|
HOW IT CAME ABOUT This page came about out of personal frustration and the difficulty I had in researching the Bledington and then the Longborough traditions. What I wanted to do was to see for myself what had been recorded by the various collectors. I contacted the Ring Archivist who provided me with photo-copies of the various documents that the archive had on the tradition but some were not capable of being photo-copied because of poor quality. What I found when I visited the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library was that is was difficult to get a good copies of copy of the Folk Dance Tunes which was what I was missing. The microfilm of the documents in the House were not of a particularly good quality or at least the wet copies that could be made were not of a particularly good quality. On one visit to the House I went into the cellar where Cecil Sharp's Field Note Books are housed and I had in my hand the small manuscript book, entitled "Morris Tunes", containing the first five Headington tunes that Sharp took down that was to have such a momentous effect upon his life. Some of these note books have been missing for a long time, although transcripts are housed in the University College Library. (I understand that in recent months some of these missing notebooks have reappeared). At this point I discovered that the Derby Local Studies Library had recently purchased a new microfilm reader that could provide paper copies using photo-copying techniques. Armed with the Rings copy of the appropriate microfilm I set to work to trawl through these to provide the best possible paper copies. The only problem was the microfilm was of varying quality. This point already represented a considerable input of time, already running into hundreds of hours. About this time I purchased a scanner for my PC which meant it was possible to optically read type written text and to scan manuscript music and to combine the scanned music with word processing. I am also now equipped with a means of printing music manuscript. The time commitment has continued to grow and grow, and I trust that it will have been worth it in the end. I have tried my best to accurately copy what I have found, only very occasionally have I corrected an obvious spelling; I have not presumed to make any correction of the manuscipt, and where I have had difficulty in making out a letter or word I have simply put a lower case 'x' or 'x's'. Nowhere have I entered into the role of editor. What you find is quite reveiling and is often at variance with what is contained in the Black Book.
|