Friday nights
‘Folk at the Grove’
has its own special atmosphere.
Expectancy is in the air when the lights dim ...
candles are lit ... the spotlight falls
and the first singer sings!
Drawn from a wide variety of sources Working Songs is the first major examination of industrial folk song for over forty years since A. L. Lloyds Folk Song in Britain, and covers some two hundred years of working life in Britain.
Printed ballads (from England mainly, but also from Wales, Scotland and Ireland) are the principal source used, but the oral tradition is also represented.
He has drawn here on his earlier publications (some of them now out of print), but the most of the material in Working Songs now appears for the first time.
Child labour, pit disasters, trade union struggles, strikes and lockouts from the Industrial Revolution to the Miners Strike, are all told through examples of songs and verse.
As the countrys foremost writer on folk song and broadside ballads, he has written extensively on every aspect of traditional song from shanties (Boxing the Compass) to soldiers songs (The Rambling Soldier).
His contribution was recognised by the English Folk Dance and Song Society, who awarded him their Gold Badge in 2006.
For forty years, he has been fascinated by the importance of songs in social history and his anthologies, ever since the publication of A Touch on the Times in 1974, have reflected this. He lives in Worcestershire with his wife, Pat.
Folk Leads Publications 2009