they lived happily for a few years. Sadly, his beloved wife became ill again and died on 24 th March 1886 at there home in Taunton.


Hope this is helpful
Bill boland