Who has more stories to tell than the English, the Irish, the Scots and the Welsh? From the legend of King Arthur to the Canterbury Tales, Charles Dickens and Midsomer Murders. Over three hundred stories in song from England and Scotland were collected by Francis J. Childs in the late nineteenth century, effectively erecting the scaffold upon which modern folk music was built. Romance and betrayal, supernatural woodland encounters, murder most foul. From Shakespeare to the Irish shanachie, no literature is as rich in character, setting and intrigue.
In 2007, Cold Spring (in collaboration with Woven Wheat Whispers, the now-defunct digital village green for all things folksy) issued its first omnibus collection of contemporary “dark Britannica”, which concentrates on stories, beliefs and traditions with roots reaching back to Druidic times and which have never really died, especially in the countryside and especially at harvest time, when the light grows dim. The spillover was too great and now a second, two-disc set has been issued. Hard work followed by rest, plenty for the honest toiler, but also a time to rest and reflect on what souls God may choose to reap the coming winter. The seasons were the true clock and calender of pre-industrial Europe.
Another thing about stories is that they don’t necessarily need a narrator to be told; sometimes the fiddler, the piper or even the drummer is the greatest storyteller. On John Barleycorn Reborn: Rebirth, the tunes range from introspective to outgoing, from the intimate exchange of two recorders to the Celtic stomp of whole tribe making its way through the shrouded, scary forest led by a voluble jackdaw, and yet it is all of whole, fustian cloth. The Wendigo’s self-titled contribution (named after a mythical, cannibalistic Algonquin aberration of nature) pipes up a shindig. The Owl Service (as remixed by RAF) uses sampling and a modern band set up to make its fondness for early British television sound just as folkloric as Wendigo’s sheepskin bagpipes. The Big Eyes Family Players round off the first disc with a taste of what drone/noise might have sounded like in the fourteenth century.
The small number of actual songs on the first disc is merely a foretaste of the almost entirely vocalcentric second disc. The singers are much like people in general – one in particular too consciously referential to the theme of the collections, as if ticking off a list. But then again, the singer is at a disadvantage – unless he or she is a dextrous spinner of yarns, then he or she must possess a very memorable instrument to live up to the musicianship all around. Mac Henderson of Grand Union Morris, a folk dance troupe preserving the traditions of the Cotswolds since 1976, singing a cappella, proves to be the most impressive of these with his rendition of ‘Jack in the Green’. “Esoteric folk” pioneers Orchis, Twelve Thousand Days and husband-and-wife team Venereum Arvum also captivate. Though nothing gets the blood happied up quite like the virtuoso performance of “De Poni Amor A Mi” by duo Miseriacordia.
With Rebirth, a total of sixty-six British folkies from the new, weird England burgeoning in the shadows of the internet are available on disc, each with its own richly detailed, period woodcut-adorned booklet, which features more links and references for further reading and listening, stories upon stories.
Stephen Fruitman
