Subversive folklore in the military?

I’m not particularly a fan of online meetings/events, but needs must when the devil drives – why, yes, I have recently been reviewing a book of proverb scholarship for Folklore – and I’ve been very happy about the current series of Folklore Society events. (I’ll be doing one myself in June). On Tuesday I had the great pleasure of chairing Professor David Hopkin’s excellent talk on ‘The Soldier’s Tale: Military Storytelling in Revolutionary Europe’, which was followed by the usual invigorating discussion. David’s focus was very much on the genre of folktales, and I wondered about the place of legend in military narrative traditions.

 

Professor David Hopkin

I mentioned in passing, for example, the song McCafferty (Roud 1148), based on the true story of a soldier killing an officer at Fulwood Barracks in Preston (1). From recollection (subsequently filled out in the discussion by William Roberts), one staple of the song’s performance is a comment on its subversive/banned character. In the late 1960s Shropshire singer May Bradley recalled singing the song some 40 years earlier ‘and a man jumped up and said, “Mrs Bradley we mustn’t allow that song in this house”. And I said “What’s that got to do along o’you?” and he said “If you was found singing that song you’d get 10 years in jail”.’ (2) Roy Palmer reported that ‘In the army itself it was widely believed that to sing the song was a chargeable offence’: his father had heard it sung in the Leicestershire Regiment in the 1920s, but ‘only when there was no one [in authority] about’ (3). It certainly continued to circulated within the military, with one of A.E. Green’s informants having learned it while serving in the Navy.

This kind of introductory comment gets me very excited, because non-sung verbal contextualisation of performances was often omitted/ignored by the early collectors, who were much more interested in the songs as musical artefacts, but is clearly an essential part of understanding what exactly is going on in the sharing of lore. David Hopkin added an extra layer to this with a wonderful story about Roy Palmer. David had been at a conference with his PhD supervisor, Peter Burke. They had met Roy Palmer, and Peter Burke said ‘The last time I saw you was at Catterick Barracks in 1952: I heard they’d court-martialled you for saluting the red flag!’

The story went that on the firing range, where red flags were hoisted to signal live fire, then Communist Party member Palmer had stood to salute one, resulting in disciplinary action. Not true, said Palmer, although as a CP member he had been removed from signalling duties as a possible security risk. However, the development of the legend – paralleling the claim that singing McCaffery was ‘chargeable’ is itself an interesting moment of military folklore.

 

By chance I have also just picked up a book on the 1797 naval mutinies, where, in another echo of the Burke/Palmer story, the Spithead mutineers used the hoisted red flag as a prearranged signal for sending delegates to central meetings – although the Spithead mutineers do not seem to have intended it as a republican gesture, that was certainly how it was seen by the Admiralty. I was reminded of the wonderful broadside ballad The Death of Parker, or President Parker (Roud 1032) on Richard Parker, hanged for his part in the Nore mutiny. It is a sympathetic song, treating of Parker’s widow and the story that, in Roy Palmer’s words, ‘the navy buried his body on the shore between high and low tide marks, and that his wife secretly removed it for proper interment’ (4). Here’s a nice version sung by Annie Dearman, accompanied by Steve Harrison.

 

Richard Parker about to be hanged

I first heard Parker sung in a folk club by Dave East (who had himself done military service). Dave would comment that singing this song was a disciplinary offence because of the line comment that ‘although he was hangèd up for mutiny, worse than him were left behind’. I’ve seen no evidence to support the claim, nor have I yet found any evidence of other singers believing the same, but the similarity with the McCaffery comment is suggestive. (Even if it is only suggestive of an experienced singer with a wide repertoire transferring legends from song to song on the basis of similarity). It suggests an intriguing nuance to some singers’ selection and perpetuation of specific songs, with some interesting implications for attitudes to military service and activity.

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1) The best consideration of the song I’ve read is A.E. Green ‘McCaffery: A Study in the Variation and Function of a Ballad’, Lore & Language, 3 (1970), 4-9; 4 (1971), 3-12; 5 (1971), 5-11.

2) Fred Hamer, Green Groves: More English Folk Songs (London: EFDS Publications, 1973), p. 48.

3) Roy Palmer, ed., The Rambling Soldier: Life in the Lower Ranks, 1750-1900, through Soldiers’ Songs and Writings (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), p. 120. Palmer gives a good historical account of the story, pp. 119-126.

4) Roy Palmer, ed., The Oxford Book of Sea Songs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 167.