2007 Christmas Revels Director’s Notes

This year, Revels celebrates not only the rich and varied rustic traditions of the British Isles, but also the act of capturing and preserving those traditions.  We salute the “songcatchers”, a group of 19^th century folklorists who became alarmed at the rapid disappearance and assimilation of English village traditions.  They observed the homogenizing effects of industrialized manufacturing and farming and noticed how much was being sacrificed in the rush into “modernity”. Armed with notebooks, pencils, and later, wax cylinder voice recorders they set out to document songs, stories, rituals, and dances before they vanished forever.

It was not a simple task. The desire to find the pure and meaningful, the archetypal and the verifiably “old” could be thwarted by many factors, including poor memory, the tastes and prejudices of the informants, the expectations of the gatherer and the sheer number of variants of almost any piece under study.  In many cases, where no reliable historical interpretation of symbol or character could be found, it was irresistibly tempting for either the informant or the songcatcher to invent an explanation or version that later appeared in print bearing the unquestioned stamp of veracity: trad.

One of the curiosities of the songcatcher tradition is that some English researchers resorted to combing the American Appalachians in search of material that had been preserved by immigrant communities there.  Sometimes they discovered forms which had been already lost back in the British isles. It was from the singing of the Ritchie family that Cecil Sharp recorded the curious and moving song, Nottamun Town.  Bob Dylan would later use the tune for his own “Masters Of War”. In this show, we present the traditional Wexford Carol with lyrics devised in the 20^th century.

This is as it should be, because the power of folklore does not derive from its historicity, but rather from its ability to move and delight people.  It changes and evolves as it moves through time. It reflects, sometimes in a twisted mirror, the lives of the people singing the songs and dancing the dances.  As a tradition is handed from generation to generation, a little bit of the “old” rubs off on those hands, and the singers, the dancers, the revelers are made aware of the continuity of human experience.  Thank-you, songcatchers, for your part in reminding us that we are all dancers in the same dance, all singers of one song in many parts. 

David Parr, Artistic Director