Carols, customs and stories from the adult writings of Alison Uttley (with a brief appearance of Little Grey Rabbit).
Friday 5th December 7.30
Every year between 2003 and 2016 Pete Castle and Joyce Varty presented an annual Christmas Show based on the works of Alison Uttley. It became a local tradition and people said Christmas wasn’t Christmas without it. It stopped when it did largely because of Joyce’s failing health, but ever since Pete has been thinking that he should resurrect the idea in some way as a solo show. Joyce died earlier this year at the age of 95 and this prompted Pete to get on and do it. This is the result. It is not the show they used to do together but it draws on some of the same material.
If you like Alison Uttley or have seen Pete perform live or have been to any of his recent Zoom concerts then you’ll enjoy A Derbyshire Christmas circa 1900.
Tickets £5 or £10 if there is more than one of you, or you are feeling incredibly generous! From: https://www.musicglue.com/tenterdenfolkfestival/tickets
(The box office will close the day before the show so don’t leave it too late.)
If you can’t make the live performance you can get a recording afterwards. Just buy a ticket as usual and then let Pete know and he’ll organise it.
ALISON UTTLEY was born Alice Taylor on 17 December 1884 and died 7 May 1976. She is best known for her children’s books about Little Grey Rabbit and Sam Pig but she also did a lot of writing for adults – essays and memoirs about her childhood on her parent’s farm at Cromford in Derbyshire in the last years of the 19th century. She is not known as a source of folk songs and she probably wasn’t very interested in them for themselves. But, being brought up on a farm in rural Derbyshire at the end of the 19th century, she couldn’t avoid coming across them and related traditions.
Her adult writings contain many references to singing and the words of some songs and carols. She wrote about Christmas, guising, sheep shearing, and harvest—all times when songs were sung. Harvest was special in that they employed a gang of Irish workers every year and when the crops were in they had a party/concert in which the Irishmen always took the lead—singing songs and ballads, diddling, and dancing. This is obviously how so many songs with Irish roots made their way into the English folk tradition (and vice versa, of course.)
Uttley’s childhood came at a time when the ‘old ways’ were gradually being superseded by what we accept as the norm, particularly when we think about Christmas. Her family still hung a ’Kissing Bunch’ made of greenery and mistletoe in the kitchen, although Christmas trees were becoming popular. They sent Christmas cards but only very few and they were delivered by hand. Presents were often homemade and mainly for the close family. I don’t think there is any mention of turkey…
So, although there aren’t many songs or carols unique to her collection her writings do open a window on the world in which many of the songs we know were collected.
