Six-time BBC Folk Award nominee Jim Causley and Miranda Sykes of the award-winning Show of Hands and Daphne’s Flight celebrate the centenary of the first serious collector of folk songs, more than a decade before Vaughan Williams and Sharp. He is The Rev Sabine Baring Gould.
Baring Gould was an amazing man. As well as collecting 2,000 folk songs, he was one of the top ten best-selling Victorian novelists; the writer of a bloodthirsty book on werewolves; author of a nerve-tingling book of ghost stories; the compiler of the finest Dartmoor history book and composer of the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers – with a tune by Sir Arthur Sullivan.
Singing some songs he collected, and maybe new ones, Miranda, Jim and narrator John Palmer (director of the Vaughan Williams “From Pub to Pulpit” Cathedral tour), interweave highlights of Sabine’s own astonishing life with anecdotes and stories from his impressive array of best-selling-books.