Tune Kingsfold

03 Feb 03 - 09:58 AM (#881294)
Subject: Tune Kingsfold
From: GUEST,ShantyAlan

Whist thumbing through the English Hymnal as you do on a Sunday, I came across the tune Kingsfold which accompanies the Hymn "I heard the voice of Jesus Say". I recognised the tune as that for The Star of the County Down, but the Hymnal listed it as a "Traditional English Melody". The Star of the County Down is obviously Irish, so does anyone know what English song it could have come from?

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03 Feb 03 - 10:16 AM (#881308)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: GUEST

From this page:

The oldest copy of this tune is Gilderoy, which appears in Musick for Allan Ramsay's Collection of Scots Songs [Tea Table Miscellany] by Alexander Stuart (c 1726). Gilderoy also appeared in Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge the Melancholy III (1707), although that version is less recognizable as this tune. The tune has been used for numerous songs, including Divers and Lazarus, The Murder of Maria Martin, and Claudy Banks. In addition, the tune is used for several English and American Hymns and Carols

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03 Feb 03 - 12:07 PM (#881417)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Malcolm Douglas

There has been a lot of discussion around the topic here in the past (from one of which Lesley got most of the information quoted above); the Forum search engine isn't working just at present, though, so it's hard to find much of it.

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03 Feb 03 - 12:10 PM (#881425)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Malcolm Douglas

Weird: that bit seemed miraculously to post itself. To continue:

According to Colm O Lochlainn, Star of the County Down was written by Cathal McGarvey (who is also credited with The Devil and Bailiff McGlynn), probably in the early 20th century (he died in 1927 -not 1937 as I think I may have said in another discussion!- and the song was first published a little later); though of course the tune is much older. During the 19th century it was extremely often used for songs of all descriptions throughout Britain and Ireland. There has been some dispute over the years as to whether it was originally Scottish or English; at the moment, England looks like the best bet.

See also, among many, these previous discussions:

Tune Req: Star of County Down..... Author ?

Songs to Star of the County Down?

Star of the County Down   -More songs sung to the tune-family. Look in particular for posts from Bruce Olson and John Moulden.

alt. words to star of the county down   -Includes a tune of the mid 17th century, The Clean Contrary Way, which the American scholar Claude M. Simpson indicates as likely ancestor to the tune-family.

From time to time, a similar piece called Flower of the County Down is touted as the "original" form of Star, but this appears to be a bit of an urban myth based on misleading sleevenotes on a modern recording of the song; John Moulden is not convinced, and that's good enough for me.

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03 Feb 03 - 12:36 PM (#881452)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Malcolm Douglas

I forgot to mention that the hymn-tune is called Kingsfold because it was in the Sussex village of Kingsfold (in the pub, The Wheatsheaf, as it happens) that the composer and folk song collector Ralph Vaughan Williams noted the melody from a Mr Booker, who sung the broadside murder-ballad Maria Martin to it. That was in December 1904. Mr Booker's variant of the tune was published in the Journal of the Folk Song Society, vol.II (issue 7) 1905, along with other versions found both with that song and with Come all ye Worthy Christian Men (and various other titles), Dives and Lazarus, and so on.

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03 Feb 03 - 01:56 PM (#881531)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Nigel Parsons

Personal experience of this hymn has always been with the tune 'Vox Dilecti' (D.C.M.) (i.e. double common metre). Unlike the version in the DT I Heard The Voice of Jesus which is shown as four lines followed by eight lines, the version in "Hymns Ancient & Modern" (hymn 257) shows 3 verses of eight lines each.
Each verse is clearly written as a 'calling' of 4 lines, and a 'response' of 4 lines. This makes other layouts look dubious.
The composer of the tune Vox Dilecti is given as Rev.J.B.Dykes(1823-1876)
The words were by Horatius Bonar (Mid 19th Cent.) Horatius Bonar

Nigel

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03 Feb 03 - 03:33 PM (#881655)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: GUEST,ShantyAlan

Thanks everyone
This has been the first time that Ive posted a thread and I'm really impressed with the response and the vast knowledge that's out there.
Not sure that the Coppers version of Claudy Banks sound much like Kings fold to me though!

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03 Feb 03 - 03:40 PM (#881664)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: GUEST

That would be due to the fact that they sing it to a different tune...

Like, doh!

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03 Feb 03 - 04:10 PM (#881691)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Joe Offer

Hi - take a look at Cyberhymnal.org (click). It suggests two tunes for "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say," Bonar (Brunk) and Kingsfold. You'll also see a number of other hymns that use Kingsfold.
-Joe Offer-

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04 Feb 03 - 04:06 PM (#882542)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Liz the Squeak

Kingsfold is a boring little village with nothing much to recommend it... I know, I drove through it 8 times helping a friend move house!

I was about 3 months pregnant at the time, so maybe the morning sickness (why do they call it that when it lasts all day) was a factor... but somehow, I doubt it....

LTS

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05 Feb 03 - 04:22 AM (#882897)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Nigel Parsons

Joe: I just checked the "Cyberhymnal", the two tunes you note are shown there as "Alternate tunes". The first tune given is, in fact, Vox Dilecti

Nigel

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05 Feb 03 - 04:29 AM (#882901)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Nigel Parsons

My earlier comments about the layout (3* 8 line verses rather than 1*4line & 1*8line) was an error on my part. I had failed to notice that the version in DT (as in the cyberhymnal) treats the lines as being of 14 syllables, whereas 'Ancient and Modern' prints it as alternating lines of 8 & 6 syllables.
The DT version however, has no break between the "second & third" verse.

Nigel

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22 May 08 - 03:42 PM (#2347087)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Haruo

See my recent post to BaptistLife.com (based on one to the Hymn Society (US/CA) discussion board) for a list of more than 30 hymn texts set to KINGSFOLD in hymnals in my collection.

Here

Haruo

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22 May 08 - 04:36 PM (#2347136)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Ruth Archer

I didn't know that Vaughan Williams collected Kingsfold to the words of Maria Martin. I assumed he collected it to Dives and Lazarus, as it is incorporated wholesale into his "5 Variations on Dives and Lazarus". I wonder why he didn't call it "5 Variations on Maria Martin"?

I sing Maria Martin. I don't know anyone else who does. (anyone out there?)

The tune fits the lyrics so beautifully.

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22 May 08 - 07:49 PM (#2347272)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Surreysinger

"Kingsfold" the hymn tune is actually attributable to Lucy Broadwood, arranged Vaughan Williams. The tune and words for "Dives and Lazarus" were published in "English County Songs", co-editored by her and J Alec Fuller Maitland and published in 1893. The tune was in fact collected and submitted to Lucy by Alfred Hipkins, an employee of John Broadwood and Sons, the piano manufacturing company run by Lucy's family. (He was in later life one of the staff at the Royal College of Music, if I recall correctly). He had heard the tune being sung (no words) on the streets of Westminster, and had been familiar with it for many years under the name of "Lazarus". The words that were published with it were actually found by Lucy in "Notes and Queries", although she comments in English County Songs that the last verse was published by Hone's "Every Day Book", and was stated to have been sung in Warwickshire in the late 1820's.The song and the tune were therefore (certainly at this point) not actually a complete entity - rather more a happy marriage of two individual parts.

Vaughan Williams would therefore have been very familiar with this tune and the words associated with it in English County Songs, since he used many of the tunes in the book as illustrations in his talks on English folk song (in 1902 in Bournemouth, for instance .. where Lucy provided him with sung illustrations of his topic, and provided him with advice and counselling - at least a year before he ever collected his own first example of folk song in the field). He apparently encountered a variant of the tune in Kingsfold in Sussex over ten years after it had been "collected" and published by Lucy and Maitland. As far as I can recall without checking my research papers, Lucy actually collected royalties from the published tune of Kingsfold on a regular basis.
Irene

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22 May 08 - 07:52 PM (#2347275)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Surreysinger

I should have said "normally" attributable to Lucy B...

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23 May 08 - 04:59 AM (#2347468)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Malcolm Douglas

My comments made earlier in this thread (five years ago now) were misleading on the source of the tune called 'Kingsfold' in the English Hymnal. Had I been at the time in possession of a copy of that book, I would have said not 'the melody' but 'a version of the melody'.

In another discussion here rather more recent than this old one (centred so far as I remember around Vaughan Williams' naming protocols for tunes he used in his English Hymnal) somebody quoted from an article by Julian Onderdonk in English Dance and Song -it had just come out, I think, so that would be in 2006- to the effect that 'Kingsfold' was taken from the Broadwood book. Having always assumed (without, I confess, having checked) that RVW had used the tune he noted in Kingsfold, I picked up a copy of the Hymnal on the strength of that; unfortunately it turned out not to be the edition with source notes included, but I was at least able to compare the tunes. I hadn't previously realised that, where RVW used melodies from other collectors, he still tended (though not invariably) to name them for places where he himself had collected forms of the same tune, even if he didn't actually use that version in the Hymnal.

Thanks for the additional information, Irene. How is the work on Miss Broadwood going?

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23 May 08 - 05:35 AM (#2347483)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Ruth Archer

"I hadn't previously realised that, where RVW used melodies from other collectors, he still tended (though not invariably) to name them for places where he himself had collected forms of the same tune, even if he didn't actually use that version in the Hymnal."

I didn't know that either - interesting! Thank you.

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23 May 08 - 07:22 AM (#2347517)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: GUEST,Surreysinger (working at a hot box office d

"I wonder why he didn't call it "5 Variations on Maria Martin"?"
Coming back to your original question Ruth ... with all the above information having obscured that, it looks as though it would be because the tune he later collected which DID have the words for Maria Martin associated with it was not actually the one that he used for his "Five Variations on Dives and Lazarus", which is based around the Hipkins tune !

Thanks for the insight into Vaughan Williams' tune naming methods Malcolm, I found that interesting .. as to your query regarding the research into Ms B .. I think the answer at the moment is "more slowly than I'd like at the moment". I seem to have got rather involved in writing talks, and trying to spread the word on her to the non-folk fraternity ... eg like a Ladies' group from a Surrey church next week ... and that's side-tracked me slightly. Anybody want a talk ?? (grins)

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23 May 08 - 07:33 AM (#2347522)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Ruth Archer

'kay, i'm confused...did he not collect Kingsfold with the words of Maria Martin, then, as Malcolm suggests further up the thread?

"I forgot to mention that the hymn-tune is called Kingsfold because it was in the Sussex village of Kingsfold (in the pub, The Wheatsheaf, as it happens) that the composer and folk song collector Ralph Vaughan Williams noted the melody from a Mr Booker, who sung the broadside murder-ballad Maria Martin to it. That was in December 1904. Mr Booker's variant of the tune was published in the Journal of the Folk Song Society, vol.II (issue 7) 1905, along with other versions found both with that song and with Come all ye Worthy Christian Men (and various other titles), Dives and Lazarus, and so on."

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23 May 08 - 07:35 AM (#2347523)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: GUEST,Surreysinger

...who is slaving over a hot box office "desk" ... grins...

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23 May 08 - 07:45 AM (#2347527)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: GUEST,Surreysinger

Hi Ruth ....
Nope ... he collected a _variant_ of the tune used for the words of Dives and Lazarus by Lucy Broadwood in Kingsfold, and it was that one which had the words for Maria Martin. When he came to arrange his Five Variations... he named it for the location where he collected the variant, and not for the location where the original tune which he'd appropriated from ECS came from ... otherwise I presume we'd all be referring to it as "Westminster"... or at least that's what I understand from Malcolm's following comment.... "I hadn't previously realised that, where RVW used melodies from other collectors, he still tended (though not invariably) to name them for places where he himself had collected forms of the same tune, even if he didn't actually use that version in the Hymnal."
Bacck to the hot box office desk and ticket sales....

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23 May 08 - 07:57 AM (#2347535)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: GUEST,Surrey

Sorry ... even more confusing for you ... I got sidetracked there .. we weren't discussing the Five Variations, were we ?? (Put that down to mind-numbing rehearsals in the auditorium behind me by Contemporary Music (ie rock) students who are playing the same unmusical tune over and over and over and over ... and over again ... it does tend to rot the brain!!!)

To reconvene ... the tune which Vaughan Williams named Kingsfold was actually collected by Alfred Hipkins, and used by Lucy Broadwood in ECS to construct the song "Dives and Lazarus". RVW arranged the tune, and named it Kingsfold ... but it was not the tune that he collected in the location of that name ... that was actually a variant of it which DID have the words for Maria Marten.

And that practice of tune nomenclature is what Malcolm was referring to in his later comment "I hadn't previously realised that, where RVW used melodies from other collectors, he still tended (though not invariably) to name them for places where he himself had collected forms of the same tune, even if he didn't actually use that version in the Hymnal."

Blame the confusion on Vaughan Williams, I reckon !!

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23 May 08 - 07:59 AM (#2347536)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: The Borchester Echo

Ruth says she sings Murder Of Marian Marten (well, she would, knowing as she does about everything that goes on in Red Barns), but knows no-one else who does.
I used to, but found it almost impossible not to morph into Crooked Jack.
This is, doubtless, a result of the apparition of Dominic Behan crashing into an Islington bar while Martin Carthy was in mid-set, and insisting on singing it.
Martin (gent that he is) sat down and let Dom get on with it, after which lurched off to the next bar.
There isn't, actually, very much that you couldn't sing to this versatile tune, should you really want to.

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23 May 08 - 08:01 AM (#2347539)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: The Borchester Echo

Oh dear.
I've killed off Marian Marten too.

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23 May 08 - 08:14 AM (#2347544)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Ruth Archer

The tune I know for Maria Marten (collected from Freda Palmer) is EXACTLY the same as that used by RVW in 5 Variations on D&L.

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02 Jun 08 - 09:21 PM (#2355760)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: T in Oklahoma (Okiemockbird)

A variant of the tune was published in Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, (London, 1856) Vol. II, page 748, with the words (incomplete) "We are poor frozen out gardeners". Chappel remarked

This is the tune of many songs. If the reader should meet any half-a-dozen men perambulating the streets of London together, and singing, the probabilities are great that they sing to this tune....I recollect hearing the tune at Kilburn, full forty years ago, and have, with tolerable annual regularity, ever since. I regret never having stopped to hear the words.

Chapel has "corrected" the tune by raising the sub-tonic a half-tone, but it is still recognizably very close to Kingsfold

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02 Jun 08 - 09:40 PM (#2355769)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Malcolm Douglas

See also thread  Poor Frozen-Out Gardeners

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03 Jun 08 - 03:18 AM (#2355905)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Liz the Squeak

"There isn't, actually, very much that you couldn't sing to this versatile tune, should you really want to."

It doesn't go to 'Jerusalem'.... but then only 'Linden Lea' really does.

LTS

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08 Jun 08 - 05:25 PM (#2360950)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Surreysinger

"Linden Lea" ... Vaughan Williams again then!!!
Just out of interest Kingsfold/Dives and Lazarus featured more than once on tonight's edition of "Songs of Praise" which was devoted in its entirety to Vaughan Williams; also featured "Monksgate" ... not to mention quite a few things I've sung in the past with choirs like "Let all the World in every Corner Sing" from "Five Mystical Songs" , and "The Lark Ascending". Weirdly enough one of the featured talking heads was an ex-music teacher of mine from schooldays many many years ago. An interesting general look at RVW (although not 100% accurate in some of the detail).The programme's available on the BBC i player for the next 6 days.

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09 Jun 08 - 06:29 AM (#2361250)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: Mooh

Too bad the Songs Of Praise program download is only available in the UK! The Ralph Vaughan Williams one looks very appealing to some of us Anglican types elsewhere. I'll have to look for another way.

Peace, Mooh.

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09 Jun 08 - 11:28 AM (#2361471)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: greg stephens

T in Oklahoma points out that Chappell changed the seventh of the Frozen Out Gardeners version:
"Chapel has "corrected" the tune by raising the sub-tonic a half-tone, but it is still recognizably very close to Kingsfold".

It should be noted that Chappell, and his arranger George Macfarren, changed a good few tunes, according to certain theories they had about what constituted the original or best versions of tunes. This explains what has no doubt confused many people, when reading his statement that God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and the Frozen Out Gardeners tunes are Dorian.When, in fact, any idiot can see that they are not Dorian at all, as printed in Popular Music of the Olden Time. The fact is that Chappell re-edited a lot of the music for the book(which was a new version of a previous book), and forgot to re-edit the text to match in every case. So the minor sixths in these two tunes as printed were in fact major in the versions that first came to Chappell, and that he published in his first book.
He was not particularly deceitful about this, as he outlined the reasons for making the changes elsewhere. (His changes were made in good faith: he felt he was correcting the mistakes of previous editors who didn't understand folk music, though I personally feel he got it completely wrong). Unfortunately, the explanations were not included in Popular Music of the Olden Time, which makes it a rather uncertain source for many tunes.

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25 Jul 11 - 10:58 PM (#3195451)
Subject: RE: Tune Kingsfold
From: GUEST,leeneia

"A variant of the tune was published in Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, (London, 1856) Vol. II, page 748, with the words (incomplete) "We are poor frozen out gardeners"."

Hello, John. The book mentioned, Popular Music of the Olden Time, is now available on Google Books. If you showed that the tune was around in 1856, that ought to do it, wouldn't it?

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