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Chapter 3: Economic role; Cultural and social role; Conclusion
Chapter 4: Survival, revival or something else?; Annie Gilchrist
written by Deborah Kermode as part of a module for a first class honours degree in Independent Studies with Lancaster University, 2001-2. It has not been updated.
(Tune titles from the manuscripts of William Irwin of Elterwater, 1822-1889)
William Irwin epitomised the 'Lakeland Fiddler' of the 19th century. He was born in Keswick on November 3 1822, the son of a shoemaker and baker. He was apprenticed to a cooper, spent about three years at Hawkshead Hill, High Furness, as a self-employed general cooper, then went to work for Elterwater Gunpowder Company at the age of 22 years. Two years later, in 1846, he married a lass of 20 years: Miss Dorothy Greenop of Baysbrown Farm, Great Langdale, to whom he dedicated two of his early compositions, a strathspey and a reel. The couple had 11 children, lived all their married lives in Elterwater, and were buried in Langdale Churchyard, Chapel Stile, near the church doors.
Like his father, and many other country people of the time, Irwin had more than one occupation. From a young age, possibly as young as 16 years, he was collecting tunes and playing for a living. Among his tune books handed on to his youngest son was one marked 'Wm. Irwin's book, January 2 1838'. Later notations show he wrote his own tunes, and built up a library of local, regional and national tunes written by acquaintances and other musicians, including Scottish border composer James Porteous. Irwin's son Edwin described these northern tunes as "shining tunes…weirdly fine".
Economic role
Yet how viable was Irwin's musical career, even accepting that it was likely to be a secondary means of earning a living? There was no mention of actual payment in the regional and local manuscript research, although earnings could be inferred. For example, Jackson was specifically called "amateur" but there was mention of a vast repertoire. He was also in demand at "formal musical gatherings and musician's sessions" at local country houses and balls. Jane Betham composed a competent hornpipe, so must have been proficient enough, but again this may only have been a leisure pursuit. Only Lishman, if indeed he was both musician and dancemaster, would in that case have been earning a living, as the dancemaster took paying pupils. Irwin provided the first clear evidence. He kept a journal of his 40 years as a professional musician, giving enough detail to show, not just that money was made, but also an indication of how much. From this, it can be seen that the 'country fiddler' could indeed earn a reasonable part-time wage. The journal is now lost, but Irwin's son Edwin used it to produce an article which told the story of how 'A Lakeland Fiddler' would travel around the pubs, beerhouses, and hotels of a district playing for weddings, birthday parties, loosenings (when an apprentice came out of his time), young folks' assemblies, working men's organisations and "tea-drinkings".
"One outstanding fact in this old fiddlers' diary is that almost every entry of an engagement is at some publichouse or beerhouse. One might almost write a history of the tenancy of most of the licensed houses of Ambleside, Grasmere, Hawkshead and Langdales from the diary. Over 30 publichouses, including a few in Keswick, have requisitioned the services of the old fiddler during the forty years over which the entries extend, and the number of landlords played for is considerably over 40."
By 1839, possibly earlier, the fiddler was playing in bands as well as on his own, and earning money from his exertions. Generally, he seemed to be paid a halfpenny a dance, per person. At other times, there was a fixed rate, which from the figures given, averaged at 14s an engagement.
The first entry to the journal was on May 18 1839, when Irwin received 10s for a dance at the Grapes Inn, Keswick. At the time he was 17 years old, and an apprentice cooper. A young Lakeland schoolmaster of the same period earned around 6s a day (£70 a year). An evening booking later brought Irwin 13s 6d, while a "tea-drinking" only fetched 2s 6d. For several years Irwin earned £26 a year and performed some 40 engagements a year, mainly in November, December and January. His biggest single earner was hunsupping - he was recorded as making £3 4s 7d in the 12 days of Christmas 1851/52, through hunsupping in Langdale. His music books included the hunsupping tune he used.
Journal entries continued up until 1878, but Edwin detailed no more earnings after 1854, apart from noting that "there is a great falling off in the entries in the diary" during 1855to 1857, when the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny were at their height. He surmised that: "National calamities ….. damped the festive spirits of our dalesmen". It could equally well have been that Irwin was required to put in more hours as a cooper, making the barrels for gunpowder.
Playing for popular dances and traditional customs was obviously of economic importance for Irwin. No record was found of wage levels for Irwin's primary occupation, other than the fact that it was "slender". Yet an extra £26 or so a year, half the average earnings of a mid-century labourer in the North West, must have been of value.
Cultural and social role
The number of engagements can also be considered from the point of view of cultural importance and role in society. Medick, in chapter one, gave the view that the cultural life of a community could be found by examining how the populace spent their money. If one lone fiddler could find so many engagements within his immediate area, then dance was indeed a primary pastime. Yet Irwin may perhaps have been exceptional. His son wrote: "My father was a first rate country fiddler …. the most popular fiddler in the district ….. As a fiddler of country dances, he stood alone in the immediate district". Yet even allowing for an understandable bias on Edwin's part, if each 'district' of five or six Lakeland towns had a similar fiddler, musicians must have played a major role in society with regard to leisure time activities.
That role did not appear to be isolated within one class of people. This may have been, as was shown in chapter one, because class distinction among the working class, farmers and lesser gentry was not prevalent in Lakeland. However, dances were held by different organisations, and aimed at different groups of people, as Edwin Irwin's article showed:
"Not only do we find (the fiddler) playing at stylish dances in the leading hotels and private houses, but we find him at beerhouses…."
He added that friendly societies and organisations run by different classes of workers all hired the same local fiddler, mentioning the Oddfellows of Ambleside, the Mechanics of Skelwith Bridge area, the Tradesmen, the Foresters, and the Volunteers.
Irwin's story provided evidence for the view expressed earlier by Medick and Russell, that an "amorphous (national) culture" creeping across the land in the later 19th century did not totally obliterate distinctive local pastimes. We have already seen that Irwin continued local custom - he was also keen to use local tunes, and to include local stepdancing in the programme. Although there were nationally known tunes in collections, Irwin's manuscript books and folios demonstrated a large number of peculiarly local tunes, written by acquaintances and fellow-musicians such as his first tutor Gillespie of Keswick, Peter Wren, William Adams of Carlisle, J. Adams, a Mr Casson and S.J. from Wigton, Cumberland, and William Robinson, another tutor, who wrote "Mr Irwin's favourite waltz". Another, named William Garnett, may have been a relative of the dancemaster Garnett who taught in the Whicham Valley, where Irwin occasionally worked as a fiddler. Irwin's music frequently contained notes, alongside the tunes, for particular dances, and it may have been that he occasionally both 'called' the dances and played in the manner of Tommy Hewitson of Lowick Bridge in 1900, who was paid 6d per person for calling figures and helping beginners at weekly 'hops'. Journal entries indicated that a dancemaster was sometimes involved in engagements, possibly as both entertainer and caller. Although not mentioned by name, Irwin's brother-in-law Joe Pepper of Elterwater (1826 to 1898) may have been one such. He practised the distinctive art of Lakeland social stepdancing, whereby known dancers would do solo demonstrations as part of a social gathering. Edwin Irwin recalled one of Pepper's pupils continuing the pastime after moving to Liverpool:
"I have a cousin in Liverpool, who like myself hails from Elterwater. At a wedding….he took to the floor and gave a stepdance. The Liverpool people were delighted and said they had rarely seen neater stepping on the stage…..His uncle Joe Pepper had learned him what he knew."
The music, journal detail, and letters provided by Edwin Irwin regarding his father, have added a great deal to the view expressed in chapter two that the Lakeland (and Northern) musician was a key figure in popular customs, and indispensable as part of the dance culture. We have seen that Irwin the fiddler was no exception to that. In addition, his life story demonstrated the economic importance of the country musician, both to his own family and to the community. He was of value to the community in other ways too. He taught in Sunday School. He took part in the Langdale church choir, together with a pupil of his, another unknown fiddler and a violoncello player. He encouraged his young son to play along with them on occasion, all reading from the same psalm book which he created. The psalm book demonstrated that he taught dance music to at least one other dalesman: now archived under the name of Henry Stables, the book contained psalms intermingled with scales, teaching tunes, country dance tunes and a full set of quadrilles.
There was one further way in which Irwin demonstrated his place, not just in the community, but in the society of the time. He showed a wide-ranging interest in learning for its own sake. His large collection of tunes, his preservation of friends' music, and his own compositions, could be viewed as a mere amassing of stock-in-trade in order to continue earning money as a fiddler. However, he also epitomised what Hobsbawm saw as the central characteristic of the 19th century - improvement.
"He was widely read in history, biography and the sciences….I think he knew something of Richardson Fielding and Goodwin's "Caleb Williams": Dickens he did not read much, but he was captivated by Carlyle and used to quote and laugh at his outlandish expressions and sweeping dictums. He was keen on astronomy and….cast horoscopes, but I remember hearing him admit that he doubted whether there was really anything in planetary influences.
"He read largely in later years in mineralogy and geology and spent most of his Sundays on the hills collecting rocks and studying rock formations….He bought, out of his slender earnings as a cooper and from his fiddling income, monthly parts of geographical and historical works. He made for himself a bookbinding press and bound the volumes. I have Roll's "Ancient History" bound in Red Leather. It seems as if it will last for ever and a day. He was a most industrious man….He bought himself several pounds worth of optics (and) he made the telescope he possessed when he died…..With the last telescope he made he saw the planet Mercury for the first time…..He was delighted past anything."
This was no example of the "casual visits by strolling…..musicians" mentioned by Mingay in chapter one. Even allowing for the viewpoint of a son for his beloved father, Irwin was a respected member of the community with a valuable and valued role to play.
However, Edwin Irwin's letters also demonstrated a harsher side of life in Lakeland than that shown so far. Although "looked up to by the denizens of the dales as a man apart" Irwin senior took part in drinking-and-playing binges with other musicians, possibly similar to the pub sessions in which today's traditional players take part. Among the entries in his journal, "there is one unabashed entry under the heading of 'spreeing':
"That form of entertainment generally results in some monetary loss, but the diarist calmly informs us that the net results of a two days' spree, with the fiddle, was exactly 3s 6d".
Like today, these binges possibly had the additional role of building up a new stock of tunes from other musicians. The 'sprees' were not just an aspect of his life as a musician, however. They were also part of his other working life, as Edwin Irwin revealed:
"He took sprees periodically. Most of the coopers did at that time. There was monthly pays. The first week of the month was frittered away in gabbling and drinking. The next three weeks were gruelling. There were about two years and three months space between the eleven children. You will understand that….my mother's lot was a hard one."
The former Miss Dorothy Greenop died at the young age of 51 years, and her four youngest children remained life-long non-drinkers. Once fiddler Irwin "signed the pledge" (i.e. gave up alcohol) in the 31st year of his marriage, the 'Scant O' Silver' times were over. He was able to pay off his debts, build up a library of books, and leave £15 to each of his children when he died. It was not an easy life for the Lakeland working man, but it was liveable, with the addition of his fiddlers' earnings.
Conclusion
William Irwin fitted easily into the established definition of a 19th century rural dance musician. His life spanned most of the 19th century. He was a fiddler, one of the most prevalent types of musician. He was a family man, who, although living in three separate places in Cumbria during his life, retained a specific locality in which to play. He was an important figure in the dance culture of his district.
Details of Irwin's life confirmed and extended previous evidence for oral transmission of common tunes and development of regional variants, and also for a combining of these traditional methods with the custom of collecting and writing down both published and unpublished tunes. Alongside the oral culture, he demonstrated a strong musical literacy by composing tunes of his own of a high quality. Above all, he demonstrated the social and cultural importance of the continuing popular musical culture, both in the way he approached and played the music and in the fulfilling of the musician's role in certain customs.
Irwin's personal history cast new light on the economic importance of the country musician. Although playing music was never his major occupation, it was shown to be of value to the family lifestyle. It added to the communal lifestyle, providing income for commercially-run hotels and acceptable and popular leisuretime activities on which people were willing to spend their money.
Irwin's story added to the picture in other ways. The last example in literature of the hunsupping custom in Lakeland was brought forward to 1852. A London craze for tea dances, made popular with the coming of the polka in 1844, was shown to become a part of the Lakeland culture for a brief while. Finally, the role of music in church life, reminiscent of the 18th century gallery musicians, was shown to be present in the Langdales as late as the 1870s (within Edwin Irwin's lifetime). Revealing insights into various different aspects of a musician's life were also provided, such as a possible method of collecting tunes.
All of the above were provided by means of examples given by his son, via documents which he gave to early 20th century folk music and song collector Anne Gilchrist of Sunderland Point. Her preservation of the documents, together with a detailed method of recording, was one of the factors that allowed the music to be revived in a manner not always connected with traditional material. The subsequent role of Irwin's music today - and the music of other surviving manuscripts - will be discussed in the light of other revivals, in the final chapter.
(Tune title from the Ellis Knowles book)
The prevailing view of English folklore tradition is that there are only two possible ways in which it can play a role today. These two ways were described by Thomas Hardy as 'survival' and 'revival'. The first way could be described as the unbroken continuation of a form of culture, or as "having temporal continuity rooted in the past but persisting into the present". This was the traditionality described in chapters two and three, whereby music from the 18th century was still in use in the late 19th century in the same or similar manner. Under this definition, once the tradition ended, 'survival' was no longer possible.
The only alternative method on offer by which traditional culture could play a role today included in its concept a certain agenda. It was argued by later folklorists and historians, following Hardy's lead, that revival of particular aspects of 19th century rural culture (now classed under the term folklore) was dominated by the "values and ideological concepts" of the very collectors who set out to preserve that culture. This picture of revival had something in common with Hobsbawm's "invented traditions", whereby ideology of individuals, or of the state, insisted that "certain values and norms of behaviour" were inculcated into the populace by reference to a historic past. In effect, it was re-invention.
Before investigating the possibility that there could be another alternative to the strict definition of 'survival', it seemed worthwhile to see if it was necessary. This was done by looking into how the late 19th and early 20th century ideological English collectors went about their work, and whether this method was copied by those who preserved the music of William Irwin and other local 19th century musicians.
Survival, revival or something else?
According to folklorist Georgina Boyes, the "genteel talking-shop" that was the early English Folk-Song Society included leading classical composers and eminent classical performers. She demonstrated that they combined the laudable aims of collection, preservation and publication of folksongs and music with an almost total absence of practical experience, knowledge and commitment for oral research or performance of this essentially oral culture. The stage was set, in 1903, for Cecil James Sharp, whose goal was to create a "National School of English Music" with a "national musical idiom". His intention, from the start, was to re-invent the traditional music of the folksong as high art. Historian Jan Marsh offered a possible explanation for this.
"While the educated classes of Britain had from the eighteenth century admired the music of Scotland and Ireland for its picturesque and romantic elements, they regarded the cultural heritage of the English peasant as consisting of a few crude and comic songs."
As a result, late 19th century collectors made sure that songs were "suitably amended" to take out coarseness, rude humour or dialect, before being published. Sharp displayed a similar agenda from the start. On his first attempt at collecting, in the summer of 1903, "he immediately noted (the music to a song) down and composed a harmony so that it could be performed". He paid women singers for their songs and gave the men tobacco, then discarded the words as fragmentary and incomplete, and created new versions of the tunes he heard, with piano accompaniments, so that they could be performed in classical style. His collection of dances and dance music was in the same manner - not designed to be "a cheerful amusement, but….a disciplined art form". Sharp arranged the tunes he collected, published them and performed them, while at the same time professing them to be the pure and simple tunes of the people, evolving unconsciously over generations of the "unlettered but not ignorant remnants of the peasantry". Marsh also pointed out that Sharp ignored the question of regional variation, considering the songs he collected (almost exclusively from Somerset and North Devon) as England's 'national music'.
Annie Gilchrist
The 19th century dance and song music from the north was treated very differently. Some was preserved, rather than collected, by family members such as William Docker's relatives, or by people interested in the traditional practices of the locality, such as the Browne family of Troutbeck. Although the Irwin manuscripts came into the hands of collectors - Frank Kidson and Anne Gilchrist - those that were kept were preserved, rather than re-written or re-invented. In fact, there seemed to be no evidence for an ideological agenda at all in Gilchrist's methods, rather an authoritative expertise that valued every scrap of regional variety or originality. It was Gilchrist who gathered the various Irwin manuscripts and folios together from various sources (including the Kidson Collection) and although unable to preserve them in their original form in most instances, made copies of every tune title, and when notating, copied every note and idiosyncrasy in meticulous detail. She was able to purchase one tune book, which she later had bound. She also preserved the context of the music, keeping letters from Irwin's son Edwin which detailed the fiddler's life and lifestyle. In addition, she was sensitive to the family, copying and returning in less than a month tunes that had been lent to her.
Gilchrist was not without faults. She had a tendency, when she knew another variant of the tune well, to write a few bars and add "etc", or to miss all but the tune title altogether. She questioned the accuracy of early modal forms on occasion, although she did preserve the original notation. She also wrote tantalisingly of several Irwin compositions, without notating them, although this may have been due to the speed with which she chose to return Irwin's manuscript folios to his son. However, without Anne Gilchrist, it is unlikely that William Irwin's music would be heard today, 113 years after his death. The story of how much of Irwin's music almost came to be lost is among Edwin Irwin's letters. He wrote, over several weeks:
"I have several manuscript Music Books belonging to my father which I must look up. They are carefully put away as I have rarely had an occasion to use them for several years back…..
"Your letter asking for his MSS has, in a way, rescued them from destruction, for I found them in a deplorable condition and rapidly wasting. Many of the leaves were clagged together by damp and have come to pieces. It was very careless of me not to look them up before, and it has nearly broken my heart to find them in such a condition. When we came here ten years ago the backs were on and no signs of decay anywhere……
"I have pricked out quite a number of tunes from this collection but found them in such a state that I had to burn them."
As a result of Gilchrist's caring and careful methods, a selection of Irwin's music was able to come down to today's musicians in original form, unaltered by the collector's own agenda or preferences. In other instances, original Cumbrian manuscripts lay dormant, again unaltered by collectors. This preservation meant that the original style, regionality and eclectic mix of tunes survived into the 21st century. One aspect of the tradition - the tunes themselves - "persisted into the present".
The traditional 19th century musical culture was, by definition, not re-invented. However, for a tradition to meet the definition of 'survival' it must demonstrate Baumann's "temporal continuity", or unbroken continuation. So did the music of William Irwin, and other 19th century popular musicians have a continuing traditional role to play? Although the musicians disappeared, did the music continue to be important in the way it once was?
On the face of it, the answer has to be no. When a custom such as hunsupping during the 12 days of Christmas died, its only place in the culture could be through re-invention. It was not a continuing tradition. A similar thing could be said of the larger role played by the music of Irwin, Docker, Lishman, and their contemporaries. As we have seen, the players were primarily dance musicians, playing for popular leisuretime assemblies, parties, weddings and social events. That tradition of group social dance continued only into the early decades of the 20th century, did not return until the latter decades, and then only as a minority interest.
It was a part of the tradition that music such as Irwin's was passed around to be included in another musician's repertoire, and Edwin Irwin revealed that his father's music was still being played into the 20th century:
"I have frequently heard his compositions played in country places. Once I heard a concertina player, who was with a party of trippus at Ambleside, playing the Laal Schottisshe".
However, there was no evidence for Irwin's music being played after that. The letters also revealed that Edwin himself stopped playing the tunes around 1916, when he moved from Lakeland to Liverpool. There was a break in the tradition.
However, in some ways, today's playing of those same tunes is within the same tradition. Irwin's, Dockers and Lishman's original tunes are now being played again in their original context, as the mainstay of a dance night, as part of the leisuretime culture of Cumbria. The tradition of passing such tunes around by a combination of written notation and oral transmission continues. Musicians again use such tunes as a means of earning extra money, although possibly far less than in the dual-occupational culture of the 19th century. Finally, the creativity inherent in the term 'culture' continues: today's 'traditional' musicians are still composing tunes in the same idiom. Despite a period of dormancy, the Lakeland manuscripts survived in their original form to become part of a similar traditional culture today.
It is not a true 'survival', and yet neither does it have the taint associated with 'revival' or re-invention. A new term is needed to describe the role today of the music of those traditional 19th century rural dance players. Northumbrian piper Alistair Anderson, referring to a similar situation in the North East, was quoted as saying: "We are repairing the tradition". Perhaps repair and restoration are the keys to the importance of traditional Lakeland music today. In the hands of skilful players, the music has been influential in repairing the traditional musical culture of the area, in the same way that a skilled restorer can bring an old fiddle back to life.
It was seen that the traditional, northern, popular dance music of the 19th century was of importance both before and during the lifetime of William Irwin. It played a major role as part of the leisure culture, within the traditional customs of the period, and towards the musician's family economic situation. In addition, preservation of the tunes in their original form meant the players' music also has a place in a similar culture today, albeit as a minority interest.