The Magic Spring: my year learning to be English
Richard Lewis Atlantic Books, 338pp, £14.99
ISBN 1843543079
David Blunkett has been urging the English to take more pride in their traditions and culture. Richard Lewis agrees there is a problem. "It would have been so much more romantic to have really - originally - been Irish or French or Greek," he writes, "but what if one is simply English?" The English, Lewis says, have lost touch with their folk traditions, those things that reinforce identity and help bind communities. The Magic Spring is a record of his search for the "vibrant and colourful" English folklore he's convinced is waiting to be discovered.
Lewis was born in Croydon, a place whose roots were covered over in the early 1960s by brutalist office blocks, multi-storey car parks, flyovers and underpasses. Needing to look elsewhere for romance, he spent three years (compressed into one for the purposes of the book) travelling through England in search of "the music and customs we had always had, since the dawn of time". He encounters morris dancing, mummers' plays, wassailing and all manner of obscure festivals - the Egremont Crab Fair, the Cotswold Olimpicks and the Banbury Hobby-Horse Festival.
Lewis wants to imagine a folklore passed down through the generations, but the reality is that most of the people keeping these customs alive have joined folk-revivalist societies. The local villagers aren't running around with bells on their legs, but hiding in the bar, casting baleful glances at the "weirdo" intruders. Can these traditions celebrate a genuine connection with the land, Lewis wonders, when all the participants have been bussed in? He eventually finds some genuine local types morris dancing around the Cerne Giant in Dorset, but it turns out that the "tradition" goes back only to 1972.
Some of the best sections follow the story of an Edwardian composer named Cecil Sharp. In the early 20th century there was an explosion of interest in indigenous English culture, and Sharp devoted himself to documenting rural music and dance. Without his work, much of this heritage would have been lost, but Sharp was not above "improving" his source material: the odd unwieldy melody was harmonised, and lyrics deemed likely to offend public morals were toned down. Today, his collections are so influential that only a handful of morris groups retain their own, pre-Sharp traditions. It is curious to think that so much of what we call English folk culture has been shaped by the sensibilities of just one man.
All this is interesting, but the main problem with The Magic Spring is that it cannot decide what it wants to be. Though the book is categorised as a "memoir", the personal side of Lewis's story is dealt with only cursorily, his thoughts and feelings mostly corralled into quips and humorous asides. As a result, his rootless angst never really convinces. One is left with the impression that the book was born out of the desire to write a book as much as anything else. As an exploration of English folk customs, it can be equally frustrating. There is a lot here to pique the reader's interest, but little that's treated in any depth: just as we are persuaded that we really need to know all about the death of John Barleycorn, it is time to skip to the Cliffe Bonfire Society.
What Lewis has provided is a quirkily subjective and gently whimsical ramble through the English countryside. Despite the book's comic tone, he avoids mocking or patronising his subjects - quite an achievement, given that English folk culture is often seen, in the words of Sharp's assistant, as a "hobby for cranks".
Unable to dig up any particularly ancient roots, Lewis concludes that everyone needs to find some personally meaningful way to connect with the land. It seems like a reasonable and inoffensive piece of advice. Helpfully finishing with an extensive list for further reading, The Magic Spring could provide a starting point for a fuller exploration of the bells, hankies and hobby-horses of the English.
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