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In the Field
Nick Groom
George Deacon, Dream Not of Love: 17 Songs from John Clare (GCD001, 2002); Gordon Tyrrall, A Distance from the Town; A Musical Appreciation of the Work of the Poet John Clare (Fellside Recordings FECD129, 1998); Vikki Clayton, Midsummer Cushion (Prestige Records CDSGP008, 1991).
In 1765, Thomas Percy published Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. This three-volume anthology included songs, ballads, and lyrics from the popular tradition-the anonymous remains of what Percy sentimentally imagined was the old English tradition of minstrelsy. The collection proved to be an ongoing success, repeatedly re-edited and reissued. Clare was lent a copy of Percy's Reliques by Edward Drury (probably the definitive fifth edition of 1812), and wrote to his publisher J. A. Hessey on 4 July 1820, 'there is some sweet poetry in them & I think it is the most pleasing book I ever happened on the tales are familiar from childhood all the stories of my grandmother & her gossiping neighbours I find versified in these vols'. Four years later his enthusiasm had grown more avid: '[I] take them up as often as I may I am always delighted there is so much of the essence & simplicity of true poetry that makes me regret I did not see them sooner as they would have formed my taste & laid the foundation of my judgment in writing & thinking poetically as it is I feel indebted to them for my feelings'.
Percy compiled his collection while living at Easton Maudit in south Northamptonshire; Clare grew up in Helpston some 40 miles away, and bearing in mind Percy's literary celebrity (he had entertained Samuel Johnson at his vicarage) it is possible that Clare would have known of Percy's onetime proximity. But if Clare regretted not having encountered Percy's Reliques sooner in forming his taste and poetic ambitions, the volumes were to prove profoundly important in legitimating Clare's activities as a collector of songs and tunes. Percy's Reliques invested the popular tradition of balladry with cultural gravitas and profoundly influenced later writers such as Robert Burns and subsequent collectors such as Walter Scott and James Hogg (Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ... collected in the Southern Counties of Scotland, 1802-3; for Scott too the Reliques was...