Songs of the West - Guide to the Manuscripts

The Baring-Gould Manuscripts - A Guide

Martin Graebe

1 Introduction

Until 1992 it was believed that the only surviving manuscripts were the Rough Copy Manuscript containing the tunes as noted by Baring-Gould and his colleagues, and the Fair Copy of 202 songs, both of which were deposited at Plymouth Library by Baring-Gould in the early years of the 20^Th Century. In 1955 Francis Nicolle, an admirer of Baring-Gould and his first bibliographer, bequeathed a quantity of books and papers to Plymouth library, which included a notebook of songs, which is probably the first that Baring-Gould compiled (Baring-Gould Working Notebook 1) as well as a notebook of Baring-Gould's own compositions.

It was assumed that everything else had been lost or destroyed in the years following Baring-Gould's death in January 1924. In 1992, Martin Graebe, Paul Wilson and Marilyn Tucker, were making a recording of the earlier Wren Trust project 'Songs of the West', at Killerton House, near Exeter. During a break in the proceedings, they were shown the three manuscript music books now known as The Personal Copy. On subsequent visits by Martin Graebe to study these manuscripts it was established that there were a number of other books of interest in the library, including annotated copies of Baring-Gould's song books, Songs of the West and A Garland of Country Song as well as books by Cecil Sharp, Francis Child and other collectors. There were also a number of bound volumes of chap-books, songsters and broadside ballads.

On a later visit it was discovered that there were also a number of boxes of mixed manuscript and printed material stored in the basement at Killerton. After a preliminary examination there, it was decided that these should be transferred to the Devon Record Office for safe storage. Though some of the items in the boxes are damaged books, there is much there of interest. There are, for example, three notebooks of songs in Baring-Gould's hand. The boxes also contain a number of photographs and letters as well as Baring-Gould's journal for the 1880s (which, frustratingly, does not refer to his song collecting activities).

It has since been established that all of this material had been kept in the library at Lew House, Baring-Gould's home in West Devon. The house had been tenanted for most of the time following Baring-Gould's death in 1924 and run latterly as a hotel. Surprisingly, this seems to have been a relatively safe environment because it was not until the 1970s that it was decided to remove the contents of the library to a more secure location. The library at Killerton House was then empty, and an agreement was reached between the Baring-Gould family and the National Trust that the majority of the books from Lewtrenchard would be moved there.

In 1998, the Baring-Gould Heritage Project (See Section 3 below) published images of the Baring-Gould song manuscripts as a microfiche edition. This included most of the manuscripts mentioned above though, at that stage, only the first of the Killerton notebooks had been discovered. The microfiche edition also included the letters and song texts sent by Baring-Gould to Francis James Child, which are in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.

2 The 'Take Six' Project

In 2011 the Devon Tradition project (See section 4 below) re-photographed the manuscripts for online presentation and these high quality colour images are now available on the EFDSS 'Take Six' website. All of the song manuscripts previously available on microfiches are included as well as the two additional notebooks from Killerton mentioned above. A manuscript book of nursery songs compiled by Baring-Gould's Aunt Emily that came to light in 2009 has also been included in the online collection.

The library at Killerton also included a number of volumes of collected chapbooks and ballads. These were available on microfiches, but have not yet been included in the on-line edition. They form only a part of Baring-Gould's collection of printed popular literature. He gave a large part of this collection to the British Museum library in his lifetime. There are a number of other volumes from his collection that have made there way into other locations in Britain. There are also a number of letters written by Baring-Gould to Cecil Sharp, Lucy Broadwood and other collectors in the Vaughan Williams Library and in other locations.

This table gives the reference numbering scheme (Fonds/Series/File) and titles of the Baring-Gould song manuscripts as they appear on the EFDSS 'Take Six' website. These are described below.

SBG/1:	Killerton House Manuscripts
SBG/1/1 - 3	Personal Copy Volumes 1 - 3
SBG/1/4 - 7	Songs and Ballads of the West, annotated, (four parts)
SBG/1/8:	A Garland of Country Song, annotated
SBG/2:	Devon Record Office Manuscripts
SBG/2/1:	Baring-Gould working notebook 2 [formerly Killerton Notebook 1]
SBG/2/2:	Baring-Gould working notebook 3 [formerly Killerton Notebook 2]
SBG/2/3:	Baring-Gould working notebook 4 [formerly Killerton Notebook 3]
SBG/2/4:	Emily Baring-Gould's MS Songbook
SBG/3:	Plymouth Manuscripts
SBG/3/1:	Fair Copy
SBG/3/2:	Baring-Gould working notebook 1 [formerly Plymouth Notebook 1]
SBG/3/3:	Baring-Gould composition notebook 1 [formerly Plymouth Notebook 2]
SBG/3/4 - 16:	Rough Copy Volumes I - XIV
SBG/4:	Popular Literature
SBG/4/1:	Chapbooks
SBG/4/1/1 - 3:	Chapbooks Volumes 1 - 3
SBG/4/2:	Ballads
SBG/4/2/1 - 7:	Ballads Volume 1 - 7
SBG/4/3:	Broadsides
SBG/4/3/1	Broadsides, Volume 1 (of 1)
SBG/5:	Harvard / Child book: Ballads and Songs Collected by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, chiefly in Devonshire, and sent by him to Prof. F. J. Child (now in Harvard)

The Personal Copy (Killerton House)

This is a set of three vellum-bound ledgers laid out like the Fair Copy (for which it was the prototype). It contains about 650 songs, though some are repeated. It appears that Baring-Gould continued to copy songs into these volumes from his notes and from other sources until about 1917. It includes some songs collected by Cecil Sharp and Lucy Broadwood when staying with Baring-Gould.

The Fair Copy (Plymouth and West Devon Record Office)

This is the collection of 202 songs, set out with all their variants of words and tunes that Baring-Gould gave to Plymouth Library. It includes most of the songs published in both editions of Songs of the West and in A Garland of Country Song.

The Rough Copy Notebooks (Plymouth and West Devon Record Office)

These are the original notebooks in which Baring-Gould and his colleagues. Henry Fleetwood Sheppard and Frederick Bussell noted tunes from the old singers. There were originally fourteen notebooks but one was mislaid before they were presented to Plymouth Library in 1914. The manuscripts are in a mixture of hands and some is in pencil and thus hard to read. The names used for the tunes are, as might be expected in the circumstances, mnemonics based on what they heard and were often changed in the fair copies. In places the reverend gentlemen have amused themselves by using French, Latin or Greek names or puns. A new index for this set of manuscripts was drawn up in 2010 and in the course of this work it was noticed that many items appear more than once and that some of the instances are of arrangements for the songs, in preparation for publication or performance. Though it is likely that there were separate notebooks in which Baring-Gould (and, sometimes, his colleagues) noted the words, none of these have been discovered as yet.

Baring-Gould working notebook 1 (Plymouth and West Devon Record Office)

Formerly known as 'Plymouth Notebook 1', this is a mixture of fair copy and rough work and is the earliest of the notebooks available. The majority of the songs do not have music associated with them. Where music is given it is often on a separate sheet stuck in to the notebook. The notebook also contains a number of letters loose in its pages. Near the back are some lists of songs which may be concert running orders.

Baring-Gould composition notebook (Plymouth and West Devon Record Office)

Formerly known 'Plymouth Notebook 2', this notebook is a fair copy of various lyrics written by Baring-Gould, including some of the song lyrics that he wrote for inclusion in Songs of the West, such as 'On the Settle'. Near the end of the book are some political poems and some pieces written to order for magazines.

Baring-Gould working notebook 2 (Devon Record Office, Exeter)

Formerly known as 'Killerton Notebook 1', this is another early attempt at a fair copy without music and contains transcriptions of much of the material that appears in Songs of the West. It also contains some notes and a list of subscribers to the first edition of Songs of the West.

Baring-Gould working notebook 3 (Devon Record Office, Exeter)

Formerly known as 'Killerton Notebook 2', this is also a fair copy of the words and notes of songs without tunes. Towards the end is some rough work on texts that Baring-Gould has rewritten.

Baring-Gould working notebook 1 (Devon Record Office, Exeter)

Formerly known as 'Killerton Notebook 3', this is the last of the prototype fair copies made before Baring-Gould commenced the 'Personal Copy', with the larger format and with music included. This volume also includes a number of the original letters written to Baring-Gould by contributors to the collection.

Emily Baring-Gould's MS Songbook

This manuscript collection of nursery songs was compiled by Baring-Gould's Aunt Emily. Some of the paper can be dated (by watermark) to the 1830s. It contains 31 songs, many of them illustrated with watercolour sketches. Emily Baring-Gould was competent amateur watercolourist. Baring-Gould entered some of her songs into his Personal Copy manuscript.

Annotated copies of 'Songs of the West' and 'A Garland of Country Songs' (Killerton House)

Baring-Gould had copies of these two books bound with extra blank pages so that he could make additional notes in them. In Songs of the West there are a number of tune variants on these pages.

The Harvard Notebook (Houghton Library, Harvard University, USA)

This is a notebook that is in the Houghton Library of Harvard University in the USA. It was compiled in its present form by Prof. George Kittredge in 1913. Baring-Gould sent a number of letters and song texts to Prof. Francis Child when he was producing his great work on ballads and Kittredge compiled these into one volume. Kittredge attempted to place the material in the order in which it was sent, but has not been completely successful. Some of the letters are very hard to read, though most of the song texts are legible. Baring-Gould indicated that these were songs that he did not have a place for in Songs of the West.

3 The Baring-Gould Heritage Project.

In 1995 a number of individuals and institutions agreed that the folksong manuscripts and other unique material from the Baring-Gould collection should be made available to folksong researchers throughout the world. The project brought together Paul Wilson and Marilyn Tucker of Wren Trust, Dr Merriol Almond, great grand-daughter of Baring-Gould and director of the Baring-Gould Corporation which owns Baring-Gould's Library, now housed at Killerton, Ian Maxted, County Local Studies Librarian responsible for heritage collections throughout the county, and myself, Martin Graebe, as project manager.

Wren Trust obtained funding from a number of charitable institutions to photograph the material and to transfer it to microfiche. The final collection, consisting of 209 fiches was launched together with indices prepared by Ian Maxted and me in November 1998. Sets of the fiches have been given to the principle libraries in Devon, to the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House in London and to the Lamont Library at Harvard University.

4 The Devon Tradition Project

The Devon Tradition Project, which kicked off in the summer of 2009, was the successor to the Baring-Gould Heritage Project and was led, once again, by Wren Music. There were three elements to the project:

· The digitisation and presentation on-line of the Baring-Gould manuscripts

· The digitisation of the recordings made by Paul Wilson in Devon

· The development of educational resources using these materials and Wren's expertise

The Baring-Gould song manuscripts were re-photographed as high resolution digital images in full colour, to maximise the visibility of some of the faint pencilled writing that could not be seen on the microfiches. The project team, with the support of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) catalogued the manuscripts to enable a database of the images to be placed online with the manuscripts of other collectors on the EFDSS 'Take Six' web pages.

5 Working with the Baring-Gould Manuscripts

In this section I have included some hints for working with the Baring-Gould Manuscripts online.

Searching

Songs can be found on the 'Take Six' website in a number of different ways:

· The 'Search' boxes allow you to find songs in a number of different ways - by title, by first line, by performer etc. The advanced search allows you to combine different search terms.

· The manuscripts are organised hierarchically using current archival practice. The highest level is the 'fonds' - in this case the Baring-Gould manuscripts denoted by 'SBG'. The next level is the 'series' - in this case the location of the documents (at the time they were photographed). The next level is the 'file' - a document such as a notebook. The lowest level is an 'item' - an individual song or tune, for example. Thus SBG/1/1/1 is the version of 'By chance it was' collected from James Parsons, in the Personal Copy manuscript, then located at Killerton (it has subsequently been moved to the Devon Record Office).

· If you are trying to establish whether there is a version of a particular song in the manuscripts, then you may not find it if it has been given a different name by Baring-Gould. One way to overcome this difficulty is to find the 'Roud Number' of the song on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library pages and then to search for that in 'Take Six'

· If you want to browse the titles in each group of manuscripts then the 'tree view' is the best way to do this. Open the tree view and then click on the plus signs beside the manuscript names to open to item level, when the titles will all be displayed and you can scroll through them. Click on any item to see the record of its details and to see the thumbnail

Visual layout:

For the 'Personal Copy Manuscript' and the 'Fair Copy Manuscript' the layout of the songs is reasonably consistent. The text will be on the right-hand (recto) page, the music on the left-hand (verso) side. There is frequently more than one text given for each song and more than one tune. - usually these are labelled with the name of the singer from whom it was collected (or the other source) so that it can be linked with its partner. If a tune is given without words this indicates that the words were similar or identical in the second version.

Hand writing:

It has to be admitted that Baring-Gould's hand writing is not good. Frequently it is awful. Sometimes the ink is very faint or blotchy. It is very frustrating to get most of the way through a song and then find that you can't read a word or a line. The secret is to record what you can read - leave a gap, and go back to it later. It is amazing how often a word becomes obvious after a few readings or on another day (there is one word that I puzzled over for four years. I cannot now understand why 'bronchitis' wasn't completely obvious!). Above all - keep trying!

Useful tip - if you can't read a word in the 'Personal Copy' check whether the song is in the 'Fair Copy' or another manuscript where it may be easier to read.

Other things:

Baring-Gould numbered the pages in some of the manuscripts (most importantly in the Personal Copy and Fair Copy Mss.) He also gave each song title in the Personal Copy and Fair Copy a consecutive roman number. Unfortunately he made some mistakes with page numbering and, towards the end of volume 3 in the Personal Copy, he stopped numbering songs and pages. When the microfiche edition was being prepared, the decision was taken to complete the page numbering, but the song numbering was left incomplete.

With the high quality digital images now available it is now possible to see the notes added to Baring-Gould's manuscripts by Cecil Sharp, when he borrowed the volumes.

The Rough Copy contains the original notations of the tunes. There are a number of tunes in the Rough Copy to songs which were never copied into the two neat manuscripts - very frustrating! On the other hand, there are some texts given in the notebooks for which tunes can be found in the Rough Copy.

There is a huge amount of stuff in the manuscript collection. After nearly 20 years I am still finding something new every time I look. Just dive in and you are bound to find something to enjoy and, I hope, use in your own performance.