Sam Henry (musicologist)

Sam Henry
Born Samuel Henry
(1878-05-09)9 May 1878
Coleraine, Northern Ireland
Died 23 May 1952(1952-05-23) (aged 74)
Occupation customs officer, pension officer, antiquarian, lecturer, writer, photographer, musician, folklorist, folk-song collector
Children Olive Mary Henry Craig[1]:xix

Samuel Henry (9 May 1878 – 23 May 1952), known as Sam Henry, was an Irish customs officer, pension officer, antiquarian, lecturer, writer, photographer, folklorist, and folk-song collector. He also played the fiddle and the tin whistle.

He is best known for his collection of ballads and songs in Songs of the People, the largest and most comprehensive collection of folk-songs from Northern Ireland assembled between the wars (1923 – 1939), when he was Song Editor for the Northern Constitution, a weekly newspaper in Coleraine.

Early life

Henry was born and educated in Sandleford, Coleraine, Northern Ireland.[2][3] He came from a prominent Coleraine family and was the youngest of five sons: his brother William was town clerk of Coleraine; Robert, principal of the Model School; James, vice principal of the Hon. The Irish Society’s Primary School; and Tom, a civil servant.[4] In 1897, when he was 19, Sam passed two examinations, one as teacher and the other as an exciseman, choosing to follow the latter career.[5]:5

Description

According to his daughter, Mrs Olive Mary Henry Craig, Henry was a "very large man, tall, broad and burly" who weighed over sixteen stone (225 pounds, over 100 kilograms).[1]:xxii He rode a bicycle and also used a car in his travels around the northern counties, as well as the public transport system (bus and train).[1]:xxii Henry described himself as "an ardent amateur naturalist, archaeologist, antiquarian, genealogist, and photographer."[1]:xx He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland and could therefore append the letters FRSAI after his name.[1]:xxiii He was also an amateur ornithologist regarded as an authority on the birds of the north of Ireland.[1]:xxiii As a well-known lecturer who communicated his enthusiasm and knowledge of his special hobbies to other people, Henry contributed many articles on such matters to the local papers.[1]:xx

Career

After service as a customs & excise officer in England (1903-4), Henry returned home, where he served mainly around Coleraine.[5]:6 When Lloyd George instituted the Old-Age Pensions Act 1908, Henry was appointed to administer it in his area, while still carrying out his duties for the Inland Revenue.[5]:6

Henry began to assemble his collection of folk songs while he was still a civil servant and continued it after his retirement.[1]:xxiii When he was appointed Pension Officer, Henry's duties included visiting the poor and elderly people in some of the most isolated areas of Northern Ireland, to determine if they were eligible for old age pensions or relief. To overcome the natural reticence of country people in those remote areas, Henry often took his fiddle and tin whistle with him, played a tune and then asked if anyone in the household knew any of the old songs.[1]:xxiii He would then record these songs by writing them down using a basic music notation system called tonic sol-fa.[1]:xxiv

Songs of the People

When he became Song Editor for the Northern Constitution in 1923, Henry used his column to specify what type of old songs he wanted. In return, the readers contributed songs that he published in a weekly series he called Songs of the People: "Let it be our joyful task to search out, conserve, and make known the treasures of the Songs of the People".[1]:xxv In order to motivate the readers, Henry also ran weekly song competitions, offering "a weekly prize of a free copy of the Northern Constitution for six months for the best old song submitted."[1]:xxv

The first song in the series, "The Flower of Sweet Dunmull" (Henry number "H1")[1]:191 was printed on 17 November 1923,[1]:522 and the last one, "The Lass of Mohee" (Henry number "H836"),[1]:372 on 9 December 1939.[1]:531 Due to a long period of illness, Henry suspended his editorship after "Ann O'Drumcroon" (Henry number "H246")[1]:249 was printed on 28 July 1928,[1]:526 and resumed his duties on 22 October 1932[1]:526 with the printing of "The Braes of Sweet Kilhoyle" (Henry number "H464").[1]:167 During his long absence, the Songs of the People series was looked after by other editors[note 1] who published just over 200 articles altogether (numbered 247-463), which therefore do not appear in Henry's scrapbooks.[2] When the series ended on 9 December 1939, Henry had contributed just under 690 songs of high quality,[1]:xxviii many with multiple variants.[note 2]

Although the songs were collected in a single district around Coleraine, there is a great amount of diversity, including not only native Irish songs but also songs of foreign origin: Scotland, England and North America. Henry continued to collect and annotate songs after the newspaper series finished.[7][8]

Legacy

Despite Henry's own attempts at publishing his collection of folk songs in book form, this would not happen until 1990, when Sam Henry's Songs of the People was published by the University of Georgia Press. This comprehensive book included, not only all the songs Henry had published in the Northern Constitution from 17 November 1923 to 28 July 1928 ("H1" to "H246"), and from 28 October 1932 to 9 December 1939 ("H464" to "H836"),[1]:522–531 but also extensive appendices, indexes and reference aids developed by the book's editors: Gale Huntington, Lani Herrmann and John Moulden.[1]:522–631 Another major contribution of this project was the transcription of all the songs' tunes, from tonic sol-fa to standard staff notation.[1]:xxxii-xxxvi

Henry also left behind a large collection of 7,000 photographs[9] and documents,[10] donated to the Coleraine Museum by his grandson, Gordon Craig, on 25 August 2011.[11]

Publications

Books by Sam Henry

  • A Hank of Yarns (No date)[12]
  • Tales of the Antrim seaboard: Dunluce, Giant's Causeway, Fair Head (c.1930)[13]
  • Rowlock rhymes and Songs of exile (1933)[14]
  • Ulster folk tales: poetry, lore and tradition of the North-East (1939)[15]
  • Songs of the people: collected from traditional sources (3 vol. musical score) (1941?)[16]
  • The Story of St Patrick’s Church, Coleraine (1941?)[17]
  • Dunluce and the Giant’s Causeway (c.1945)[18]

Books about Songs of the People

  • Moulden, John, ed. (1979). Songs of the People: Selections from the Sam Henry collection, Part 1. Belfast: Blackstaff Press. ISBN 0-85640-132-3.
  • Huntington, Gale; Herrmann, Lani; Moulden, John, eds. (1990). Sam Henry's Songs of the People (1st ed.). Athens, GA and London: The University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-1258-4.
  • Moulden, John (1994). Thousands are sailing: a brief song history of Irish emigration. Portrush, Northern Ireland: Ulstersongs. ISBN 1-898437-01-7.
  • Huntington, Gale; Herrmann, Lani; Moulden, John, eds. (2010) [First published 1990]. Sam Henry's Songs of the People (Reprinted ed.). Athens, GA and London: The University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-3625-4.

Notes

  1. ↑ "The Songs of the People series in the Northern Constitution weekly newspaper of Coleraine, County Londonderry was initiated by Sam Henry in 1923 and continued until 1939. From a date in 1928 until a date in 1932 the series, numbers 247-463, was edited, not by Sam Henry but principally by two others, James Moore and William Devine, Moore for about 8 months and Devine for around three years, with occasional interventions by three others."[6]
  2. ↑ "A Henry number is assigned to each item, corresponding to the number of the original column and preceded by a letter "H". If the column contains two or more items, the Henry number is followed by a lowercase letter of the alphabet, in alphabetical order. A separate letter is assigned to each variant; for example, two texts that share a tune, or two tunes with the same text, are listed as two items. The purpose here is to give a unique differentiating label to each variant combination."[1]:xxxi

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Huntington, Gale; Herrmann, Lani; Moulden, John, eds. (1990). Sam Henry's Songs of the People. Athens, GA and London: The University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-1258-4.
  2. 1 2 Moulden, John (March 3, 1977), "The 'Songs of the People' collection", Slow Air, 1: 3–6
  3. ↑ Newmann, Kate (2016). "Dictionary of Ulster Biography". newulsterbiography.co.uk. Ulster History Circle. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
  4. ↑ "The Sam Henry Collection". niarchive.org (PDF). Northern Ireland Community Archive. Retrieved on 11 December 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 Moulden, John, ed. (1979). Songs of the People: Selections from the Sam Henry collection, Part 1. Belfast: Blackstaff Press. ISBN 0-85640-132-3.
  6. ↑ Moulden, John (April 16, 2010). Details on Northern Constitution song editors (1928-1932) (Website). State College, PA, USA: The Mudcat Café. Retrieved 20 December 2016.
  7. ↑ Huntington, Gale; Herrmann, Lani; Moulden, John, eds. (2010). "Introduction to Sam Henry's Songs of the People". books.google.com. Athens, GA and London: The University of Georgia Press. Retrieved 3 November 2011.
  8. ↑ Folk Music Journal (English Folk Dance and Song Society), Vol. 3 No. 3, 1977
  9. ↑ "Sam Henry Collection (Photographs)". niarchive.org. Northern Ireland Community Archive. Retrieved on 18 December 2016.
  10. ↑ "Sam Henry Collection (Documents)". niarchive.org. Northern Ireland Community Archive. Retrieved on 18 December 2016.
  11. ↑ Carson, Sarah (25 August 2011). "The Craig family donates the Sam Henry Collection to Coleraine Museum". niarchive.org. Northern Ireland Community Archive. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  12. ↑ Henry, Sam. "A Hank of Yarns". nli.ie. Dublin: National Library of Ireland. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  13. ↑ Henry, Sam (1930). "Tales of the Antrim seaboard: Dunluce, Giant's Causeway, Fair Head". nli.ie. Dublin: National Library of Ireland. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  14. ↑ Henry, Sam (1933). "Rowlock rhymes and Songs of exile". nli.ie. Dublin: National Library of Ireland. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  15. ↑ Henry, Sam (1939). "Ulster folk tales: poetry, lore and tradition of the North-East". nli.ie. Dublin: National Library of Ireland. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  16. ↑ Henry, Sam (1941). "Songs of the people: collected from traditional sources". nli.ie. Dublin: National Library of Ireland. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  17. ↑ Henry, Sam (1941). "The Story of St Patrick's Church, Coleraine". nli.ie. Dublin: National Library of Ireland. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  18. ↑ Henry, Sam (1945). "Dunluce and the Giant's Causeway". nli.ie. Dublin: National Library of Ireland. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  • "Exploring Sam Henry's preservation of Ulster-Scot traditions". ulsterscotsagency.com. Ulster-Scots Agency. 19 February 2015. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
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