Posted by Andy Morley on April 23, 1999 at 19:45:44:
In Reply to: Englishness and AR posted by Anne LeVeque on April 23, 1999 at 17:47:30:
Replying to Peter - I hope you won't consider it a slur on either you or the legal profession if I say that a precise, legalistic application of 'relevance', may not be appropriate to a bulletin board. If you applied such criteria here, many of the messages below would have to be deleted and the whole conversation would become stilted and somewhat navel-gazing. If you personally think that such topics as Englishness and folk-music are irrelevant to a wider discussion on Ransome, please do feel free not to join in this particular thread - I promise you that I won't be in the least bit offended. And likewise, I sincerely hope you won't take it amiss if I decline any future opportunities to join in games of Swallows and Solicitors, be they of the Barrack-Room or the Sea-Lawyer variety.
Tim - I sense from your question that you may have mis-read my throw-away remark about 'preciousness' in folk music. I'll take some time to explain (hopefully this won't be too long). There are two types of English folk music, which in turn break down into a myriad varieties. The first sort is the stuff of oral and aural tradition, set apart from the world of radio, gramophones and written music. This is the culture that Ransome tapped into and it is not 'precious' in any manner, shape or form. It is simply the popular culture of a pre-industrial or a pre-modern-communications society.
This aspect of English culture was documented extensively by Cecil Sharp at some time near the turn of the centuary. Sharp's work spawned a whole variety of things, and the preciousness of much of it is well known and documented, Read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis for an insight into the academic preciousness associated with this sort of thing in the 1950s. In the '60s, another kind of preciousness emerged from left-wing attempts to invent a proletarian cultural heritage. Does anyone know the name of a detective-fiction writer whose heroes were a brother and sister, children of a policeman, in their late 'teens..? The boy may have been called Dominic. She (I think) set one of her murders in a convention of early '60s folkies, duffel coats and all. In the '70s, wispy women in cheese-cloth and beardy men romanticized aboute alle thingys medaieval while busily disappearing up their own back passages. John Renbourne, folky guitarist ex Pentangle issued The John Renbourne Sampler complete with a spiel on the cover addressed to his fans which ended: "I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own." In the 1980s, thank goodness for the Pogues. Their LP Rum, Sodomy and the Lash was a wonderful celebration of our glorious naval traditions (I'd just like to inform everyone that I am now wearing my tin hat and about to take refuge in my bunker). Anyway, need I continue..? Men singing in nasal voices with their fingers in their ears and their personalities up my nose. Artificial folk-music 'accents' that are a misbegotten cross between Geordie and Devonian.
"Enough enough the maiden cried, that's enough, I'm satisfied, a rum-titty-bum-titty-bum-titty-bum" (Full lyrics on request). Two last things to share with you on this subject :