Nell Leyshon is known for her work centred on the English countryside.  In her new play, Folk she looks at the heritage that is Folk Music and one of the first people to keep it alive and pass it on in writing to future generations.   Set in Somerset, two women outworking as glovers were sung to by their mother and as they sewed, they learnt her songs. 

The younger sister Louie (Mariam Haque) takes a job for a week as a maid to look after a man Cecil Sharp (Simon Robson) lodging at the local vicarage.  Sharp, once a lawyer, is in 1903 in charge of a London Conservatoire and has come to Somerset to write down as many folk songs as he can gather in the countryside.

Sharp hears Louie singing and there begins a joint purpose, for her to sing and for him to write down the musical notation and the words of her songs. Louie has a bad leg which means she limps and she hasn’t been to school so she cannot read or write.  She is fascinated by Sharp’s playing of the piano and musical script. 

Louie unused to company has a very matter of fact way of talking, a naturalness with no sign of deference to her employer which can sound belligerent.   “The Seeds of Love” sung by Lucy’s friend John England (Ben Allen) collected in Hambridge on 22nd August 1903 is romanticised in folklore as the golden moment when this period of collecting begins. 

Faced with great composers from Germany, France, Italy, Norway and elsewhere in Europe, Sharp wants to inspire a revival in interest in English folk music by composing new work around these old tunes.   I was wondering when sound recording became a possibility after Edison and the invention of the phonograph in the 1870s.  The answer is that quality recording wasn’t developed until the 1940s and in 1942 Louie Hooper recorded for the BBC Radio her memories of meeting and working with Mr Sharp.