Some of my earliest memories are of my father, Bill Smith, singing songs as he hand-milked the cows, or drove the little Allis-Chalmers on our small farm in Middleton Scriven. It was the early 1950’s, before mains water and electricity. I remember him singing ‘Seventeen come Sunday’, ‘Billy Muggins’ and occasionally a few verses of ‘The Outlandish Knight’. Sometimes, on the way home from the cattle market in Bridgnorth, we’d stop at The Down, and a couple of pints later he’d sing ‘Ram she ad a dee’, driving the last three miles back to the farm;

I once did go a courtin’ ’er, when ’er old mon was at "wum"

In the late sixties I started taking an interest in folk music, but to my great shame, it never occurred to me that Bill’s songs were relevant. It was 1979 before I got round to recording him. By 1983 I had recorded about sixty songs and fragments, and a couple of hours of conversation.

Born in 1909, Bill was the son of a farm labourer from Diddlesbury, the fifth of nine children. Shortly before he was born, his grandfather, John Smith, had been visited by ‘a big mon from London’ who spent the day listening to, and noting his old songs. Flattered by this attention, Bill’s family were keen to encourage their young son when he started to show ability and he was often asked to sing for the family at home.

He left school on his fourteenth birthday and left home to work on a local farm. Sixty years later, at the age of seventy-four, Bill recorded songs he had learned at school including ‘The Cuckoo’ and ‘The Two Magicians’. I later checked and found them to be practically note-perfect from ‘English Folk Songs for Schools’ by Baring-Gould and Sharp.

In his late teens Bill became a regular at The Tally Ho! at Bouldon;

‘Oh, they sung in one or two pubs in Ludlow. Tally Ho! was the main. Tally Ho! was so very . . . oh dear; if you spoke when somebody was singin’ they’d be down your throat.

"Wait ’til ’e’s finished. He’s obligin’ you by singin’!"

As a young man Bill couldn’t always obey the discipline required by the old singers;

"You’ll ’ave this, if you go on!"’ (Makes a fist)

There was a wide mixture of song at the Tally Ho! As well as traditional songs there were music hall songs, sentimental Victorian parlour ballads, and army songs. Bill was encouraged to bring songs back home and sing for his mother and younger brothers and sisters.

In the War Bill stayed on the land, becoming a member of the Home Guard. He met his wife, Veronica, a Land Girl from a relatively well-connected London family, and after the War they took the small farm in Middleton Scriven. Singing became Bill’s activity to accompany solitary labour rather than a social pursuit.

We left the farm in 1968 and Bill took various jobs, ending up as a grounds-man at Bridgnorth Golf Course. It was the easiest, least stressful job he ever had, and probably the best paid. In this friendly atmosphere Bill started to remember some of the songs from his youth.

‘I was on the tractor, I was goin’ across the field an’ it come to me about the farmer’s daughter, (The Banks of Sweet Dundee) an’ damned if I didna’ sing it, straight away. An’ all the golfers lookin’ at me!

I stopped recording Bill in 1983, shortly after Veronica died. Bill’s health was deteriorating and he just didn’t feel like singing. He was, however, clearly pleased that something of his youth could be passed on, and would be valued by another generation. He died in 1987, before his younger grandson was born. Bill would have been so thrilled to hear his grandson sing his version of ‘Tommy Suet’s Ball’.

Ó Andy Smith 1999

‘God, I reckon I missed my chance, but I never thought I’d ever want a song. Else I’d ’a give them blokes a tanner each for all the songs they’d write for me, and I should ’a ’ad every one. You know, ’cos I knowed all the tunes of every song, as soon as they’d do one verse I’d got the tune of that song then.

Oh, they sung in one or two pubs in Ludlow, like the Tally Ho! and New Inn, and the Royal Oak. Tally Ho! was the main. Tally Ho! was so very . . . oh dear; if you spoke when somebody was singin’ they’d be down your throat.

Used to get some beautiful songs. Real old-fashioned songs, you know, it used to be great. But you couldn’t speak, . . . an’ if you wanted to go outside, you’d gotta wait ’til they’d finished that song. Oh, they was very particular. An’ you know they was the roughest lot o’ blokes you ever saw in your life. Ten times rougher than I am when I go t’ work: ripped jackets an’ sleeves.

But d’you know what? In the Tally Ho! in them days, they was more stricter than in your club!

"Shut yer bloody mouth!"

"If you gotta speak, get outside!"

"Let the chap sing! You’ve asked him to sing haven’t you?"

"If you car shut yer mouth, get outside!"

Oh they was snotty lad, you know. If a bloke was mate, you’d got to . . . And not only that, you hadna’ got to go and walk across the room to fetch a pint of beer, mate!

"Wait ’til ’e’s finished. He’s obligin’ you by singin’!"

And they was such old-fashioned old cronies, you know, strong chaps. They was like in their fifties, then.

Poor owd Tom Vaughn, he was a very friendly chap and a very happy-go-lucky chap, but he, Oh he got arthritis or rheumatic terrible. He walkin’ about with two sticks. An’ ’e used to walk all down these bank for ’is beer. ’Im an’ Billy Thomas as used to live with ’im, to lodge with ’im like. An’ ’e’d walk. An’ when ’e got down there ’e’d be puffin’ an’ blowin’, an’ ’e’d give ’em a song. ‘Billy Muggins’ was ’is song.

Our Mam used to love me to sing ‘Billy Muggins’. ’Er used to laff at that song. I’d sing there at ’ome if I was in a good temper.

But there come a different lot of blokes there. All kids an’ girls an’ these owd juke boxes an’ this sort o’ thing, and this spoilt everything, you know, spoilt everything that did.’