All Among the Barley

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It is this political shadow that darkens Harrison’s new novel, All Among the Barley, set in East Anglia in 1933. Edie Mather is a farmer’s daughter on the brink of adolescence. Steeped in the rhythms and rituals of country life, fascinated by its fables and folk stories, Edie is seized upon enthusiastically by Constance FitzAllen, an energetic young woman from London who has come to document the old rural traditions before they disappear. The bookish, awkward Edie, accustomed to being ignored, is immediately captivated by Connie’s kindness and her curiosity. Elmbourne’s other residents take a little longer to succumb, but Connie is cheerfully undaunted. Soon she is a fixture of village life, helping in the fields, cutting sandwiches for the local fete. It is only as harvest approaches and economic pressures begin to bite that the villagers understand she wants more from them than just their stories. As an evocation of place and a lost way of life, Harrison’s novel is astonishing, as irresistible as a magic spell Harrison brings 1930s rural England to life stylishly in this story of a teenage girl trying to figure out who she is and what she wants to do with her life. The summer and autumn of 1934 are momentous for Edie Mather as she sheds her innocence and illusions. She’s being courted by Alf Rose, and isn’t sure she likes it; she learns some unpleasant truths about her family; and she looks up to Constance FitzAllen, a career woman from London who arrives in the village to write a column about the old country ways, only to find that the woman isn’t who she thought. boy...I don't know...I just got it from doing a google search....the supersearch was not working at the time...i don't think... I've finally managed to have a look at Judith Barger's Elizabeth Stirling and the Musical Life of Female Organists in Nineteenth-Century England (thanks Google books). It devotes a large section to the song (as Stirling's most well-known) which tells us some things about the origin of the song.

In rural Suffolk in the 1930's the effects of the Great War still loomed over those working the land. There was some change in the air though, modernisation was slowly happening despite the global Great Depression. For everything that was moving on, there was as much standing still too. At Wych Farm, they farm the land in the old way and everyone, including the fourteen-year-old Edie Mather, is still expected to help with the harvest. Sheet music for ALL AMONG THE BARLEY can be viewed (depending on what country you're in, perhaps) in I didn't expect to be drawn into this book particularly but I was wrong. The details of rural life and the seasonal activities of a farm from the 1930's was fascinating and evoked an era that not all of us can recall. Hard work and a simplicity of life and the limited scale of opportunities available to most individuals at that time. Can anyone provide a provenance for the following piece, heard in Birmingham UK, possibly from MacColl's 'Radio Ballads' collaborator Charles Parker, c. 1969? It is autumn 1933 and 14-year-old Edie is living on her family’s farm in Suffolk. Edie prefers books to the company of other children, is prone to superstition and is often chided by her parents for living in “the more vivid world inside my head”. The arrival of a glamorous Londoner, Constance, to document rural traditions is at first exciting for Edie but it gradually becomes clear that Constance has more sinister, political motivations. The novel is a beautiful evocation of the rhythms and pressures of rural life in the interwar years, as well as a powerful and lyrical coming-of-age story from a writer who is fast establishing herself as one of the best contemporary exponents of the pastoral novel. This Really Isn’t About You

All Among The Barley

I would hear Mother calling me in exasperation, but it has always been my habit never to close a book unless I have reached a sentence of seven words exactly in case something dreadful should happen to the farm, or to my family; so I would delay, and often go home to a hiding, because we were expected to work in the fields when we weren’t at school and not to waste time reading books. " Alfred Williams collected The Ripe and Bearded Barley from farm hand Henry Sirman of Stanton Harcourt, and printed it in 1923 in his book Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames. Martin Graebe gave an illustrated talk about Alfred Williams and his song collecting to an appreciative audience at Whitby Folk Week last year. The words of the song are attributed to A.T., and Shan Graebe speculated that A.T. might be Alfred Tennyson. Of course the reviewers are immediately drawn to Trump and Brexit parallels – although I could not help sadly reflect on the level of overlap with the leader of a major left wing party – anti-Zionist, anti-European, distrusting of big business and international finance, and owner of an allotment. All Among the Barley – endorsed enthusiastically by McFarlane, McDonald and McGregor – is Harrison's first foray into the past. Fourteen-year-old Edie Mather was born just after the Great War, its effects still strongly present in her East Anglia village in 1933. Men are missing and grief shadows its turning seasons. Other changes are coming. The local landlord has died, and his city-dwelling son is selling his land. Edie's father, a tenant farmer, faces a second year of drought. Interestingly as an aside – shortly after writing this book, the author decided to leave her City life and move to a small cottage in the Suffolk countryside where this book was set.

I first heard All Amongst The Barley when I made my first visit to a Folk Club - The Meadow in Ironbridge, Shropshire in 1973. A couple of years ago I found a fourth verse which does at least, give an opportunity to sing the chorus again: Eine Geschichte des Umbruchs: Wie England in den 1930ern politisch und wirtschaftlich sich auf dem Land ändert, wo Technologie das Magische des Alltags ersetzt, die Frauenbewegung anfängt und ein Mädchen zu einer Frau wird. Das Buch wird aus der Sicht von Edith erzählt, das diese Verwandlungen miterlebt und von ihren Erinnerungen erzählt. Fourteen-year-old Edie Mather lives with her family at Wych Farm, where the shadow of the Great War still hangs over a community impoverished by the Great Depression. Glamorous outsider Constance FitzAllen arrives from London, determined to make a record of fading rural traditions and beliefs, and to persuade Edie's family to return to the old ways rather than embrace modernity. She brings with her new political and social ideas – some far more dangerous than others. We are treated to an abundance of wonderful descriptions of the countryside of East Anglia and its wildlife. I adored all of this. One example of the gorgeous writing - ‘ At dawn, dew silvered the spiders’ silk strung between the grass blades in our pastures so that the horses left trails where they walked, like the wakes of slow vessels in still water’. As the author explains in a closing historical note, a complex set of fragmented groups all drawing from “a murky broth of nationalism, anti-Semitism, nativism, protectionism, anti-immigration sentiment, economic autarky, secessionism, militarism, anti-Europeanism, rural revivalism, nature worship, organicism, landscape mysticism and distrust of big business – particularly international finance”.This however is no rural idyll. The farm is struggling. Edie’s father tends towards drink and doesn’t like to be contradicted and everyone knows he is violent towards Edie’s mother. The newcomer Connie it transpires is a fascist and there is much about strength and tradition and England for the English. The target then was the Jews and in the after note Harrison reminds the reader of Orwell’s essay on Antisemitism in England. Her views find some support and some opposition from union members and socialists among the farm hands. This, of course, leads to more tensions. Line 2 of verse 1 seems odd. If there is stubble in the field then the wheat has been cut. Rather than:

Melissa Harrison has previously paid tribute to the Devon writers whose work has inspired her fiction, among them Henry Williamson. Williamson’s classic, Tarka the Otter, was described by Ted Hughes as “a holy book, a soul-book, written with the life blood of an unusual poet”, and there is in Harrison’s work a similar kind of poetry, an in-the-bone connection with the natural world that contrives to be both sparklingly precise and wildly exhilarating. Like Williamson, Harrison is a hawk-eyed observer who refuses to be seduced by sentiment. Her second novel, the Costa-shortlisted At Hawthorn Time, presented a determinedly modern portrait of rural life that, while full of wonder, could also be bleak and brutal. I've been singing "All Amongst The Barley" every September since 1976. Can someone please give its origin ?More than 40 years ago I found a book that changed how I looked at life and history. It was titled The Days that We have Seen by George Ewart Evans. (At one point in this novel we encounter a grocer’s van belonging to G & E Evans and I suspected the author Melissa Harrison was telling us something.) He had been a schoolmaster in Suffolk but became fascinated by recollections by country folk of the old days, what life was like before the 1914-1918 war. He recorded their stories and depicted their ways of life, which in some respects were not so very different from in Chaucer’s time. It is this world that Melissa Harrison sets All Among the Barley, though at a slightly later period, the 1930s. The central character and narrator is Edith Mather, a 14 year-old farm girl in East Anglia who has just completed her formal schooling and ought to embarking on a life as a nanny or even a teacher. She is very literate and a constant reader. She lives at Wych Farm, near the village of Elmbourne, with her mother and father, her brother Frank, and two farm workers, the aged Doble and the horseman John, who had served in the war and experienced things that he does not wish to remember. Into their life comes a London woman named Constance FitzAllen, whose fictional career reminded me very much of Ewart’s. She is a freelance writer who specialises in country life, waxing eloquent about old ways of farming and housekeeping and cooking. There also seems something sinister about her, though we find out precisely what only at the end of the book. Little stuff: I think "rout" is correct. A rout is a mob of fleeing soldiers, but I think here is it a playful term meaning "you fellows." Since All Among The Barley has appeared again I thought I might get round to putting this up. About a year and a half ago nutty asked me a question about this song (to whit: was Walter Pardon's version sung to the same tune as the copy in American Memory) so I did a bit of investigating and I've been sitting on this since. There are two sheet music versions of the song at the Library of Congress in the Music For The Nation: American Sheet Music collection: There are three distinct themes running through All Among The Barley, and while I was a bit non plussed by the fire that represents a kind of finale, that’s a minor quibble.

Elizabeth Stirling. Born at Greenwich in 1819 and died in London in 1895, aged seventy-six. She was a remarkable organist, holding important posts in London and giving fine recitals which exercised much influence. At a time when Bach was little played she included much of his work in her programmes. At forty-four she married a well-known London musician less than half that age, F A Bridge. My thanks also go to Malcolm Douglas for providing me with a copy of the Walter Pardon recording of the song. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Edith Mather vermisst ihre Schwester Mary, die gerade jung geheiratet hat und nun ihrem Ehemann gehorchen muss. Obwohl Mary mit Mann und Baby nicht weit von der elterlichen Farm lebt, ist es im ländlichen Suffolk der 30er Jahre nicht üblich, dass eine verheiratete Frau alltags spontan einen Besuch macht. Als landlose Bauern, die ihre Farm vom Großgrundbesitzer gepachtet haben, sind drei Generationen Mathers erfahrene Landwirte, deren tägliches Leben sich allein um „unser Land“ dreht, um den Betrieb, die Arbeitspferde und das sichere Einbringen der Getreideernte. Marys Heirat hat der Familie verdeutlicht, an welch dünnem Faden das Funktionieren des Betriebes hängt; denn Mary fehlt nicht nur Edith und Mutter Ada als Vertraute, sondern als Arbeitskraft auf dem Hof. Mehr als 10 Jahre nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg befindet sich England mitten in einer Wirtschaftkrise; für die Versorgung des Landes mit Lebensmitteln fehlen besonders in der Landwirtschaft Arbeitskräfte. Spätestens beim Besuch der Großeltern mütterlicherseits muss Edith der Nebenwiderspruch klar sein, dass Haus und Einkommen traditionell allein mit der Arbeitskraft des männlichen Landarbeiters oder Pächters verbunden sind – auch wenn die gesamte Familie den Hof bewirtschaftet. Gingen Haus und Hof verloren, ständen drei Generationen mit leeren Händen da.The core of the book is a brilliant evocation of life on an English farm in the mid 1930s, through the eyes of the narrator Edith, recalling the events of one summer when she was a 14 year old tenant farmer's daughter. The location is not described directly but seems most likely to be Southern Suffolk. I always have a soft spot for books with maps in them, and we get two beautiful maps at the start, one of the village and a larger scale one of the farm. My name is Edith June Mather and I was born not long after the end of the Great War. My father, George Mather, had sixty acres of arable land known as Wych Farm; it is somewhere not far from here, I believe. Before him my grandfather Albert farmed the same fields, and his father before him, who ploughed with a team of oxen and sowed by hand. I would like to think that my brother Frank, or perhaps one of his sons, has the living of it now; but a lifetime has passed since I was last on its acres, and because of everything that happened I have been prevented from finding out."