Jim Causley & Miranda Sykes Present

Ghosts, Werewolves and Countryfolk – Songs & Stories of Sabine Baring Gould

Six time BBC Folk Award nominee Jim Causley and Miranda Sykes from the Award winning Show of Hands and Daphne’s Flight celebrate the centenary of Sabine Baring-Gould, by exploring his life and writing through the folk songs that meant so much to him. In an entertaining show that will have the audience singing, gasping and smiling. Sabine was an astonishing and often overlooked celebrity of the Victorian era. A pioneer of folk song collecting – inspiring Cecil Sharp to follow in his footsteps ten years after him, he was also one of the Victorian’s best-selling-novelists and composer of the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers, with a tune by Sir Arthur Sullivan. Of all of his achievements, Sabine wrote, ‘To this day I consider that the recovery of our West Country melodies has been the principle achievement of my life’. He interleaved folk songs he’d collected and wove real people and events into his fiction, to give it life. And that’s what Jim and Miranda do in the show, where they’re joined by narrator John Palmer, creator of the critically acclaimed Vaughan Williams 150 Anniversary From Pub to Pulpit tour of Cathedrals with Paul Hutchinson’s Coracle and acapella group Broomdasher.