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North End Voices research information

The main text of the North End Voices exhibition follows below, except for the captions and information relating directly to photographs and graphics. A booklet containing this text plus photographs, is available from EATMT, price £4.00 including P&P. For any further information, please ring (01449 771090) or email us.

Anyone wishing to cite this work should credit it to Katie Howson, East Anglian Traditional Music Trust.

Introduction

Ralph Vaughan Williams in King's Lynn, 1905

Early twentieth century singers and songs

The Captain's Apprentice

Music

King's Lynn singers 1950s onwards: BBC and private recordings

Appendix 1: Information about the singers from whom

Vaughan Williams collected songs in 1905/6

Appendix 2: Songs collected by Ralph Vaughan

Williams in King’s Lynn 1905/06

Acknowledgments

Shortcut to other research information on this website

Introduction

For over one hundred years, folk-song collectors have been fascinated by the songs and singers they have found in the coastal communities of Norfolk.

Traditional singers learned their songs from their families and communities. They usually sang solo without any accompaniment but with companions or audience joining in on any choruses. The songs they sang ranged from ancient ballads to songs reflecting the coastal and rural life of the region, with the occasional item relating specifically to local events and characters. More light-hearted lyrics also went down well in the pubs, which frequently provided convivial settings for singing gatherings.

Many of the songs noted down by the early collectors were published in books and journals, and in 1934, commercial recordings - of the great Broads singer Harry Cox - were issued: the first in a steady stream to be released on 78 rpm and later 33rpm records. Unfortunately for us today, the earliest of the collectors, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, was no fan of new-fangled technology, and no recordings were made of the singers he heard in King’s Lynn back in 1905. In the 1960s and 70s, recordings were made privately for local history purposes, but were never intended for public consumption, and these still lie in the various archives in the town’s museums.

Ralph Vaughan Williams in King’s Lynn, 1905

In January 1905, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams set off from his home in Surrey on a folk song collecting trip to west Norfolk, starting in Tilney All Saints, to the west of Kings Lynn. Here he recorded songs from a gardener and church sexton, John Whitby. He then headed in to Kings Lynn, to the tight-knit fishing community of the North End and also to the workhouse, where the poorest and neediest of the community were housed.

Vaughan Williams, unusually for a man of his status in those class-conscious days, was quite happy to visit pubs to hear singers, and is known to have visited a singing pub in the town, probably the Tilden Smith (now The Retreat). He also visited people in their homes, which enabled him to note songs from several women, who, in those days, rarely visited pubs.

Vaughan Williams noted down the tunes he heard with a pencil and music manuscript paper. He was careful to note melodic variations, and the title of the piece and who sang it. If it was a song he had not come across before, he would write down all the words, but if it was a familiar set of lyrics to him, he did not always write them down. It would have been a slow process to transcribe the music as sung to him by these fishermen and labourers, and Vaughan Williams’ interest was always primarily the melody.

During his stay in Norfolk in January 1905, Vaughan Williams got as far east as Sheringham to note down a song from a Mr. Emery in the Crown Inn, but then returned to the more fertile ground he had identified in King’s Lynn, where he revisited some of the singers he had met earlier in the week.

Early twentieth century singers and songs

Vaughan Williams’ usual introduction to singers was through a local clergyman, or someone associated with the church: his visit to St James’ workhouse in King’s Lynn may well have been the Tilney All Saints sexton’s idea, as another man by the same name of John Whitby, possibly a relative was an inhabitant there at the time. Here Vaughan Williams also noted songs from men such as Robert Leatherday and Charles Crisp, both in their sixties, who sang such historic songs such as Creeping Jane and Just as the Tide was Flowing.

Amongst the fishermen, Vaughan Williams found James ‘Duggie’ Carter, who sang The Captain’s Apprentice, (see below) and Joe Anderson, who sang Young Henry the Poacher, which Vaughan Williams used in his English Hymnal in 1906, as the tune for a poem by G.K. Chesterton. The hymn, no. 562, bears the name King’s Lynn. Both Carter and Anderson were known well by the curate of St Nicholas’ Chapel, the Reverend Alfred Huddle, and would have sung in the Chapel regularly, as well as in more secular settings.

Vaughan Williams noted songs from a number of other men in the area, and also from several women, and their songs covered similar subjects of sailors returning home from sea, like this one from Mrs Betty Howard:

Our anchor’s weighed, our sails unfurled

We’re bound to cross the watery world

Don’t you see we’re homeward bound?

Don’t you see we’re homeward bound?

The North End women were also economically involved in life at sea through such activities as fish-hawking, net-mending or knitting the distinctive fishermen’s ganseys for husbands, brothers and fathers. This was of course in addition to bringing up large numbers of children, keeping the tiny cottages spotless and feeding their children and menfolk.

Further information about the people who sang to Vaughan Williams is in Appendix 1, page 9.

The Captain’s Apprentice

One song which has seized the imagination of many people, is ‘The Captain’s Apprentice’ sung to Vaughan Williams by James Carter and at least one other singer in King’s Lynn. The song tells a horrific story of the death of a young boy on board a sailing ship. Many people have presumed a local connection, as St James’ workhouse is mentioned, but Edgar Samuel, in his 1971 PHD thesis on Vaughan Williams’ felt there was enough evidence to deny this. In 1997 however, serendipity proved him at least partially wrong: a newspaper article from the Lynn Advertiser of 1857 was unearthed, telling the true story of an ex-workhouse inmate, young Robert Eastick of Lynn, who died whilst working for Captain Johnson Doyle on board a ship owned by Mr. John Sugars from King’s Lynn.

Painstaking research by Elizabeth James has proved that the song existed before these events, but the similarities between the song and the real life tragedy clearly made the song extremely meaningful within the North End seafaring community.

Interestingly, Vaughan Williams himself commented, ‘The ballad was probably called forth by a particularly brutal case of ill treatment, similar to that narrated in it, which occurred some twenty or thirty years ago.’

Music

Singing was one way of entertaining friends and family in the little free time working people had, and dancing was another. Vaughan Williams mentioned only a few dance tunes amongst the hundreds of songs he collected, but in January 1905, whilst in Tilney St Lawrence, he noted down some fiddle tunes from a farm worker, Stephen Poll, who also gave an insight into the kind of dancing that was popular in this and many other rural areas at the time.

‘He used to learn them at Lynn Fair, when a new dance was danced he used to learn it by dancing in it – then later he would ask for the same again and then knew the tune and the dance and could start at the top. He used the fiddle for dances – the old country dances used to have more money in them because each couple as they got to the top would give him a penny.’

Other musicians must have been active in the area too, although of course, this relied on having enough spare cash to purchase an instrument. Church bands and military volunteer bands often gave youngsters a musical education, and sometimes supplied an actual instrument through a charitable trust or loan.

One well-known musician in the North End community was Tom Senter, a fisherman born in 1843, who lived to the age of 92. In 1881, Tom was living in North Street (just around the corner from one of the singers recorded by Vaughan Williams, William Harper, who was living at no 1, Trues Yard) but by 1891 he had moved out of the North End, which may be why Vaughan Williams did not visit him. Tom Senter played a piccolo, but Bussle Smith (see below) recalled him singing with a fiddle as well. He also remembered that, ‘old Tom Barker used to play a fiddle, he used to have it down the (river)bank …o’nights, anytime.’

King’s Lynn singers 1950s onwards: BBC and private recordings

Soon after the Second World War, the BBC began to broadcast programmes of traditional singing sessions from Norfolk on the radio, recorded in pubs such as the Windmill in Sutton, near Hickling Broad, and in 1955, in the Tilden Smith in the North End of King’s Lynn.

The Lynn News of 8^th July 1955 carried a lively report, which in the absence of the actual recordings themselves, still allows the reader to imagine the scene vividly:

‘This was going to be a big night in the history of the Tilden Smith. Those who could not get inside peered in through the windows from outside.

‘The first song came from 89-year old Charlie Fysh, the oldest fisherman in Lynn. Now everyone knows Charlie and everyone knew this was going to be good. It was. It had been carefully explained to Charlie beforehand that he would have to leave out of the song certain words that might be considered offensive to the more aesthetically-minded listeners of the BBC.

‘Even so, some of the banned words crept in and were received with gleeful appreciation by the less aesthetically-minded patrons of the Tilden Smith. What the BBC is going to do about it is their affair.

‘Charlie stood there stiffly to attention, his cap perched at a jaunty angle and his good eye making up in brightness for the one that was obscured by the familiar patch.

‘The microphone was thrust before him and he started away on the first line of ‘Ole Johnnie Bowker.’ Then there was a flash as someone took a picture of him. Charlie stopped abruptly. “What the --------- was that?” he snapped. “Never mind about that, keep on singing,” said Francis Dillon. “Never mind about it? Oi nearly broke me braces when it happened,” complained Charlie.’

Charlie had in fact been living in one of the yards off Chapel Street in the North End in the early 1900s, but would have been under forty when Vaughan Williams visited the area, and perhaps considered too young to have any songs of interest to the composer!

Oral history recordings made by Mike Herring and the Norwich Tape Recording Society in King’s Lynn in the 1960s reveal that there were still traditional singers amongst the older generation of fishermen, whose way of life in the old North End of the town was already undergoing rapid change. The singers’ names illustrate the Norfolk tradition of nicknames – Bussle Smith and Slinger Woods were still singing, and recalled, amongst the older generation of singers: Trunky Bunting, Turkey Stevens and Tippeny Goodson. Other singers mentioned were Dave Scott and Bill Chase, and George Bone could still remember the words to a rare song about the sinking of the Titanic.

Trunky Bunting used to sing a local version of the song usually known as Dogger Bank:

‘I'm a harin’ scarin’ fisherman and I hail from Kings Lynn town,

And in this old life I've seen many an up and down.

And when we've spent our stocker bait and had a jolly spree

Away we'll crack, on board the smack, and plough the angry sea.’

Elizabeth James, then deputy curator of the Lynn Museum, recorded an interview with descendants of James ‘Duggie’ Carter, one of the 1905 singers, in the mid 1970s and as late as 1987, Pat Midgley, founder of the True’s Yard Fishing Heritage Museum, recorded Jasper Guy, then the oldest surviving sail fisherman in the town, reciting the words to Dogger Bank and Old Johnny Bowker.

Another of the old singers was Sam Southgate (1864 -1945), a man who in his latter days owned two grocery shops in the North End, but who had been a fisherman, a Wash pilot and a deep sea sailor who had been round Cape Horn under sail three times. One of Sam’s favourites, perhaps not surprisingly given his long-distance travelling in earlier life, was:

All hands to man the capstan, see the cable is all clear.

Then across the briny ocean for old England we will steer.

Rolling home to merry England, rolling home across the sea,

Rolling home to merry England, rolling home England to thee.’

Folk music enthusiasts in the area have kept some of theses songs going, and the year 2005 marked another huge revival of interest in the folk song heritage of the area, with events celebrating the centenary of Vaughan William’s visit to the town and the singers and songs ‘discovered’ on that trip. It was also the year Lynn commemorated the 800^th anniversary of the signing of the town’s charter, giving plenty of opportunities for further folk song events.

Appendix 1

Information about the singers from whom Vaughan Williams collected songs in 1905/6

Appendix 2

Songs collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams in King’s Lynn 1905/06

Songs with no publication details listed have not been published. In many cases, only the melody was collected, and not a full word set. Vaughan Williams often did this if the words seemed to be very similar to previously published versions  - often printed on broadsheets by ballad printers.

Acknowledgments

All photographs except Vaughan Williams and Anderson, Carter & Huddle, courtesy of True’s Yard Fishing Museum, North Street, King’s Lynn, Norfolk PE30 1QW. True’s Yard is an independent museum with an archive collection of documents as well as displays. Images of Vaughan Williams, Anderson, Carter & Huddle, The Captain’s Apprentice and Dream of Napoleon reproduced by kind permission of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Thank are due to the following people, without whose work we would know far less about the songs and singers of the North End: Elizabeth James, Mike Herring, Patricia Midgley, Edgar Samuel, Frank Castleton, Arthur Painter. All research in Appendix 1 carried out in 2007 by Katie Howson for the East Anglian Traditional Music Trust.

Thanks are also due to BBC Radio Norfolk for their support as part of the Celebrate Northend! Project run in 2007.

Anyone with information or photographs about any of the singers mentioned here, or others not mentioned, is welcome to get in touch with Katie Howson at the East Anglian Traditional Music Trust.

Home      News      Diary of events    About EATMT     Friends of EATMT     

What are the musical traditions of East Anglia?

Traditional Music Day     Melodeons & More      Workshops, classes & schools      Community Projects       

          Profiles of traditional musicians        Research         Jig Dolls        Dulcimers     Stepdancing

Resources      Shop        Links      Press Room