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The Three Ravens
VSD-299, reissue LP cover

Divided as they may seem to the uninitiated, folk song and art music are often unified and interdependent to a remarkable degree. This is as true of England as it is of other countries, though the work of noting down tunes and texts was rarely done before the early years of the nineteenth century. Early collectors of folk-song were usually concerned with the preservation of popular airs from rural parts of England, though occasionally tunes taken from manuscript and printed sources of the renaissance were found side by side with those preserved by a particularly vigorous oral tradition. The long but instructive title to the Rev. John Broadwood's collection, published in 1843, sets a pattern that was to be followed for nearly a century: "Old English Songs, as now sung by the peasantry of the Weald of Surrey and Sussex, and collected by one who has learnt them by hearing them Sung every Christmas from early childhood, by The Country People, who go about to the Neighbouring Houses, singing, or 'Wassailing' as it is called, at that season."

The festivity that gave rise to singing was not always Christmas: pay-days of the Cornish miners, hunt suppers of northern noblemen, farm-suppers after harvest and many other agreeably recurring times of rejoicing helped to rouse the spirits and loosen the tongues of singers. These singers, though in no way professionals, were frequently gifted with clear memories and remarkable, if unsubtle, vocal prowess. A simple wager of a glass of beer for every song would be enough to set some of these worthies to work for a whole evening. During the rather more sober and scientific business of noting the tunes down, it was sometimes felt that the music of one song would affect the next, in such a way that the tunes were less clearly distinguished than when they were noted on separate occasions. The painstaking labours of such collectors as Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams have unearthed a large and unquestionably rich repertory of national folk-song. Sharp's success in collecting and collating songs in America might well figure in comparative musicology, for he found that many English songs were preserved by Americans in a purer and more accurate form than any he had encountered at home. The troubles and trials of collecting were set forth by a French enthusiast, Louis Bourgault-Ducoudray: "When a song has been transmitted from mouth to mouth, without having been fixed by notation, it is exposed to alterations. One is sometimes obliged to collect as many as twenty variants of the same air, before finding one that is good. This is the greatest difficulty to the seeker: it is as hard to seize upon the true and typical form of a melody as it is to meet with an intact specimen among the shells that have been cast upon the sea shore."

Some tunes have been used in fifteenth century carols, sixteenth century Masses, and seventeenth century virginal pieces, to name only three kinds of art music in which composers have drawn upon popular melodies. There is evidence to prove a flow of ideas in the other direction, as well; a composed tune, apparently the genuine work of its author, may be found in varied form many miles from the city where it was first performed. The true age of many folk songs will probably never be known. Indeed, the very charm with which so many of these melodies are invested has something of an unknown quantity about it: neither stylistic patterns nor geographic generalities can help us to find the inventor of the tune or the words.

Several songs can be found in Elizabethan and Jacobean sources. The Three Ravens appears in Ravenscroft's Melismata (1611) though it is obviously much older; I will give my love an apple, with its text of riddle and courtship, is found in The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book as Tell me Daphne. The same source contains a piece called Quodling's Delight, whose tune is that of The Oak and the Ash; a slightly varied version was printed in Playford's English Dancing Master, which also contains King Henry under the unlikely title of Reeves Maggot.

Certain songs are known by many different titles, and their verses are changed and re-arranged according to the particular district where the tune was found. Sharp gave the title O Waly Waly to a few verses of a much longer ballad, because of their resemblance to one of the items in Orpheus Caldonicus, and similarly Barbara Allen shares various texts and interchange of material. Double meanings as well as double texts are entirely typical of folk song, for whether their trend be toward religious symbolism in the more serious songs, or ribaldry in the lighter ones, the hidden element is nearly always there. Without it, folk-song would lose much of its fascination.

The Wraggle-Taggle Gypsies
VRS-1001, original LP cover

Tracks 16-29 consist of songs whose origins range from the Elizabethan Age to that of George III. The Elizabethan period is well represented, but part of the interest of this release, aside from the imperishable songs themselves, is the sidelight it throws on English history. Songs like Lord Rendall, in both the words and the modal curve of melody, are like a cry from the tormented "Gothic" heart of the Middle Ages. With the prim moralizing and sweet tunefulness of Strawberry Fair or Sweet England, we are in an England that has gone through the Puritan revolution, absorbed Italian song and built from it the great national art of the Handel oratorios.

– Adapted from notes by Denis Stevens

Originally released as Vanguard VRS-479 (tracks 1-15) and VRS-1001

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