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Robert Story wrote song lyrics. He wrote many other things, but first he wrote song lyrics.
'It was then delicious to find that I was able to express, in strains something like the strains of my favourite poets, the feelings of love and admiration with which my village beauties inspired me ; and that my power of song-writing sometimes gave me, in their eyes, an advantage over likelier suitors. The chronological arrangement adopted in the present collection, assigns the first place to those early love-songs ; and the reader may feel assured that he is not perusing verses "made to order" for publication and music — though they were all written to music — but genuine outpourings of a youthful heart, intended for no ear but hers who happened to be the Muse of the moment. The same observation is true of the domestic effusions.'
Robert Story, Poetical Works, 1857, p vi.
So, these verses were all written TO music - emphasis in the original text.
'Many of Story's Lyrical compositions are destined to descend to posterity. He was essentially a lyrist, and in every description of that class of poetry he excelled...'
John James, 'Life', p lxxxviii
Robert Story's Songs - Action research...
We can, if we want, think of our engagement with Robert Story's lyrics, and our exploration of his musical world, as 'action research' - usually conceptualised as research undertaken by practitioners into their own practice, in order to improve it. We can see what works, and we learn by doing.
I can immediately think of 4 routes...
1.
We follow Robert Story's instructions...
The writers that we are considering here often tell us what tune they had in mind as they constructed a lyric. This might be one of the ways in which they differ from 'mainstream' poets - their work lives in a world of song.
So, if we look at page 16 of the 1857 Poetical Works there is a lyric, 'The Star of Eve'; 'On Miss H- of Gargrave, long since dead. The Song, in structure, resembles Burns's inimitable lyric, "O Bonnie was the Rosy Brier".
I have placed that page of the book, in an attached file, below.
You can find the words for Robert Burns' 'O Bonie was yon rosy brier' all over the place - it is on the BBC web site at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/robertburns/works/o_bonie_was_yon_rosy_brier/
Where you can judge if it makes sense to treat this song lyric as a poem...
Throughout the web 'Bonny' is variously spelt, 'Rosy' variously, 'yon' sometimes misheard as 'young'. Burns himself says that the song goes to the tune of 'I Wish my Love were in a Mire' from Orpheus Caledonius. Which is a great, daft, first line.
But we will not get bogged down in that mire - there is a constant turmoil of renaming tunes, lyrics finding new or different tunes, and Burns himself is part of that turmoil.
I have found this track by folk rock band Hedgepig, a version of Rosy Brier, to a tune that I think certainly works.
Hedgepig - Rosie Briar - Cambridge Folk Club 6th July 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vCkYMhNbTQ
Thereafter we are simply making decisions about how we handle Robert Story's lyric. For example, the melody has an A part and a B part, so the song really needs multiples of 2. Story gives us only 3 verses - should we treat one verse as a chorus, and repeat it? Or just repeat the whole thing, to give some length, and a tidy 6?
Another example is Robert Story's song, 'O Sing to me no Modish Tune', p 276, from the Poetical Works. I have attached a pdf of the page, below. Story's own note mentions the dance tune 'Calder Fair', and his song lyric mention 'Calder Fair'.
'Calder Fair is almost the same tune as 'Six a Song of Sixpence'. Here it is on Nigel Gatherer's web site...
http://www.nigelgatherer.com/tunes/tab/tab8/cawdf.html
There are many more examples...
2.
Mix and Match
Robert Story clearly carried inside his head a storehouse of the song tunes of the Borders and the North Country, the tunes used by Robert Burns, Hector MacNeil, James Henry Dixon, and so on.
One way forward is to just immerse ourselves in that music, with Robert Story's song lyrics open before us - and see if there is a fit. There are recurring structures, line lengths and cadences - every now and again we find one that works.
3.
Authentic period setting of a Robert Story lyric
A significant number of times in his books Robert Story notes - with some pride, I think - that a specific lyric was set to music by such a composer. Sometimes the named composer seems to be a friend, or someone of significance in the local community, and sometimes the named composer seems to be a national figure - Alicia Bennett, Richard Limpus Junior, Johnson of Preston, J. W. Thirlwall, Frank de Fonblanque, J. P. Knight.
John James, in the 1891 Lyrical and other minor Poems, notes, p 187, that 'G.W. Marten' set to music the lyric 'Our Saxon Fathers' - I think that this must be a misprint for G. W. Martin, the Editor of the Journal of Part Music.
There isn't really the time or the resources, just now, to follow Robert Story's leads and to search in the archives for these settings of his lyrics. Clearly there is stuff out there to be found.
But I have found one setting freely available. The lyric is 'The Church of our Fathers', p. 238, 1857 Poetical Works - Story dates it to 1835, so that it is reasonable to assume that the church he has in mind is Saint Andrew's, in Gargrave. Story notes that the lyric was set to music by Robert Guylott.
The music and the lyric can be found on the JScholarship web site of the Johns Hopkins University, USA...
Title: The Church of Our Fathers.
Author: Robert Story (lyricist); Robert Guylott (composer)
Description: piano and voice
Johns Hopkins University, Levy Sheet Music Collection, Box 118, Item 051
https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/7736
The Library's display of the pages on the web site is a little wrong - I have had helpful email discussions with the Johns Hopkins University, and they have searched their paper files on our behalf. The have now located and made available to us the title page of Robert Guylott's setting - pdf attached, below.
This title page and the sheet music were made available to us by the Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music, Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University.
4.
Just do it...
Get together some singers and musicians, pick a Robert Story lyric that you like - and have a go. You can be ancient or you can be modern - the lyrics are pretty robust.
Now, look back at all the books and links and find your own favourite Robert Story song...
Email your suggestion to bard@songlyric.co.uk
Or print out the lyric and pin it to the Robert Story Story Board in Gargrave Village Hall...
Patrick O'Sullivan
April 2013
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