Woman's Hour - Women and Folk Music

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

This May bank holiday Emma looks at women and the tradition of folk music. You may have a stereotypical image of a woman in a floaty dress walking through a flower meadow - but we want to challenge that. From protest songs and feminist anthems - it's not all whimsy in the world of folk. Emma talks to Peggy Seeger who has enjoyed six decades of success with her music. Peggy was married to the singer Ewen McColl. He wrote the song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" for her. Together they revitalised the British Folk Scene during the 50s and 60s, working on the BBC Radio Ballads; ground-breaking documentaries - which wove a story from the words of real people working in the mining and fishing industry or building the M1 motorway with sound effects, and songs. Now 86 years old, Peggy's own songs have become anthems for feminists, anti-nuclear campaigners and those fighting for social justice.Emma examines the uncomfortable elements of folk music, and how artists are finding ways of reinterpreting old songs, or writing new ones to represent missing narratives and stories. Who were the female tradition-bearers, writers and performers and the often forgotten collectors - those who would record and notate traditional songs handed down orally from generation to generation? And what is being done to improve the gender equality and diversity in folk music? Emma is joined by: Peggy Seeger http://www.peggyseeger.com/about Fay Hield https://fayhield.com/about.html Anne Martin https://www.annemartin.scot/ Amy Hollinrake https://www.amyhollinrake.com/about Rachel Newton http://www.rachelnewtonmusic.com/about.html Grace Petrie https://gracepetrie.com/ Angeline Morrison https://linktr.ee/angelcakepiePeggy Seeger and Grace Petrie will be playing at Norfolk & Norwich Festival's 250th anniversary later this month.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello, and on this Maybank holiday, when you might be thinking of dancing around a maypole or perhaps watching some Morris dancers or none of those things, we thought here on Woman's Hour we would take the opportunity to learn a lot more about women and the tradition of folk music. Now, you may have a stereotypical image of a woman, I don't know, in a floaty dress walking through a flower meadow. But we want to challenge that somewhat.

From protest songs to feminist anthems, it is not all whimsy in the world of folk. Far from it. And I should say at this point, folk music, to give a loose definition, but hopefully a bit of a framework, it's music transmitted orally, often unknown composers played on traditional instruments and taking in themes of cultural and national identity. But of course, it's also evolving. In today's programme, we'll be examining some of the uncomfortable elements of folk music too, and how artists are finding ways of reinterpreting old songs or writing new ones to represent missing narratives and stories. We'll hear about the women who were the tradition bearers, writers and performers and the often forgotten female collectors. Collectors being in this instance those who would record and notate traditional songs handed down orally from generation to generation. I should say we are not live today,

but you can still get in touch on social media. You know I love to hear from you. Or you can email me through the Woman's Hour website. We have a wonderful cast of women today that we've brought together that I'm so excited to hear from and share with you. Grace Petrie, Rachel Newton, Angeline Morrison, Faye Heal and Amy Hollenrake. But first, I'm going to talk to a woman considered a legend in the folk world, Peggy Seeger. Peggy began her career in America, where she was born and then came to the UK, where she's enjoyed six decades of success with her music. And when she came here, Peggy met and married the singer Ewan McColl. He wrote the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face for her. Together, they revitalised the British folk scene during the 50s and 60s,

working on the BBC radio ballads, groundbreaking documentaries, which wove a story from the words of real people working in the mining and fishing industry or building the M1 motorway with sound effects and songs. Now 86 years old, Peggy's own songs have become anthems for feminists, anti-nuclear campaigners and those fighting for social justice. One of her best-known feminist anthems is Gonna Be an Engineer. When I went to school I learned to write and how to read some history, geography and home economy. And typing is a skill that every

girl should need to while away the extra time until the time to breed. Then they had the nerve to say, but would you like to be? I says, I'm gonna be an engineer. No, you only need to learn to be a lady. The duty isn't yours for to try and run the world. An engineer could never have a baby. Remember, dear, that you're our girl. Peggy, welcome to Woman's Hour. What words to start on? An engineer could never have a baby. Well, apparently one of the women engineers I talked to at the time

actually had that sent to her. I'm a shameless plagiarist of words from other people. I always try and say that's where I got it from. But she was actually working in Corby and she had one of these drills that come down like that. And she was absolutely fabulous. Well, I mean, I think isn't that at the heart of folk, taking the stories that you're hearing around you and putting them there? Certainly. Well, other people can express what they endure and what their life is like better than you can. A third party saying this happened to so-and-so, this happened to so-and-so

doesn't cut it for me because they will always go to different ways of speaking different words and a different emotion. So I make songs out of other people's words, but I always say that I got them there. Yes. And it's storytelling, you know, at the heart of it. And actually, though, even though it sounds very, you know, sing song, there's anger. There's annoyance in that, isn't there? Well, a lot of folk songs do sound sing song because they use the same tune over and over and over with very little embellishment. And that's on purpose. They want you to listen to the words and if they send you home with an earworm that's great. There's a strategy

there within folk to get you to hear the story. Well the folk songs before probably 1900s, most working class people and that's where folk songs come from. They come originally from the working class. Most of them, almost all, were not literate. So music was the way of transferring information and culture. And these are really works of art. And they were transmitted from mouth to ear, ear to mouth. That's a very important point, especially at the beginning of this special program that we're so happy to have you as a part of. Thank you. Talking about this perhaps stereotype of women folk singers in floaty dresses, as I mentioned, perhaps romping around a flower meadow or fields, that's quite a departure from many of your protest songs

and what you're known for. A lot of us female folk singers have stood against that. Way back in the early days of my starting to to work in feminist things i made a lecture called the image of women in anglo-american folk songs because that's all i sing anglo-american and these are white of course they don't speak about black experience and i was horrified when i started analyzing the image and the position of women. Women as property of her parents until a man takes her over. Women as unclaimed property, poor old maids. Women loved and left. Women as a victim. Women's view of men as fickle,

opportunist, cruel, but necessary for a woman to have a man. Men's view of women, they would do anything to get hold of a man. They say pregnancy is a form of blackmail. Women is powerless. I mean, in the folk songs, things happen to women. Women, on the whole, don't do things. Another image is sleep with a man and you'll always get pregnant. If you sleep with a man, you're a fallen woman. Then there's the mother-in-law. The mother-in-law. The wife's mother is always to poke fun at. When I was a kid, I learned one about mother-in-law. My life is all trouble, no pleasure I see.

Wherever I go, that old lady watches me. I'd rather be drug off to jail or to Congress than live all my life with my mother-in-law. And if you read my memoir, First Time Ever, you'll know that my mother-in-law, Ewan's mother, lived in our house for 16 years. Did you used to sing her that song? No, I wouldn't.

I wouldn't dream it. She was menacing. Well, no, you make a very good point there, I suppose. When you start to look through this, and of course I jest about you singing her that song because the whole point of you bringing it up was about the stereotypes and the very, very narrow way women were defined or made fun of.

But for you, you've taken that tradition and you've changed it. And some have described you not just as a feminist but as an eco-feminist. It's the road we've all gone from conserving what we've got to environmentalism, which usually means human environment. Then it's to recycling things and then it's to identification with nature. And so women work more with nature naturally. We give birth and we don't kill so easily as men do.

So I became an ecofeminist and then deep ecology, which says unless we bond with nature, we're finished. And women are vital to that. But there's been a number of women who have written songs all along. It's just that mine happened to take off because it's kind of like a folk song. I think also you are synonymous with certain moments in our history, not least the Greenham Common protests? My main song about Greenham is Carry Greenham Home. Yes. Is it true that you keep a bit of the wire on your mantelpiece? I've got it, yeah.

It was sent to me by a friend who went when they took the fence down. Greenham Common really was a turning point for me with bonding with other women because when you're in a heterosexual relationship, especially where the man is stuck in movement politics, which is unions, big industry, and all of that, which Ewan McCall was, he loved big industry because that was what he was born and brought up with. But we've got to get past that.

So Greenham Common bonded me with women and I started making women friends, which I didn't have when I was with Ewan. And you're now married to a woman, I should say as well. Oh, yes. Irene, yes. Yes, we're still married, even though she lives in New Zealand. I live here and I haven't seen her in three years because of illness and pandemic. Oh, gosh. Well, I'm very sorry to hear that. But it must be challenging in regular times as well, a long distance thing, or you find that works for you too? I used to go down there for three months. She came up here for three months every year,

but now we talk every morning and every evening and we keep each other interested and we're working out because we're strolling towards a cliff. She's 75 and I'm 87, so there you go. There you go indeed. Well, you love bawdy songs. Can you explain to the uninitiated what they are? And I'll include myself in that. There's a lot of women's songs in the American tradition, which talk very directly in double entendre language about, you know, sex. And normally the collectors of folk songs were men. and so the women wouldn't sing those songs to them so everybody thinks that we don't have those songs but we do.

And there's an example of that with a song I believe you're going to sing for us today, The Young Virgin. Well, I could sing a song on a program like this that's one of my cannonball feminist songs or one of my scalpel feminist songs. But I chose this one because you won't normally hear it. And it's a prime example of men doing stuff to women. Woman is the receiver. Man is the engine.

I am a young virgin. Just come aboard. I have as envious a maidenhead as ever, and a young man took in his hand. Besides, I've twenty pounds and land. This young virgin we understand. She took a trip to a foreign land, and forty young lovers court and her came and the tools of their trades I'm going to name. I'm going to clap.

I am going to clap because it's not every day that Peggy Seeger sings you a song. Go on, tell me what you wanted to say about it. I don't sing this song on programs

unless I say something about it. The woman is just, first of all, she's a virgin and a lot of the songs seem to regard virginity as an ailment, something that can be easily cured with one session in bed with this man or that man. And she's admirable because she's a virgin, but she's also prime property for the first man that gets her. So I just chose to sing that because you won't hear it otherwise. No. I did also want to bring up your latest album, First Farewell.

There's a wonderful track called The Invisible Woman about growing older and not being seen. And this is a theme we have discussed on Woman's Hour. And often, you know, a lot of our listeners get in touch about this. Tell me a bit more about that. Well, the song Invisible Woman was made with my son, Neil, who at age 62 feels invisible. It's beginning to feel invisible to young women, I believe. Do you feel invisible?

Well, it's when nobody knows I'm a singer, I do feel invisible and I love it. Really? Younger women don't even notice you. Men pointedly look past you. I think older men are afraid of us, to be quite honest. But I love being the age that I am. And I love being invisible so that I can observe and nobody knows I am listening to everything. So using it as a superpower,

taking everything in. Well, Peggy, you're going to stay with us and I'll come back to you very shortly. But there's a lot to talk about, not least, I mentioned at the beginning, folk song collecting. And Peggy, of course, was part of the second revival of British folk music, the birth of contemporary folk music. But the first revival began in the 18th and 19th centuries when there was an increased interest and study of traditional folk music, as people worried that older forms of song were being abandoned with the Industrial Revolution. Some of the best known folk collectors here in the UK were Cecil Sharp and the Reverend Baring Gould. And they would travel around the country transcribing or recording songs sung by tradition bearers. But there were women too. Well, joining me now to talk about the female collectors, Faye Hill, a traditional English folk singer and a senior lecturer in ethnomusicology at the University of Sheffield, and Anne Martin, a Gaelic singer from the Isle of Skye.

Faye, I'll start with you. Welcome to the programme. Thank you. You were part of something called the Full English Project when contemporary musicians brought the work of these collectors to light. Can you tell us a bit about some of the women we should have heard of and perhaps haven't? The Full English Archive was a big collection put up by the English Folk Dance and Song Society. So it's all the collections that make up this thing that we call English folk music. And there are a couple of women included in there, though it is predominantly men. So Lucy Broadwood is one definite key person. Maud Copley is somebody that we should definitely know about.

And Anne Gilchrist. There's quite a few, actually. Why do you think they've been lost? Well, those names are included in that one. There's other people that aren't put up there. So people like Kate Lee, she was one of the first people to note songs from the Copper family. And she was one of the driving force behind the first folk song society. But you never see her name anywhere, but she's really

great. I mean, and Lucy Broadwood was one of the earliest, is that right? Starting collecting in the 1880s. Yeah, so Broadwood and Libra were around around the same time, but they had slightly different attitudes towards folk collecting. You get all these huge arguments, you know, what is folk music? What's in, what's out? Who can do it? Who shouldn't do it? Who gets collected? And usually it's all the men that are arguing about that. But looking at this role of women in it as well, there's many varied opinions. So, okay, Lee started the Folk Strong Society. And then when she went off with illness, Broadwood came in and she edited the journal for 20 odd years. She's a real creator of that establishment, but not always

recognised as highly as Vaughan Williams or Sharp. And didn't have much time for Sharp, did she? Well, I think she was a little bit resentful because Sharp came in a little bit after them and learned his craft from all these other eminent, really intelligent and clever people. He gave up his day job, so he needed to make a career out of folk singing. And he really presented himself in the media as a celebrity. And so she was a little bit put out that he kind of presented himself as the king of this. And he wasn't as good at crediting his sources as perhaps Peggy is. Cecil Sharpe's assistant, Maud, tell us about her. She's a fascinating character. So Maud Carpley, yes, she was a young woman who was sort of employed as Sharp's secretary. But she travelled with him through most of his folk song journey, ended up nursing him.

You know, she was incredibly close to him and she worshipped him. But she herself contributed an awful lot of work. She wasn't just this person that ran around on his coattails. And after Sharp's death, she continued their work together, went back to Newfoundland because they went over to the States to collect a lot, which is quite a big undertaking at the time. You know, this is around the wars. And so she went off on her own and continued that work. She collected on her own in Europe with other people and she's published books as well. But she very much positioned herself as on Sharp's coattails. Her introduction to English folk song, she introduces it as an introduction to Cecil Sharp, really,

rather than English folk song. She wants people to know his work. Well, we actually have a clip of her speaking, of Maude Caffley speaking, in 1974, just two years before she died, from a BBC programme called Folk Song and the Concert Singer. The pity is that so many of these lovely songs, most of which were collected during the early part of the century, are still lying inanimate in printed collections.

For a song doesn't come to life until it is sung. A truth that both Vaughan Williams and Cecil Sharp knew full well. Maud Carpley speaking in 1974. She actually collected songs with an American, Sidney Robertson Cowell, also a prodigious collector who travelled all over America gathering songs, especially in the Depression era. And Peggy Segar, I just wanted to come back to you at this point. You knew Sidney, didn't you?

I knew Maud Carpley as well. Ah, you knew both, brilliant. Yeah, Sidney Cowell, I was I knew Maude Carpolese as well. Ah, you knew both. Brilliant. Yeah. Sidney Cowell, I was present at her wedding when I was five years old and apparently brought the house down when I asked when the real wedding was going to happen. Yeah, she was a friend of my mother's. A very, very intelligent woman. Very smart woman.

Maude came to our house. I would have been about 14 or 15. And I also stayed at her house when I came to England. She was a character, total character. Well, we have an excerpt to share a song Sydney and Maud collected together from a woman called Emma Shelton. And I love this, the address is also included, flagpoint, Route 1, Tennessee, and it's called Shortening Bread. Let me bring in Anne Martin at this point from Sky. Anne, welcome to the programme. Hi there. Lovely to have you.

You, I understand, have a very special collection from a female collector called Catriona Douglas. Can you tell us a bit about her? She was an amazing woman who sadly I never met. But during the 30s, 1930s, she was what was referred to as an inspector of the poor. And that took her round the North, a very northern trip of Skye. And on her rounds, she gathered stories and songs and came home each night and diligently wrote what she'd heard basically in a very like like a school jotter but so beautifully written down giving huge credit to whoever she'd spoken with it's interesting because as a child I was born in 63 and every house in our area had singers, but predominantly female singers.

But going back to Catriona's notes that she had above each song, I'll read out one. This is reputed to be one of the songs composed by Behak, a dairymaid who was in the service of the Martins of Dunthallam. We are told that Martin Martin, the subject of this love song, had a love affair with her. The song was used as a walking song in the district, taken down from the singing of the late Mrs Peggy Macmillan,

Balgown Kilmuir Sky. So that little note at the top, it just gives me so much information to be able to just add that little bit more to the song. And you just mentioned there a walking song. I believe you're going to sing us one. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, well, that is the reference actually to the song that I was going to sing. Behak Vohr, who wrote it. She was madly in love with Martin Martin. But as she was the daily maid, they knew that their love was never going to last and they had an affair and they had a child together but in her song she says look if you're going off to find another woman then make sure she's she's of good quality and gentle and sensible

but then she's also suggesting going back to those body bodiness of a peggy's songs earlier on you know she says don't get one from a certain family because she'll kill you with wantonness oh there you go straight can we might have too many habits can we can we hear some of this then? I'll let you prepare yourself. There you go. That was wonderful. I could have listened to that for a lot longer, but we do need to keep talking and learning. Do you want to just explain what walking is referring to? Walking, as in W-A-U-L-K, walking, walking the tweed.

So it was the process of shrinking and thickening, really, the tweed, making it a more durable product. The women would sing for many hours as they did that. I often think that the modern way of sticking things into a washing machine with dye doesn't necessarily have the same sort of rhythm as that. I know later this year you're publishing some songs under Catriona Douglas' name for the first time. What does that mean to you? Oh, my goodness gracious me.

I mean, this book I inherited from my auntie who inherited it from Catriona. And it's been sitting, you know, it's been a bit of a heavy mantle, as it were, that I've been carrying for a while, trying to work out what to do with this book. Because we've got three different notebooks and nearly a hundred songs. I've always wanted to do something a bit extra with it. But I've just come to the realisation that, you know, they need to get out there because each and every one of these songs is worthy of a film, really, because they've got great stories behind them.

And have her name attached to them as well. Absolutely. Having her name and the name of all the people that she got the songs from. Anne, thank you so much. Stay with us. Peggy, let me just come back to you, Peggy Seeger, at this point, because I know you collected with Ewan McColl and turned stories into songs.

What was important to you about that process? I grew up listening to folk songs as my mother transcribed the recordings that John and Alan Lomax made all across the United States. And because we were singing in the folk clubs, we decided to collect ourselves, especially from the stewards of Blair Gallery, from a chain maker who lived near Birmingham, and from some English travelers. It was an absolute education, complete education,

because much of this was from traveling people, not from landed people. And that meant they were always on the move. They were living in tents and in caravans. And just meeting and being part of the scenery. Ewan would talk to them and ask questions because he knew some of the songs already. And I would operate the machines, sometimes in the dark,

in bow tents, things like that. So collecting from the actual people whose lifeblood, one of the people we collected from, Caroline Hughes, when we referred to the large, big songs, Barbara Allen, the ballads, she says, oh, them's our religions. Without them, we're nothing. Wow. Peggy, thank you for that. Well, let's turn now to the kinds of stories women tell through folk music. And Amy Hollenreich is here, a singer-songwriter, who's bringing out an album of songs later this year called Sad Lady Songs.

Great title. She's also the founder of the feminist cataloguing project Loathly Lady. I think I've got that right, Amy? Yes. Welcome to the programme. Tell us just first of all about the project, Loathly Lady. I think I've got that right, Amy? Yes. Welcome to the programme. Tell us just first of all about the project and how that came about. As a performer performing this kind of material, I started to see just similarly what Peggy had mentioned earlier,

lots and lots of instances cropping up of issues of representation for women in folk song. So particularly themes like unwanted pregnancy, women being perceived as the devil, the manifestation of evil, the murdered sweetheart, the drowning woman, the abandoned woman, and all of these different motifs. And I really wanted to find a way to organise these songs through a feminist lens. And Loathe the Lady is essentially a platform where performers and anyone really wanting to approach the tradition can view these songs and ballads, view these different archetypes

responding to these women's stories that I was seeing. The archetypes being drowned woman, murdered, warrior. Yes, the drowning woman is one of the archetypes. So they are ballads where we see a lot of women death by drowning or suicide by drowning, not always murder. Yeah, it's a pretty heavy start. Yeah, we'll take it, go on.

And also Unwanted Pregnancy, I've called The Ruined Woman, ballads where women are impregnated and are forced into such extreme societal shame that they can't have the baby or they kill the baby or they have it and then they're kind of ostracised. I've come up with these different archetypal names of these women, just wanting to acknowledge what I think a lot of singers and particularly female folk singers have obviously been aware of through, you know,

singing these songs. We're like, wow wow these are some pretty terrible tales for women and which is why it's important to have singer songwriters in the tradition I suppose creating new materials which we are coming to and talking to you now in with that hat on you have a song called it draws the same we're going to hear a short excerpt of that but just before we do what are you trying to say in that so with Draws the Same I was particularly imagining the story of the drowning woman so I've been struck by many images of say like Ophelia as well and you know that across folklore or literature poetry this striking image of the drowning woman who has perhaps taken her own life by suicide and death by drowning in that way. And I really wanted to create a response to this woman,

to imagine her psyche and imagine her in that last moment, in that difficult decision to kind of humanise her and give her some agency. She is the past and future Laying by the wheel of moving tides And I'm just above the water I'm watching it rise It's very powerful, it's very evocative.

How have audiences reacted to your folk songs? There's quite a community of young musicians. I'm based in South East London and there's definitely a big pocket of young musicians and young folk musicians who are getting really interested in the genre. And I think for them it's particularly interesting to hear people reworking and talking about identity in folk music because folk has always been reflective of values of the community.

So it seems only right that it would be a conversation to have musically. And I hope I think that's received well by the older audiences as well who are not just traditionalists but wanting to hear this material reworked in new ways. Do stay with us, Amy. I'm going to introduce now a folk artist who takes old songs and reinterprets them in new ways and that's the Scottish singer and harpist Rachel Newton. I'm going to introduce now a folk artist who takes old songs and reinterprets them in new ways.

And that's the Scottish singer and harpist Rachel Newton. Her latest album, To The Awe, released in 2020, is about women's experiences at various stages in their life. Rachel, welcome to you. Hi, Emma. Reworking ballads that are often hundreds of years old as opposed to making the new songs as well. Why does that matter to you? Why do you do that? Well, I think in the way that we've been hearing from everyone else so far, it's just so fascinating to hear these stories. They're so universal and they're like a little piece of history. It's just so incredible to kind of have been able to access that and that very personal kind of perspective, I suppose.

Talk to me about fairies. Can we bring up fairies at this point and changelings? Yes, I did a project a few years ago all about changelings, which are the fairy babies that are left in place of real babies by the fairies, if you follow me. Yes, I'm still there. I don't talk, actually, I don't get the chance to talk about fairies enough, as you can tell. I'm rather excited. Go on. There's a lot of supernatural kind of beliefs that are represented in folk music especially in scotland in the sort of gallic communities it would go alongside any sort of religious belief there would just be this understanding that fairies were a thing and i was kind of fascinated by how that potentially explained things that were really happening to people sometimes i wondered about changelings whether it was maybe that there was something

that was unexplained about the baby, that it was crying, even something like colic or something like that, and they would think, this baby must be a changeling. And there's also songs, like there's a song, Queen of Elfin's Nurse, which is an old ballad, which is where the mother is actually taken away to breastfeed in the kind of fairy world, because it's thought that her breast milk would be better.

And that potentially could be something to explain the absence of mother and maybe an absence of mind of postnatal depression, something like that. So we're just kind of trying to explore kind of how people so poetically explained these situations. Yes, it's good to hear, I suppose that the row about breast milk and what's best still being present even even in this context and pressure on women. Faye Heald to come back to you traditional English folk singing is still with us I know you've also explored the world of fairies and also ghosts and the animal kingdom tell us a bit about what you've looked at and your view on folk songs and the natural world and women.

Even if you're doing one of the old songs, you're still going to make it relevant to make sense to you now. So my experience was exactly like Rachel's, looking at the songs, trying to work out why it's meaningful. I love them, like to my core, I love them. And it's trying to work out why, why does it speak to me? And some of them are really abstract connections like that absent postnatal mother that that really hits me that's absolutely incredible and so yeah I've been digging into them trying to make them make sense and trying to understand them in the same society so I was talking there about the female collectors and maybe they're not getting recognition because of the culture they were working in but we're working a different culture now and we're singing in a different culture now so it's a really complicated blur between authentic folk songs and singer-song

writers and which is the authentic voice is it the voice that's speaking now or is it the old song so that's a huge kind of worms yes that's the stuff I like looking at well also your title track is about a witch from the 17th century is that right? Yeah so she was tried for witchcraft in 1600s and obviously a lot of women were dreadfully treated at that time but linguists have looked at her account and they say that she believes what she said whether or not you do that's up to you but she would tell stories about leaving a broom in the bed and bewitching it so her husband would think he was still in bed with a woman and then going off and changing into different animal forms to do the work of the devil.

There's a very lurid description of having sex with the devil, if you're into that kind of thing. She had this incredible double life as a witch. So yes, I've taken one of her actual spells and turned that into a song because we were looking at telling stories about these magical things, but we wanted to actually make magic out of music.

I was working with Inga Thompson, actually a wonderful, wonderful piano accordion player. Well, I knew we were going to go on a journey on this programme. I wasn't sure we were going to get into having sex with the devil and all the detail that that entails, but I'm very happy that where we're going with this... Have you ever been in a room with a load of women folk singers? No, no, I'm getting into it.

This is my first immersion, as it were. We're going to hear a short extract of what you've just been describing. I shall go into, go into a cat With Soros I and a jet black shot I shall go into, go into a cat With Soros I and a jet black shot And I go to the devil in the devil's name And stay till I come home again.

I go to the devil in the devil's name and stay till I come home again. I could also keep that playing. I'm going to have to create my own playlist off the back of this. Let me just come back to you, Rachel, because I know your latest project with the fiddle player, Laura McColl, Heal and Harrow, is a tribute to those persecuted during the Scottish witch trials, which has actually been in the news recently about campaigners trying to clear the names of those women. Why was it important to represent them in your music? Yeah, I actually heard your programme with the Witches of Scotland campaign. Lauren and I were

really interested, after visiting the Witches Stone and Dornach of Janet Horne, the last woman to be legally executed as a witch. And it just really struck us that we didn't know very much about this part of our history at all. You know, this very real part of our history. We learn about the Battle of Culloden and the clearances and things like that in our Scottish history at school but not about these mostly women and there were men but it was overwhelmingly women who were accused and killed by the church and the state as witches and yeah I think you know I had this project changeling about the supernatural but actually these people were women who were just very unfortunate and it really sort of struck us and we wanted to explore that. Yes and I suppose part of that as well is setting the record straight in some way as well. Yeah absolutely and part of the way we did that was commission a writer, a fantastic writer,

to write 10 stories sort of representing these women's lives. Between the land and sea If you find my bones again Take them back And swear that you'll remember me So that song is called Lilius and it's about Lilius Eadie who was a woman who is actually one of the few people who were buried because usually if you were tried and convicted as a witch

your body would be burned because they were afraid that they would come back and she was actually buried under a stone in Fife so that's for her because she died before she was tried. Well, thank you for taking us there. And, you know, it's a very powerful way, I suppose, to try and set some of the records straight and educate people if they haven't known about these things. That's Rachel Newton staying with us as well. But it is, of course, one thing to be able to inherit a tradition or reinterpret old songs. But what do you do if you can't find anyone like

you in those songs or collections? Well, one woman who could be seen as taking the baton inherit a tradition or reinterpret old songs but what do you do if you can't find anyone like you in those songs or collections well one woman who could be seen as taking the baton from Peggy in terms of protest songs and feminism is the lesbian singer Grace Petrie. Grace hello. Hello hi. Welcome to the program and I'm very excited to have your voice in this and hear how you have been trying to update the canon in some way and take audiences to a different place. Thank you. I don't know if that's something that I'm sort of worthy of. I mean, it's obviously a real honour to be in this conversation with these amazing folk women, but I kind of always feel like a bit of a fraud in these situations because I know so little about

the traditional canon of folk music. You know, I sort of came into folk music through when I was growing up, I was listening to a lot of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. And I sort of absorbed this idea that protest song is inherently folk music. You know, I started writing political songs sort of by accident, really, in 2010, when the Tories got in to power, and they're very good at inspiring protest songs and I started writing all of these songs about austerity and about the sort of you know really big political issues of the day but in in the folk tradition naturally well I mean that's the million dollar question I suppose I mean I play an acoustic guitar and I certainly am guilty

of repetitive choruses I'm sort of trying to get people to join in with. So there's a lot of people who sort of don't regard what I do as folk music. There's some people who do, and I myself, I suppose, have always thought that folk music has got to, you know, involve a sort of radical element and it's got to involve sort of speaking truth to power about the important political issues of the day.

By that metric, I consider myself a folk singer, I suppose. Well, we've finally dragged you to qualify yourself as being able to be included in this discussion, which is good, it's good. But I mean, however, speaking truth to power, wherever you come at your politics from that and using your music to do that, there's a very powerful example with you,

a very recent example that I know you wrote after the Sarah Everard vigil called The Losing Side. Can you tell us very recent example that I know you wrote after the Sarah Everard vigil called The Losing Side. Can you tell us a bit about that? Because we're going to play a bit in a moment. Yeah, the thing about writing political things is, you know, in order for them to sort of be topical and be relevant, they need to be sort of quite quickly written around the time. And I was in lockdown, I was doing an episode of the Guilty Feminist podcast via Zoom. And they were going to be talking about the vigil that had happened that week. And I was in lockdown. I was doing an episode of the Guilty Feminist podcast via Zoom. And they were going to be talking about the vigil that had happened that week. And I was so like so many of us, you know, I was just so distraught by the details of that case and really hit me kind of quite hard in the guts.

And I wrote this song in about 45 minutes just before I was due to perform on the podcast via Zoom. And it's basically about the idea that, you know, I'm 34 now and I keep losing elections in my life. Things keep going not the way I want them to go politically. And I sort of had this epiphany, you know. You're not standing in them, to be clear. You mean who you're supporting? I mean, who I'm supporting. Your side's not doing very well. My side's not doing very well. And I think, you know, we're living in this pretty sort of reactionary time, actually, right now. You know, I think we're sort of coming to grips with this pandemic of violence against women. We're coming to grips with, you know, our difficult history of colonialism in this country. You know, we're coming to grips with a lot of things that I feel like we're living in this very sort of urgent time

where I think we do need to make sort of urgent political changes and urgent ideological changes and and I sort of realized that you know some of those movements that I really passionately believe in I might not see victories in my lifetime but that doesn't mean that it's not worth fighting for and I think if all of the people who fought for women's rights and fought for queer rights and fought for lots of the things that you know know, give me the freedoms that I have today to stand on a stage and talk about myself with freedom, you know, they didn't happen overnight. There were people who went before me and fought and in some cases died for me to have those rights. So even though it sounds like a very depressing title for a song, The Losing Side,

it is about the idea that we'll win in the end, I suppose. Let's have a listen. they'd be under attack and all that should protect you hoping someone has your back the history books are screaming from the shelves Grace, I know that you also and you were starting to talk about it then have songs about being a butch lesbian

talking about your identity your experience why have you felt moved to write about that? It's quite a personal journey, I suppose. I mean, I think that, you know, growing up, I was always quite butch, even as a kid, you know, and growing up, I think I didn't really see any representation of women or girls that looked anything like me.

And I think the lack of that representation really made me feel quite inadequate as a kid and quite lonely, you know. And then I sort of was lucky enough to forge a career on stage and I realized somewhat arrogantly I suppose that I maybe could be that representation for other people who were sort of looking for sort of permission to kind of be this kind of woman and so that sort of influenced my songwriting a lot in the past few years and that's been a very interesting journey in the folk scene, you know, because... Yeah, how's that? How are the responses and the interactions?

Well, you know, I mean, I think you said at the top of the programme that the stereotype is, you know, women in floaty dresses singing in fields. And that is not a fair representation of women in folk music at all. No, but I think it's important to paint that image, isn't it? Sure. Well, I think I was going to say, I think actually there are some audiences who that's the sort of woman that they want to see in folk music. And, you know, I'm by no means am I describing all folk audiences, but I have had some pretty tough reactions, you know, going out on stage wearing a suit and tie and I swear in some of my songs and I've found that that's really not something that the men of folk audiences like their women to do. So it's fine for the men to go out

and strum their guitars angrily and drop the odd swear word but when a woman goes out there and does the same thing I was met with some quite uncomfortable reactions. So it was a very interesting learning curve, I suppose. Yes, I imagine. And again, part of this is looking, I suppose, at folk in the future and now and how it's changing.

And perhaps there's a lag between some audiences getting that memo and the work that's being created now. And it's fascinating to hear your experience of that. Stay with us, Grace. I want to be able to try and come back to you if I can. But Angeline Morrison is Stay with us, Grace. I want to be able to try and come back to you if I can. But Angeline Morrison is also with us, a Birmingham-born, but now I believe Cornwall-based singer and academic. And I know, Angeline, you've also been looking for songs about the Black British experience, but also about what's not there as well as what is there. What's that been like,

that experience? Because I believe it's not been the easiest. Well, I began really as a sort of teenage folky looking for images of people like me in the songs. So I would hear songs like, for example, The Brown Girl, which I've recently recorded. It's one of my absolute favorites. And in my head, The Brown Girl was my sort of brown. She was, you know, a black girl or somebody of colour. And I didn't really ever give voice to this because I figured that in the predominantly white world of folk music, people may not want to hear that. But nevertheless, that was in my head and it was a treasured sort of dream for me. And I just began to wonder whether there might be experiences of

blackness to be found in the songs that we have in the British Isles. I was particularly interested in the contrast between the UK and America. So there's a body of African-American folk song, which is specifically by and about black people. And I thought, we don't have anything even remotely equivalent in the UK. And what people usually say to that is, well, there were never any black people here. We don't have a historic black presence. And what I gradually began to find out was that that's not the truth, that we have a historic black presence in these islands in the UK, dating back at least 2000 years. So it became really important for me to try and, first of all, find out if there are any songs in the UK tradition

that might reference black experience. And, you know, if there weren't, if I couldn't find any, then as a songwriter, I felt like it was my responsibility to create them. So I have been doing some research and it's still ongoing, by the way. And there are some songs that reference black characters in the UK song traditions. Are they by black musicians, by black singers? They don't seem to be. I mean, these songs are so old that we don't know the authors. But in terms of the descriptions of the black characters, a lot of them are either quite negative or a bit dismissive.

So they don't seem to be about black experience. The character is there for some reason, perhaps for a comedic reason or to be a villain or something like that. And when you were researching, you went to the Cecil Sharp house to look through the catalogues of music there what was that process like and did you find any black singers at all I didn't find any black UK singers no the process was very very absorbing it really took me over just absolutely took over every kind of part of me I couldn't stop thinking about it. The hardest thing for me was the search terms, because I started off using search terms such as black,

blackness, or slave, or, you know, search terms that are everyday words that we might use. And then I realized that I was going to have to use search terms, which might be words that I wouldn't want to say, or which I wouldn't want to hear people saying and I had to do that and I did find some songs using some of these you know specifically negative horrible terms that I wouldn't want to say and also I had to really think about ways in which black people have been described in the past like for example the term Ethiopian was in Elizabethan and Jaco times, a sort of a blanket term for somebody with black or very dark skin who was likely to be African. So it didn't mean that you necessarily were from Ethiopia itself. But Ethiopian or Ethiop was a term that was used around that time. So

that was quite hard as well, the search terms. I bet. Yeah, but it was a really, really absorbing experience. And ultimately, that's not over either, because I'm going to go back. But what I really found was that there's an absence, there's an absence of songs, you're bringing out an album later this year called The Sorrow Songs. And I know they're your original compositions, but a sort of tribute to the missing songs. How are women's perspectives reflected in those songs? There are many songs reflecting specifically the experiences of black women in The Sorrow Songs. The full title, I should say, is The Sorrow Songs, Folk Songs of Black British Experience. And the title actually comes from The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. And chapter 14 of that is called The Sorrow Songs. It's a very musical book.

He references music a lot in the book. But in chapter 14, he talks specifically about the spirituals as a storehouse of the experience of enslaved Africans in America and of that incredible depth of emotion that is so incredibly traumatic that it's difficult to tell in anything other than song form. We're going to actually hear an excerpt of a song and it's called Unknown African Boy. They are sad and empty Oh, where, oh, where Is my little son? He is stolen away By English slavers With a cut-gel blow

And a pointed gun Unknown African boy, Angeline Morrison. Tell us what we're hearing there. OK, well, that's from a mother's perspective, that song. And the story is about a shipwreck which happened off St Martin's Isles of Scilly in 1830 and many slave ships would go past the Isles of Scilly because that was one of the main sort of transatlantic slave routes and there were many wrecks because the waters around there are very treacherous and on this occasion there was a ship coming from West Africa that's the amount

of detail we have it's just West Africa but what came to shore in the wreck was a ship coming from West Africa. That's the amount of detail we have. It's just West Africa. But what came to shore in the wreck was a whole lot of luxury goods. And this was reported in a newspaper at the time. This was 1830. A couple of boxes of elephant tusks, two boxes of gold dust. There's a box of silver dollars and the body of an unknown African boy aged around eight years old. And this, yeah, it's very hard to hear. And this child is buried in St. Martin's Cemetery on the Isles of Scilly. And I really wanted to pay tribute to this child and to honour him

and tell this story myself with an emotional truth that I could feel as I was singing it. And I thought I've got to tell this from the perspective of his mother. And there will, of course, have been many, many, many mothers whose children will have just gone missing whilst they were out playing because they were abducted by slavers and trafficked. So what you're hearing in that song is the unknown African boy's mother talking about how at the start of the song, she says her brown arms are sad and empty. And she's wondering where her little boy is. arms so that the mother's arms are sort of beginning and ending the song almost like a big hug from two mother's arms that's a that's a beautiful image and i always find it so so powerful but especially so in a song like that telling such a difficult

story if we can hear the story behind uh why you've created the song in the first place angeline morrison thank you so much for that. And I think what Angeline's pointing out there, Faye Heal, who's still with us, an academic, is, you know, and we've talked a bit about this throughout the whole programme, is some of the problematic aspects of the folk world, what's not there and what, you know,

could be there or should be there. And I know you've begun a project to try and address this. Is that right? That's right, yes. Just started a couple of months ago, but it's running for five years so we're really hoping to dig quite deep into some of these questions and what i think is interesting about folk music is you could do a project on the collectors and the songs and look

quite small at english folk music or you can question what is english cultural heritage and how do contemporary people understand englishness yes Yes. And they're very different things. And so that's what I'm trying to reach towards. Well, good luck with that. Rachel, I know you're a founder of the Bit Collective, which is addressing equalities issues in Scottish folk and traditional music. Have you got thoughts on this, about making the folk world more inclusive, especially as we move forward?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think a big part of it is representation and feeling like you're represented on stage the bit collective came out of me being one of my bands the she we were told by an agent that they already had their girl band for that year for their festival just one allowed yeah yeah yeah and well that got me fired up anyway that's for sure i bet it did wellgy, can I give the final word to you of this special time that we've had together? Peggy Segoe, I know that you are a big fan of singing being good for the soul. Tell me a bit about that. And do you think even if you don't necessarily count yourself as part of the folk world,

you know, how you should have singing in your life? Music vibrates the entire body. Ladies, think about that. Yeah. It really... I'm thinking. It's interesting that being able to hear is the last sense that goes. And playing music to people who are dying, people who are ill,

people who are mentally in trouble. Music has a number of functions, but urging people to indulge in producing music of any sort. Produce it yourself. Don't just listen to what other people are doing. Music is vital. It's the thing the babies first start at. They coo. They don't start speaking, you know, regular language. Music is a basic human function. Peggy Seeger, what words to end our special conversation with. A huge thanks to you, huge thanks to all of you, to all of the women and folk who've taken part in today's programme.

I'll remember it for a very long time, and I promise we will share on the Women's Hour website all of their details so you can follow their work and go and watch them perform in person and I don't know feel vibrations all over your body like Peggy just said that sounds wonderful it's been real it's been memorable thank you so much for your company as well I'll be back tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour thank you so much for your. Join us again for the next one. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more

questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.