Hampshire Voices - Hampshire's enduring legacy of folk song.
A Hampshire Collection

TRADITIONAL SONGS AND TUNES

Collected by Gwilym and Carol Davies

Gwilym and Carol Davies are well-known in the folk music world as performers and researchers. They have compiled a new book of folk songs and tunes collected in Hampshire since 1970, entitled A Hampshire Collection.

The book contains 17 songs, 8 tunes and a mummers play, all collected in the field by Gwilym and Carol Davies from traditional performers, or from fellow collector Paul Marsh, set out in legible form with background notes and photographs of some of the informants, plus woodcut illustrations.
The folksongs represented range from songs of love, highway robbery, battles at sea, war, the land, to marriage and drink. One rare item is a text of a ballad on the failed attempt to hang the murderer John ‘Babbacombe’ Lee in 1885.

If you have bought the book but can't read the music, midi files of all the songs and tunes that are in A Hampshire Collection (except Death of John Lee, which had no tune) can be heard by clicking on the titles in the table below. (I Don't Care If I Do has silence in middle of the tune. This is where part of the verse is spoken.)

SONGS:– TUNES:–
An Acre of Land version 1 I Once Loved a Lass George Privett's Polka
An Acre of Land version 2 Jim the Carter's Lad George's Stepdance 1
Bonnybrook Fair John Barleycorn George's Stepdance 2
Box on her Head The Life of a Man George's Stepdance 3
The Death of John Lee The Sailor Boy Sam Bond's Scottische
Fathom the Bowl The Scarlet and the Blue Wild Bill Hiscock's March
The Fox The Shooting Gallery Union Step Dance
Henry Morton Three men Went a-Hunting Glockenspiel Polka
I Don't Care if I Do Stan Seaman's Scottische

The book is published by Hedingham Fair and can be obtained from them via their website at http://www.hedinghamfair.co.uk/ for £10 plus postage.

Gwilym was interviewed on BBC Radio Solent on 20.1.11 about this book. The interview is no longer on BBC iPlayer but it can still be heard by clicking here (By kind permission of BBC Radio Solent.)

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