The Chime Child

or Somerset Singers Being An Account of Some of Them and Their Songs Collected Over Sixty Years

Ruth L. Tongue

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317357643
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1968. The author, a well-known contemporary and friend of folklorist Katharine M. Briggs, collected a tremendous store of folk music material over many years and eventually decided to put some of it on permanent record. This book comprises a cross-section of rescued melodies dating back to medieval days and up to the Victorian early ballads. It describes individual folk singers in Somerset in great detail as personal accounts and documents their lyrics and their tunes, which are all together at the end of the volume.

 

1

The Chime Children

 

In this modern age of televised ‘occult’ discussions for the millions on matters our forefathers wisely regarded as ‘best not talked about’, I have often been asked by fellow folklorists to explain a Chime Child.

I have, at last, felt free to do so. For years the ancient command of silence and secrecy held me back, although I had quite deliberately and prayerfully done what I could to remove that foot of mine so firmly planted in an unseen world. There are many men and women in this too-glib world of interviews and trivial chatter, who are still known to be ‘Seers’, ‘Seventh Children of Seventh Children’, ‘the gifted’, the charmer (not the fortune teller), who have been born to a strange heritage, and live out their lives with a foot in each of the worlds, seen and unseen. They are usually very silent about it, and only very few friends or their families know. Most of these ‘traditional namings’ are to be found, through our modern passion for scientific classification, in various dictionaries but I doubt if you will find more than one reference to a Chime Child. The Chime Hours, yes—those potent ghostly hours from midnight to cock-crow that Shakespeare and his forbears knew were dangerous to living man because the Powers of Darkness claimed them—these you will find in many records of many beliefs. But a Chime Child was a purely local West Somerset faith, and within my own lifetime faded, with so much ancient lore that did not survive the First World War. So here is a description of what the very old in the 1900’s declared Chime Children to be.

They must be born between midnight on a Friday and cockcrow on a Saturday, as I am told I was—both these days being regarded as full of unseen danger among some villagers. This was all explained to me before I was five.

I had been out for a walk with an adult to visit our sexton’s home. There was a funeral and its arrangements to be discussed. Young Sexton’s wife, however, considered such talks unfit for my tender years. (Little did she know!) ‘Jack and his dad be over church now, ma’am. Leave the little maid bide with Jack’s mother and his old aunties. They’ll like to see her.’

They did, and I was equally pleased to meet them, although by the end of our meeting there was so much in my small mind that I could only feel the warm glow of a huge secret.

In the midst of my chatter the Old Sexton’s wife took my hand and drew me to her gently, asking, ‘And when was you borned, my little dear?’ After many questions we finally arrived at the right answer—I had been born after midnight had struck on a Friday. The old lady sat back in triumph and both the elderly aunts beamed—apparently I had done something very clever, though nobody at home had ever mentioned it. Then the right-hand Aunt—the one with two corkscrew curls—began to recite a verse. I loved words and listened eagerly.

They that be born of a Friday’s chime

Be masters of musick and finders of rhyme,

And every beast will do what they say,

And every herb that do grow in the clay,

They do see what they see and they hear what they hear,

But they never do tell in a hundred year.

Then they all three nodded and so I nodded back. We all said the last line again, and I was an accepted Chime Child, for their ghoulish interrupted gossip now continued something like this:

SECOND AUNT (THE ONE WITH VELVET TRIMMINGS): ‘So old Mrs. Buzzacot have a-goed off at last, the wicked old toad!’

FIRST AUNT (WITH THE CURLS), REGRETFULLY: ‘Vicar did say she made a good end—but I doubt it! She’ll come again’.¹

SEXTON’S WIFE, FIRMLY: ‘No, she won’t then! Dad and young Jack they took good care of that. They turned her face down in her coffin afore they nailed it up. I don’t doubt she knows which way she’m bound for and not all deceiving of Vicar, and saying she were repented will alter it’.

A general sigh of satisfaction all round and then a final triumphant statement: ‘What’s more, they’ve been and a-buried her on top of the Dog!’

ME (VERY SORRY FOR HIM AND WONDERING IF MRS BUZZACOT HAD BEEN VERY FAT): ‘What dog?’

FIRST AUNT: ‘Why, the Church Dog to be sure as is always buried somewhere on the North side to drive Old Nicky away, but there, you’m a Chime Child and know about all they things!’

And strangely enough I discovered I did, and a lovely, terrible, wonderful world it was that I had one foot inside—making very sure of the sanctuary in which the other every-day foot remained rooted. And in my childhood and for fifty long years after ‘I never did tell’.

And these are the gifts of Chime Children even if they never realize they have them:

1 To see the dead and the fairies, and speak with them but come to no harm—such encounters must never be sought.

2 To have immunity from all ill-wishing, as many of the clergy have.

3 To love and control all animals—so Chime Children often become herdsmen or veterinary surgeons.

4 To have a knowledge of herbs and a way of healing others.

A strange heritage which in old times would have meant accusations of witchcraft, but nowadays has helped to staff surgeries and hospitals. Like myself others have tried to come to terms with their ‘gifts’ for the benefit of other folk—while those whose curiosity or vanity tempted them to venture further into a world unseen have, as the tales of thousands of years give warning, perished miserably and spiritually.

It is never wise for man to know too much, his understanding is still very limited and minute, so like the country people who have always been very close to old Mother Earth and her ways—‘best let bide’.

 

¹ Come again—haunt.

2

‘Old Shepherd’

Folk-singer and musician,
born about 1815, died about 1903

He was the very first singer I knew and I have loved him all my life. We met when he was very old and I was very tiny, but it was enduring love at first sight. I saw him only twice but my heart warms at the very thought of him even now. For it was he who first opened the magic doors of folk music to me, and his songs and tunes still crop up to bring keen pleasure in my years of collecting.

Our first meeting was outside a small country church. It was a time of Harvest Thanksgiving, and, half pagan as the area was in many matters, they had decorated the foot of the pulpit with a large sheaf of corn which they called ‘the dolly’, and to bring luck to the service and the coming year it must be wreathed or stuck with flowers by the youngest maiden; ‘ ’twas the custom’. Although a visitor I was the youngest maiden capable of toddling into the church handfast with a proud farm-girl. Once face to face with the rustling giant towering above me, I was given a bunch of marigolds (‘must be the right flowers, mind’) and told to get on with the decorating. I sat myself down on the cold stone floor and went to it with alacrity. Alas ! marigolds are not the easiest of flowers for very little fingers, and after I had decapitated about five of them my disappointment and the coldness of my small behind amalgamated into heart-broken disapproval. The lynx-eyed girl watching my face begin to pucker tucked me under one arm, and had whisked me out through the church porch before my tears should outrage the sanctity and break the luck—and then the lusty bellowing began and she was kept captive in the churchyard, missing all the excitement.

An old man came up the path with a carefully combed and washed hank of sheep’s wool. He put it down gently among the other porch-offerings and as gently took me from her willing clasp and carried me down the path away from the church

Even in my sorrows I was interested in him because he was wearing a night-shirt in day time. I had never seen the old linen round frock and I was to see very few more. They had gone out of fashion ye...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Table of Contents
• Author’s Note
• 1 The Chime Children
• 2 ‘Old Shepherd’
• 3 A Taunton Trio
• 4 ‘Gillavor’
• 5 William Webber
• 6 Two Aunties and a Great-Great-Granny
• 7 Annie’s Granny
• 8 Richard Garland, the Sedgemoor Soldier
• 9 Delilah Odcombe
• 10 Seafarers from the Severn Sea
• 11 Mrs. Cordelia Cooper
• 12 Mr. Barry, the Ballad Singer
• 13 Isaiah Sully
• The Music of the Songs
• Index of Names and Song Titles