Dr Buck Ruxton

The last of my classes at the City Lit folklore summer school on Saturday dealt with contemporary folklore. I was highly delighted when one of the students, Carol, started thinking about the new development of songs.

It occurred to her, she said, because her grandmother had been treated by Dr Buck Ruxton. Ruxton, an Indian-born GP in Manchester, murdered his wife and housemaid in 1935. He was subsequently arrested and executed for the murders.

The case was extremely high profile. As with the Maria Marten Red Barn murder of the previous century there seems to have been a theatrical dramatisation of the crime. As also happened with the Red Barn murder, Ruxton's crime also prompted a folkloric response. Across the country we find records of people singing, to the tune Red Sails in the Sunset:

Red stains on the carpet,
Red stains on the knife
Oh Dr Buck Ruxton
You murdered your wife.

I was pleased to find someone who remembered the song from within her family, but even better was the family legend that accompanied it. According to family legend, Ruxton treated Carol's grandmother on the very day that he had dismembered the corpses of his victims. He arrived at the patient's bedside, it was reported, with a cut on his hand, which he claimed he had done on a tin can.

It's a wonderful story. I have some doubts about its veracity, because there are many records of earlier criminals being used to scare children (Jack the Ripper turns up as an East London bogeyman in the early part of the 20th century, for example). Whether true or not, it's exactly how folklore tradition works with details of crimes. Perhaps the most satisfying part of the event in class was that a younger student didn't recognise the name, so Carol got to relate the whole story to her. Folklore in action!

Songs of Love and Emigration

I'm not quite out of the thesis woods yet, but am beginning to start thinking about research/interests/life generally after I finally finish. One part of this has involved catching up on some recent CD releases. I've finally picked up a copy of Songs of Love and Emigration, a 2 CD set of songs recorded by London Irish pensioners.
I already knew something of the project, having had the privilege of hearing one of the singers, Andy Higgins, several times at Sharps Folk Club. The 21 singers here perform a wide range of songs and recitations from folk songs, popular theatre pieces, to a song from the repertoire of John McCormack. Gerry Diver has contributed an impressive and sensitive backing to all of the pieces.
I hope that someone also recorded these singers in the settings where they actually sang most of these pieces, but that's not a criticism of this project. It's interesting to hear songs that might not get an airing in the folk world, invested here with evident emotional significance. Anne Morrissey sings Galway Bay, for example, quite beautifully. It is a song that reminds her of leaving Galway for America at 19, and you can hear that in the performance.
What's also interesting is the evidence of a continued tradition of making songs and poems. There are poems here performed by their authors, but the song that caught my attention immediately was John Butler's The Gracie Blue. I knew nothing of this song, or the story attached to it.
It relates to an event in Schull Harbour in 1947, when local traders were passed dud cheques by a conman in an ornate naval uniform. The song sung by John Butler appears to have been just one of a number of local compositions on the subject. It isn't the song sung at the end of this lovely local oral history film, for example:

The Gracie Blue: A People's History from El Zorrero Films on Vimeo.

Here is folk poetry, commemorating an otherwise forgotten incident in local history, and it's got me very excited about getting onto another research project in due course.

Roud 166

On 1st July this year the Daily Mirror reported that Aurica Cosmescu had been hospitalised in Brasov, Romania, following a shooting accident. She was wearing a black and white jacket when she was shot by a man hunting magpies.

This potentially tragic accident is a striking echo of the traditional song 'Polly (or Molly) Vaughn (Bawn)', number 166 in Steve Roud's Folksong Index. In the song the incident is usually blamed on poor light or weather conditions. Polly pulls her apron over her, sometimes to keep off the rain. Her lover is out hunting and shoots her, believing her to be a swan. In Harry Cox's charming Norfolk phrase, 'He shot his own truelove in the room of a swan'. The lover is appalled at what he has done. His relatives tell him not to run away but to stand trial, as no punishment will follow for his terrible mistake. Here's a version recorded in 1952 in Arkansas that tells the story up to this point.

Older versions of the song from the British Isles don't stop there. When the lover gets to court, Polly's ghost intercedes on his behalf. She appears and tells the court that this was an accident. This is a nice embodiment of the belief that those who have died untimely deaths are more likely to become ghosts, and will intervene to finish some unresolved business before they can rest.

I've just been learning Harry Cox's fine version of this song, 'The Fowler', and will be singing it at the Spectres at the Feast event in a couple of weeks.