I love what Gary Snyder has to say about singing and travelling: ‘even working wanderers have always known they had a home-base on earth and can prove it by singing their own song.’ I would remind myself of this as Simon and I hurled around the country.
I began to write my songs because it bonds me to the place I belong. I call it ‘digging and dreaming for stories of the land’. It contributes to a community and brings a wholesome sense of place and happiness.
I had been living at Dartington in South Devon for several years when we bought a young apple tree and planted it in our front garden. When it bore its first fruit I wanted to know the name of our tree and was told the best people to ask were an elderly couple who had lived in the village since the 1920’s. I stood on the doorstep of Sheila and Edward Guy’s house with an apple, was invited into their kitchen, and into the story of their long lives at Dartington.
Eddie was born in the village in 1923 and met Sheila, an evacuee during World War II, at one of the locally famed wartime dances held in Dartington Hall. Slowly Eddie and Sheila rooted out and recalled the folk history of Eddie’s ancestors - who had worked the famous local cider farm at Barkingdon for hundreds of years and I began to see the possibility of a good song or two. They passed on to us the names of the Devon apples in the orchard behind their house, the last great orchard at Dartington; Butterbox, Totnes Apple, Tailsweet, Tom Putts, Slap-me-Girdle. What a pleasure it was to sit in their kitchen overlooking the orchard and listen to them recount their stories.
Come October vast loads of apples from the bountiful farm orchards in the Lowland Dart valley were rumbled into tractors, driven to Barkingdon, then unloaded into the great cider press at Hillcroft farm. During the Great War Eddie’s great aunts Ida, Maud, Gwen and Renie manned the fort, shook the apples down in Barkingdon’s six orchards, drove the tractors, operated the great press and kept the cider and apple juice flowing. And so Lowland Dart and several other songs, including Appletown were penned. We recorded Eddie and Sheila’s interviews, transcribed and put as many as possible of their own words into the song lyrics; only when lyrics were completed would we write a fitting melody. And I had ample opportunities to re-visit Sheila’s kitchen to check on various drafts! Thank you to Eddie and Sheila for their reminiscences and warm welcome.
Shortly after I moved to Dartington in May 2009 I remember driving on the road from Buckfastleigh into the village. Just over Staverton Bridge was a large board by the verge side that read:
‘HOOD FARM: AUCTION: SPLIT LOTS: LAND: FARM BUILDINGS’
Years later Sheila and Eddie introduced us to the man who had farmed at Hood Ball all his working life.
Jack Connabeer, president of Devon Rural Skills Trust, farmer, highly regarded countryman, hedge-layer, dry-stone waller and upholder of the Devon dialect was also a great story-teller but above all he loved to be out on the land. From the 1950’s onwards Jack raised a large flock of sheep and grew mixed crops on the farm. He married Heather and they had six children.
By the time we met them, Jack and Heather had moved to a bungalow in South Brent and over several interviews we talked about his farming life in great detail. Jack loved words too and I eventually wrote two songs with a good deal of his input: ‘Strange Harvest’ tells the story of the last year on Hood Farm which was forced to close due to changing global market forces and their effect on the economy of the small farm. ‘Language of the Soil’ is the celebration of his life: Jack recounted a myriad stories intertwined with Hood farm, village life, the orchards, the Dart river, the birds and animals; some were poignant, others apocryphal and told with a great dose of gentle humour. Finally with sadness he came to recall the last farming year on his land and our song Strange Harvest slowly came to be written.
He talked for a long time in his soft, droll accent that once extended all down these western valleys, the Dart, the Teign and the Exe, out beyond Ashburton and Dartmoor to the north and Salcombe and Sidmouth to the south as far as the sea. The language is naturally humorous, playful, pungent. Jack called it ‘the language of the soil’ because as he said it came from the breath, the rhythm and roll of folk working hard on the land, bantering and enjoying the company, enduring the infamously long agricultural days.
As with the interviews with Sheila and Eddie I attended closely to the spoken word awaiting those moments when Jack’s emotional memories were set in full flight - for it was at these exact moments when he would unselfconsciously talk of his deep feeling for the land. I reviewed my song drafts with Jack at subsequent meetings, we would see if I had hit the mark, make improvements and ensure I had used correct words and phrasing.
Jack Connabeer passed away in 2009. He is widely and affectionately remembered in South Devon.
Meanwhile Si was busy composing songs too. Drawn to strongly narrative subjects ranging from Devon legend to contemporary rural reportage he invites the listener to accompany him through strange landscapes whose denizens include coffee drinking mermaids, corn mowing devils, flying highwaymen and disappearing hedgerows. Si and I would co-write much of our material asking each other for help with lyrics and melodies and our house was often awash with scraps of paper covered in scrawled lines.
Whether from the hedgerow flowers, the ploughman’s toil, the small-holder’s vision, the orchard’s weight of fruit, we have tried to draw our thread and stitch together honest, poignant songs in which we may see a world on the brink of change, and a map for a brighter future.
Ros Brady Teign Village 2015