Available here only

Dream Not of Love Love Songs from the John Clare Collection Performed by George Deacon with Isobel Deacon : Harmonium Christine Hodgkinson: Violin GDCD0001 £12.99 P&P UK inclusive, Rest of World £1.00 John Clare was born in 1793 in the east Northamptonshire village of Helpston. At the age of 27 he was a famous literary success, lionised for his book Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. His poetry had however grown out of a rich village and family tradition of song, story and music. Over the next 15 years or so he was to record much of that tradition-the songs whose parents and friends saying; village customs; sports and pastimes; village beliefs and most important of all to him the tunes he played on the fiddle for his own amusement. As a record of the tradition of self entertainment in a pre-industrial village it is unique, as well as anticipating by some 25 years other attempts to recover the folk song tradition of southern England. The majority of the songs are in Clare's papers are love songs and they form the theme of this recording. As Clare knew only too well the path of true love is beset with many snares. His first love was Mary Joyce from the nearby village of Glinton but their relationship was stifled by her parents, he being "below her degree". By 1820 he had married Martha Turner just two months before she bore their child. He undoubtedly came to love "Patty" but he never relinquished his first true love. Small wonder then that he should have identified with the lovers in these songs. Whether they were parted by proud parents or bearing children whilst unwed, professing their undying love or wandering forlorn, their plight seems to have much in common with Clare's. Here then is a unique record of the love songs collected and written in one small village during the early years of the 19th-century. It provides our only documentary evidence of what was sung in East Northamptonshire and gives us a rare opportunity to discover the songs that inspired one of our major poets - John Clare. Although he was an accomplished fiddle player and collector of fiddle tunes John Clare did not record melodies for the songs he collected. In this recording we have therefore set the songs to arrangements of melodies taken from the oral tradition. Most have a connection with Clare’s text having been performed by other singers as the melody for their version of the song. Where a readily identifiable melody was not available we have chosen a melody ourselves. Many of the songs are performed unaccompanied as they almost certainly would have been in Clare’s day. We have however added instrumental accompaniments to some songs using a either an early nineteenth century folding harmonium, a gut-strung baroque violin or a guitar. To order go to How to Order Page