Bushes and Briars
Speed the Plough track 15
Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams in Essex.
Roy Palmer's notes to the song in Folk Songs Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams say:
In the late autumn of 1903, after giving a lecture on folk song at Brentwood (Essex), Vaughan Williams was approached by two middle-aged ladies. They explained that their father, the Vicar of Ingrave, was about to give a tea-party for some old people in the village, who might conceivably know some songs. Vaughan Williams accepted an invitation to attend, met various singers, and returned the following day, 4 December, 1903, to note 26 songs. Up to that time, he wrote: 'I knew and loved the few English folk songs which were then available in printed collections, but I only believed in them vaguely, just as the layman believes in the facts of astronomy; my faith was not yet active.' When Vaughan Williams heard 'Bushes and Briars' he 'felt it was something he had known all his life'. It was the first folk song he noted, only three months after Cecil Sharp's first, 'The Seeds of Love'. The singer was a seventy-year-old labourer, Charles Pottipher, who, when asked about this and other of his songs, said: 'If you can get the words the Almighty will send you the tune.' Vaughan Williams took down the melody, commenting: 'It is impossible to reproduce the free rhythm and subtle portamento effects of this beautiful tune in ordinary notation. 'He noted the words of the first verse only, later completing the text from a Broadside issued by Fortey of Seven Dials.
(information from Mudcat)