History of Westmorland Music Festival

Subject: History of Westmorland Music Festival
From: GUEST,Storyteller
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 04:18 PM

The Holm Bank Hunting Song ("One morning last Winter to Holm Bank there came") which features in Arthur Ransome's novel Swallowdale was collected by George Rathbone from an unnamed singer at the Westmorland Music Festival early in the 20th century. This site; Arthur Ransome:Holm Bank gives some more information about the song and its background.

Frank Kidson also collected at least two songs from the 1904 Westmorland Music Festival; Poor Old Horse from Mr Barber, as well as The Morning Looks Charming from Mr Cropper.

Anne Gilchrist collected The Wa'ney Cockfeightin' Sang from John Collinson in 1909, after he had won first prize with it at the 1905 Festival. The song is a fine version of 'The Bonny Gray' and it appears in Roy Palmer's English Country Songbook along with the story of how John Collinson went to great lengths to learn the song at some expense to himself.

So - what was the Westmorland Music Festival? How long did it keep going? Did it especially encourage traditional singers? I'd love to know a bit more about the festival and the singers who sang there.

Subject: RE: History of Westmorland Music Festival
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 04:39 PM

The 'Unpublished Country Dialect Song' category was introduced in 1904 or possibly 1903, I think. Frank Kidson was adjudicator in 1904, and Cecil Sharp in 1905; there was a further competition in 1906, but I don't know how long it ran after that.

The rest of the festival was the usual mix of competitions for amateur "trained" singers and bands, plus art-music concerts and recitals. There are various references in the Broadwood and Gilchrist collections at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, including Kidson's comments, notation of various songs, some press-cuttings, and at least one printed programme (1904; John Collinson doesn't appear in the list for his category, so I assume he was a late entrant).

Brigg and other regional festivals also ran folk song competitions round about that time; and the Sussex Gazette also sponsored one.

Subject: RE: History of Westmorland Music Festival
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 05:15 PM

I was a year out; evidently the folk song category was introduced in 1902. The following piece from The Westmorland Gazette, April 19, 1902, can be seen at the paper's website: http://www.thisisthelakedistrict.co.uk/:

Folk song novelty

THE most striking novelty introduced in the Westmorland Music Festival competitions was unquestionably the folk song. Collections of folk songs have been made in many manners since Walter Scott planned and carried out his Border Minstrelsy. His plan was to carry on the hunt for old songs himself and by means of friends and helpers who could take an interest in the quest. But it was without any public or extrinsic document.

In the folk-song contest a new method and new motive are provided. It is known that an indefinite number of popular local songs exist which would have been repeated from generation to generation, but never published. Some of these are worth preserving and it has now been proved that the Westmorland Music Festival may be the means of discovering and preserving them by the process of competitive selection.

It is not stated that the Festival Committee will undertake to print them; but somebody at all events should take care to collect them.

Subject: RE: History of Westmorland Music Festival
From: GUEST,Storyteller
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 05:19 PM

Thanks, Malcolm, for those very helpful leads. I shall try to follow them up when I get a chance, and see what else I can find in the paper archives of the Westmorland Gazette, and I'll report back on anything of interest.

The Holm Bank Hunting Song also appears (without tune) under the name Squire Sands in the 1971 Songs of the Fell Packs as a song of the Coniston Pack.

Subject: RE: History of Westmorland Music Festival
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 15 Sep 05 - 05:44 PM

Following a brief, but very fruitful, visit to the Local Studies centre at Kendal Library I can now add some details of the folk-song competitions in Kendal in the early years of the 20th century.

The main source of information is an article by the Kidson scholar, John Francmanis, in the journal Rural History, Volume 11:2 (2000), pp.181-205, "The Folk Song Competition: An Aspect of the Search For an English National Music" published by Cambridge University Press. The library also has a lot of information about the Westmorland Music Festivals, including some of the programmes.

The competitions were held as part of the Westmorland Music Festivals which had been organised annually by Mary Wakefield since 1885, and which even now still continue biennially in her name.

The newly established English Folk Song Society was eager to collect new songs, and from 1902 to 1906 they supported the competitions in Kendal to gather such songs. There were also later competitions in Brigg, Lincolnshire and Frome, Somerset as well.

Frank Kidson judged the Kendal entries in 1902, 1903 and 1904; but as the terms of the competition required previously unpublished songs he had to eliminate several entries each year on the grounds that they had already been published. Cecil Sharp was the judge in 1905 and 1906, and he was quite strict about excluding songs which he did not think were folk songs.

In spite of all these restrictions a good few songs were sung, and of these a much smaller few were collected and printed in the Journal of the Society.

The Festival programmes which listed the entrants show that there was a thriving singing tradition in Westmorland, whether or not the songs met with the approval of the judges.

Anne Gilchrist visited some of the competitors in 1909, and she wrote about her experiences in the Journal of the Lakeland Dialect Society in 1942.

I'll add some more information about the singers and their songs in a later post.