All Among the Barley

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However an equally important theme – and one which is crucial to the limited present day part of the book – is the 1930s rural treatment of the “mad” which often amounted to a lifetime sentence to an institution When I was a child, I believed that what I want mattered so little that it wasn’t even worth me discovering what it might be.”

The version commonly heard in the UK is, according to the notes on Johnny Collins' Free And Easy, words from Alfred Williams' Folk Songs Of The Upper Thames and tune put to it by Mike Gabriel. From the author of Costa-shortlisted and Baileys-longlisted At Hawthorn Time comes a major new novel. Set on a farm in Suffolk just before the Second World War, it introduces a girl on the cusp of adulthood and a rural community on the brink of change. Alfred Williams cycled 13,000 miles around the Upper Thames area between 1914 and 1916, collecting the words of nearly 800 songs sung by the men and women that he met there. More than 400 of these were published in a series of articles in the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard at the time and, of those, about half were printed in Williams’s book Folk Songs of the Upper Thames in 1923. Melissa Harrison's previous novel, At Hawthorn Time, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2015 and longlisted for the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. All Among the Barley was unfortunate to miss out on this year's Booker but I suspect could be a repeat contender for the other awards. The local, parochial community life, is reflected in the reality that you go to school with other neighbourhood children, then you marry one of your classroom peers.Connie's project starts to take on a slightly more political (and sinister) air than the bucolic project she initially suggested. The first hint is when she bites her tongue when describing her ideal: The nature writing in this book is often very moving - particularly in the first half. We can ‘see’ the land through both Edith’s and Constance’s eyes - one of them deeply knowledgeable, the other misty-eyed with romantic notions about unspoiled Englishness, but both of them appreciative of the beauty of the landscape and the changing seasons. Harrison’s research into farming methods in the 1930s gives a rich texture to the storyline, and that aspect of the story is believable. What doesn’t entirely work, though, is how the author touches on local folklore and superstitions. Edith forms some erroneous conclusions, and acts upon them, but that part of the story didn’t quite ring true or seem built up enough. These messages are delivered by looking at Edie, her family and the two trusted and longtime employed workmen living at Wych farm. Edie is young, confused and lonely. She feels as an outsider, even at home. She needs a friend, someone to whom she can confide. When the glamorous, charismatic and outspoken Constance FitzAllen arrives from London, interested in documenting and promoting traditional customs, folklore and ways, the two form a bond. Each affords the other what they need, but one is young and naïve. And the elder? We learn by the end of the novel that the outspoken and friendly Constance hides secrets. Neither is she the only one with secrets. Edie’s family too is riddled with secrets. So the origin is well documented, but the author of the text remains unknown. And the interesting origin didn't stop the song being widely taken up. For me, the book goes a step further. As industrialization led to urbanization, people began to eulogize the rural idyll which in its urn led to an enhancement of national pride. Dangers lurk. Nationalism, carried too far, leads to dislike of all things foreign and even fascism. The author is drawing attention to a trend that occurred in Britain during the interwar years, and she is criticizing it.

There are two sheet music versions of the song at the Library of Congress in the Music For The Nation: American Sheet Music collection: This is a lot like an English version of The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows: 1930s setting, child narrator, experienced older woman coming to town, the slight feeling of menace as times and ideas are changing, and so on. What I’ll remember from the book is the feeling of an idyllic but transient time between childhood and adulthood: “No more harm would ever come to us, and so it would go on forever, world without end: the elms always sheltering our old farmhouse, the church looking out over the fields. For the fields were eternal, our life the only way of things, and I would do whatever was required of me to protect it. How could it be otherwise?” Nostalgia, nationalism and superstition all play their part in an acutely observed narrative that is as pertinent to the here and now as it is evocative of its time and place.' - Mail on Sunday There are perhaps too many themes struggling for deeper treatment in this book: the clash between Edie’s bright intelligence and her family’s need for her on the struggling farm, the oppressive sexual relationship she falls into with a neighbour which raises issues of abuse/non-consent and sexual complicity, the vein of ‘madness’ that emerges and its treatment in the 1930s.Well, I’m no anti-Semite, of course, but they’re not from here, and if we’re not careful they’ll mar the character of England forever – not to mention the way they undercut wages and take work away from ordinary people, just as the Irish did... We must rebuild the country, and we must put our own kind first!... There are hordes of them coming all the time – this country is being handed to them on a plate’

As the nsong is attributed to a writer and composer, are there any royalties payable upon recording? In V. 1 it must be 'wheaten stubble', not 'wheat and stubble' as by September any farmer worth his subsidy will hare harvested his wheat! Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? A beautiful, heartbreaking novel of great power. Melissa Harrison has built a world for us, and peopled it, making it solid and real, and all the time making one aware of an awesome fragility - of human minds and bodies, of farmers under politicians and under nature, of ideas that might transform lives or might destroy them. I've been privileged to inhabit this world' - Tim Pears, author of The Horseman

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Fourteen-year-old Edie Mather lives with her family at Wych Farm, where the shadow of the Great War still hangs over a community impoverished by the Great Depression. Glamorous outsider Constance FitzAllen arrives from London, determined to make a record of fading rural traditions and beliefs, and to persuade Edie's family to return to the old ways rather than embrace modernity. She brings with her new political and social ideas – some far more dangerous than others. The core of the book is a brilliant evocation of life on an English farm in the mid 1930s, through the eyes of the narrator Edith, recalling the events of one summer when she was a 14 year old tenant farmer's daughter. The location is not described directly but seems most likely to be Southern Suffolk. I always have a soft spot for books with maps in them, and we get two beautiful maps at the start, one of the village and a larger scale one of the farm. For comparison with the tune above (btw, thanks Malcolm for posting the English Dance and Song stuff!) here is the tune from the 1871 version. This was sheet music for voice and piano: