manx celtic music and dance

Research article - SOPHIA MORRISON & JOSEPHINE KERMODE COLLECTION

27 Oct 2015

THE SOPHIA MORRISON & JOSEPHINE KERMODE COLLECTION OF MANX FOLK SONGS

A PRELIMINARY VIEW

One of the difficulties of seeing Sophia Morrison and Josephine Kermode as song collectors is that there are no notebooks full of folk songs nor, say, a bundle of sheets pinned or grouped together to conveniently stand out as being the Morrison and Kermode Collection. There is not, for instance, the four tune books that make up the Clague Collection nor the bound transcript of the Gill brothers collecting to hold reassuringly in the hand. Instead, we have loose sheets scattered amongst her personal papers, others to be found in the hands of Kermode, her close friend and it is argued her fellow-collector. Then there are the song texts published in 1905 in Manx Proverbs and Sayings. And then, remarkably, her sound recordings made with the phonograph of the Manx Language Society purchased in 1904, the cylinders now lost. Morrison stands out as one of the pioneers in Europe in putting the phonograph to use in recording vernacular song culture. 

Read the full article by Stephen Miller here

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