[FX] https://freesound.org/people/baryy/sounds/409143/
It’s the 21st of June and the sun is already blazing golden in a sapphire sky. A carefree young man takes a walk. Heads of wheat bob and dance in a gentle breeze against their colourful backdrop of wild flowers and there, at the edges of the field, an ocean of pale yellow, humming with a thousand bees. A young woman emerges from a gap in the hedgerow.
At this time of year the sap is well and truly risen. Shall I, he wonders?
Dear listener, he does. And of such decisions, folk songs are born.
[instrumental break]
Welcome to Handed Down, I’m Jenny Shaw and today is all about The Banks of the Sweet Primroses.
It’s an unusual folk song, not in its theme which is pastoral and deals with thwarted love. No, it’s unusual because its earliest versions are almost identical to the ones we hear today. Its first known appearance was as Broadside ballad in the early part of the 19th Century and it just took off from there. It was reprinted many times throughout England and Scotland, always in the same version.
This level of integrity is unusual, especially as the plot itself isn’t particularly strong. In fact the second half is quite ambiguous. But the lyrics are absolutely on point, full of phrases that are satisfying to sing and which paint a vivid scene in a few short verses.
I’ve always had a very definite headcanon regarding this song since I first heard Shirley Collins’ version at the age of five or six. I could always see those primroses and the lush, rolling meadow – so different from the wide and windswept landscape of the Holderness peninsular. And then, last year on a walk in North Somerset – a place I’d never visited before – I found the meadow from this song. It was August and too late for primroses, nonetheless this song from my childhood jumped right back into my mind and I’ve been singing it on pretty much a daily basis ever since.
The tune is equally satisfying. It has a beautiful shape to it and when you get to the end of one verse you can’t wait to sing the next. It fits the words perfectly but it leaves just enough scope to provide emphasis where it’s needed, and a little variation.
So it’s not surprising that when the late Victorian and early Edwardian song collectors took to the highways and byways of England, they found this popular song all over the place, with only minor variations in words and tune.
It was especially common in the southern counties. Vaughan Williams collected it in Essex and George Butterworth in Sussex, and later the two of them collected in in Norfolk. Baring-Gould found it in Devon and Cornwall and Lucy Broadwood in Herefordshire. Cecil Sharp discovered it up North in Nottinghamshire, and Percy Grainger heard it just up the road in Lincolnshire.
It seemed that any traditional singer worth their salt had a version of this song. It was as common as the primrose itself - clearly a favourite with audiences, but perhaps less so with collectors as time went on. In fact it was so ubiquitous that some stopped collecting it, and other refused to touch it at all.
[Music break]
Henry Edward Denison Hammond was an influential yet accidental figure in the folk revival of the early 20th century. His father had been an official in the Bengal Civil Service, which had taken a toll on his health, and after his retirement the family moved to Madeira in search of a better climate. Sadly this didn’t have the desired effect and he died shortly after the move, leaving behind a his widow and six children.
The family returned to Somerset where Henry excelled in his studies and at sports. He won a place at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and after graduation took a role a classics master in Edinburgh. There he became known for his practical and theoretical skills in education. He was a huge success in the classroom, and outside of it he continued to play football. He seemed to be set for a glittering career and in 1899 a huge opportunity came when was offered the role of Director-General of Education in Rhodesia.
But, just like his father, a career in the colonial service took a terrible toll and within a year he was back home, with his health destroyed. But this brilliant mind needed some kind of occupation, and friend and fellow teacher came up with the perfect diversion. George Gardiner, now retired, was a recent but fervent member of the Folk Song Society. He and Henry made an early expedition near Henry’s home in Somerset, collecting 20 songs. Although they were absolute beginners, both men had found their passion, though after this first trip they went their separate ways.
For Henry, folk song collecting became the focus of the rest of his short life. Teaming up with his brother Robert, the two of them took to the roads by bicycle spending weeks, and even months, at a time collecting songs, with Robert writing down the words and Henry the tunes. Moving on from their native Somerset, they turned to Dorset where, in Henry’s typical business-like fashion, they made an impressive and thorough study of the county’s songs,
By this time, The Banks of the Sweet Primroses was so well known among collectors that the brothers simply refused to collect. But this changed when they met an old widow, Marina Russell, in the village of Upwey. Marina was a member of the Dorset Sartin family, and sister of Edith, whose more recent relative, folk musician Paul Sartin, we so sadly lost in 2022.
Marina turned out to be an absolute fount of traditional music, even though her memory was not as keen nor her voice as strong as it had once been. When she began to sing Sweet Primroses they just carried on writing, noting down what they believed to be a superior tune to the popular song.
Over the course of two visits she gave the brothers a hundred songs.
Henry died tragically young just three years later, but recent research by Nick Dow has shown that Marina outlived him by five years, moving back to Bincombe where she’d lived with her husband and young family, living there until her death at the age of 83.
[Marina’s version]
But what about the song itself? The words are lovely but the story doesn’t make much sense. The man doesn’t seem to know the woman, but she knows him and she’s very angry and upset about something he’s done.
One of them, and it’s not completely clear which, talks of their plan to withdraw from the world, and yet the song then ends on an optimistic note – especially positive for a folk song.
Some have said that this must be an incomplete broken token ballad, with missing verses coming after the woman’s outburst.
And if you’re not familiar with broken token ballads, here’s the mystery voice to tell you all about them.
Broken token ballads were a popular type of traditional English folk song in the 18th and 19th centuries. These ballads typically tell the story of a couple who are separated by circumstance, and who exchange tokens of love to remember each other by until they can be reunited. The tokens are usually a ring, a piece of clothing, or some other sentimental object. The songs are called "broken token" ballads because the lovers often use the tokens to identify themselves to each other when they are reunited.
One example of a broken token ballad is "Adieu, Sweet Lovely Nancy." This song tells the story of a sailor who is forced to leave his sweetheart Nancy behind when he goes off to sea. Before he leaves, he gives her a ring as a token of his love, and she promises to wait for him until he returns. When the sailor finally comes back to port, he goes to find Nancy, but she doesn't recognize him at first. However, when he shows her the ring, she knows that it's him and they are joyfully reunited.
[Phil Beer singing Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy]
But there is another possibility.
Picture the scene. A young woman is walking through the fields in summer, minding her own business. And then out of nowhere some bloke gets right in her face and does an old time version of “cheer up love – hey I know what would cheer you up.”
She wants him to back off so she kicks off a bit. She’s loud and assertive in her take-down, and I wonder if she’s trying to alert others to what’s going on, for her own safety. And if you’re a woman listening to this you’ve probably done similar at some point in your life.
Did she know him already?
Maybe. Perhaps he had tried it on with her before and forgotten, which turns the song it into more of a comedy. Especially so if she was tempted by this first approach but later thought better of it. Or maybe he was a notorious young man like Young Ramble Away and she had her guard up for fear of being taken in by him.
Either way, this has potential to be a song with an unreliable narrator. Did he really just step up to her thinking for to view her? I mean, is that all he did to provoke such an outburst?
And here’s something else I found. Modern versions usually have that incongruous final verse addressing young men. But in older collected versions and broadsides, it’s aimed at women. Come all young maids who go a-courting. In these older versions, it also sounds as though the woman is the one threatening to go down to the lonesome valley, and in that context it sounds like exasperated hyperbole.
I’m quite sure her day improved no end once she’d successfully got rid of this false young man.
[Music]
I love poking around online archives looking for the origins of traditional songs. It’s like a treasure hunt and there’s always that thrill of discovery to see a song referenced in an old book or manuscript.
This song has proved very elusive before the 1850s, so much so that I’m inclined to go along with the theory that the song was originally written as a broadside. I always have to remind myself that every song was written by someone.
But every song also has its inspirations and influences.
There’s a ballad from the mid seventeenth century which is very of its time.
It’s called Maids looke well about you?
OR,
The cunning Yung-man fitted.
I’m going to give you a few verses, and you’ll soon see why it could have been an inspiration for the Sweet Primroses. I’ve left out the chorus because to be honest it’s just too cringe, but it does make it very plain, at the end of each verse, that the man was setting out to deceive her.
[Tune of Cold and Raw]
AS I went forth one Evening tide,
it was my chance to spy one,
Was walking by a River side,
but he would not come nie one,
A Maid was stoupin hard by him
a gathering of Primroses.
And as she gathered by the spring
she made them up in Posies
The Young-man said unto the Maid
as he did step unto her:
Of mee I pray be not afraid,
he thus began to wooe her.
Sweet-heart these flowers which thou hast heare
I hope I shall enjoy them,
And the flower of thee my deare,
oh doe not say me nay then.
I pray sweet Young-man be content,
I dare not love a stranger?
For afterward I may repent,
for therein is great danger:
Therefore from mee begone,
I doe not love your prating.
I had rather to be left alone,
your smothings I doe hate them.
The song goes on – at length – with the young man persuading her every way he can to lie down with him on the Bank – he uses the word Bank. In the end he becomes so desperate that he offers to buy her a gown of green, and gives her forty shillings right there and then.
I think you can see where this is going.
The maid pockets the money and runs off home, and the young man becomes a figure of fun in the town, eventually sailing away to Barbados to escape his reputation.
In all of this we get to know the woman’s name, which is Sisly. The name is written in italics, which I think means that it’s designed to be changed by the singer, perhaps to reference someone in the audience, which would be pretty funny.
In an interesting turn, the narrator of the song – who, as he notes, has saved her reputation by witnessing her refusal – then becomes her new suitor. The two of them get married and are much celebrated in the town.
This ballad has a named author, Peter Fancy, who also wrote the popular ballad “The Age and Life of Man” and a political ballad about the coronation of Charles II. We can’t rule out a political or satirical element to this ballad either. It appears in The Book of Fortune, a 1650s collection of ballads from the English civil war and interregnum - with a distinctly Royalist lens. Would its original readers have identified the false young man as Cromwell, and the hidden narrator as the King in exile? It’s certainly possible.
Going back even further, the opening words of the song – walking out to view the fields – is a very old form of opening. Fresno State University’s ballad index has identified a fifteenth century version of this, in a religious song called Medicines to Cure the Deadly Sins. After this first verse it carries on in a much more religious vein, but I’ll give you a quick blast of it.
We don’t have the original tune, so I’ve borrowed one from a 15th century carol.
[To the tune of This Endris Night]
As I walked upon a day
To take the air of field and flower,
In a merry morning of May,
When flowers were full of sweet flavour
Boy meets girl. It’s an age old story and anything could happen. Love or hate, joy or sorrow, meeting or parting, truth or deception. The Banks of the Sweet Primroses is about that moment of meeting and everything else is left to our imagination. All we know is that it has beguiled many generations past and no doubt many to come.
Stay tuned after the song to hear about its moody Canadian cousin.
[The Banks of the Sweet Primroses]
The song Peggy Gordon was collected in Nova Scotia in the 1950s and 60s. It’s a song of lost love, similar to Pretty Saro but a bit more earthy. Rather than writing a letter, the narrator puts his head in a cask of brandy. Some think it came over to Canada from Scotland or Ireland, but versions of it are also found in 19th Century New York vaudeville.
It’s tune, though, is the same as Sweet Primroses, but with a distinctly North American style to it. Here’s a clip of Isobel Anderson’s haunting version:
[Isobel]
If you want to hear more you can find it on her 2013 album In My Garden, and there’s a link to her Bandcamp page in the shownotes.
Thank you for listening to the show, and for regular listeners thank you for your patience while I’ve been taking a short break. It’s good to be back. If you enjoy the show please tell one other person about it, it makes such a difference.
We’ll be back soon, but in the meantime let’s keep going to gigs, buying albums and supporting folk music in any way we can.
