English Folk-Song and Dance — Inside the Classic

Kidson's Classification of Song Types

Kidson devotes separate chapters to narrative ballads, love songs, pastorals, drinking songs, highwayman and poacher songs, soldier songs, sea songs, pressgang songs, hunting and sporting songs, songs of labour, traditional carols, and children's singing-games. This taxonomy reveals a systematic effort to map the social contexts of folk-song. The categories are not merely thematic; they reflect the occupations and experiences of the singers. For instance, pressgang songs and sea songs are distinguished from soldier songs, indicating a sensitivity to the specific hardships of naval impressment versus army service. Kidson also includes a chapter on the ballad sheet and song garland, showing attention to the printed transmission of oral material.

Neal's Argument for Ritual Origins

Mary Neal's section on folk-dance is more speculative than Kidson's. She proposes that the Morris dance descends from sun-worship, citing the Golden Bough and comparing English dances to those of the Roman Salii. She lists three reasons: the processional form at Bampton-in-the-Bush, the circular and semicircular evolutions in dances from Abingdon and Headington, and the appearance of a King and Queen figure. Neal writes that the Abingdon dances 'end with a complete circle' and that Bean-setting begins with 'two half-circles danced in opposite directions.' She interprets these patterns as mimetic magic intended to influence the sun's course. The argument is presented as plausible rather than proven, and Neal notes that the etymological link between 'Morris' and 'Mamurius' is not taken seriously by the author she cites.

The Role of Fieldwork and Photography

The book includes photographs of Morris dancers at Bampton-in-the-Bush and Abingdon, credited to the Daily Chronicle and the Espérance Morris Book. These images ground the text in observable practice. Neal describes the Bampton dancers as having 'an unbroken tradition going back some hundreds of years' and notes their 'slow, dignified rhythmic movement' in processional form. The set dances, by contrast, involve 'wild leaps, twirlings round, hand-clapping, stick clashing, and the waving of handkerchiefs.' This contrast between processional and set dances is one of the few places where the authors offer a direct observation of living tradition, rather than historical reconstruction.

Limits of the Evidence Presented

Kidson and Neal rely heavily on printed sources and comparative anthropology. Kidson's chapters on song types do not include transcriptions of tunes or full lyrics; he refers to the existence of such material but does not reproduce it. Neal's ritual hypothesis depends on the Golden Bough rather than on local testimony. The book does not claim to have collected new songs or dances firsthand. Kidson's note thanks Lucy Broadwood for 'a folk-tune of her collecting,' but no tune appears in the excerpts. The authors are synthesizers rather than field collectors, and their work is best understood as a summary of early twentieth-century knowledge about English folk tradition, filtered through the lens of contemporary scholarship.

Readers interested in the raw material of folk-song and dance should supplement this volume with the collections of Cecil Sharp or the journals of the Folk-Song Society. Kidson and Neal provide a useful overview of categories and historical theories, but their evidence is often secondhand. The book's value lies in its snapshot of how two early revivalists understood their subject—as a living link to prehistoric ritual and as a body of work worthy of systematic classification.

In English Folk-Song and Dance, Kidson finds rituals hiding in plain steps, old suns behind the Morris bells. It reminds me of another quiet volume, The liberty minstrel — Context and Discussion, where freedom hums beneath the verses. Both books hold that ache of something older, singing through cracks in time. I often shelve them side by side, as if they might exchange whispered tunes.