#AFolkSongAFortnight No.5: Thousands or More

Two weeks on from the resumption of this project, and not only is spring in the air, but we also have cautiously encouraging news about a return to social gatherings. With this in mind, for this instalment I've selected a song brimming with both forbearance and optimism. 

Bob, John, Ron & Jim Copper (credit uncertain, happy to remove on request)

'Thousands or More' (Roud 1220) is also a number that only truly ignites when sung communally, and so on this occasion I've bucked the trend of doing new recordings, and instead here present a snapshot of the last singaround I made it to before the portcullis of 2020's first coronavirus lockdown clattered down to curtail such gatherings.

My own performance is a little wayward - breathing slightly out of sync, through having to put in the extra oomph alongside the fine, full-throated contributions of others; but I still find it a joyous, somewhat wistful reminder of what we've been missing for a year, and - hopefully - a signal of what can be resumed in the near future.

#AFolkSongAFortnight · #AFolkSongAFortnight No.5: Thousands or More

I first encountered the song at the January 2015 Bob Copper centenary concert at Cecil Sharp House; since returning to touring, Shirley Collins also uses it as a joyous communal finale to her own concerts. It's extremely well-known in folk circles; I've never sung it, or heard it sung, without a good portion of those in the room being able to join in.

'Thousands or More' is particularly closely associated with the Copper Family of Rottingdean, East Sussex. Indeed, of the 19 entries for the song in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library catalogue, 12 are from the Coppers. The earliest comes from the Copper Family Song Book, compiled by Jim Copper (1882-1954) from the inherited/accumulated repertoire in 1936. The first audio recordings were both gathered on 24 April 1952, by the legendary Irish musician and song collector Seamus Ennis - with separate recordings of both Jim and his son Bob Copper (1915-2004). The most famous rendition is probably that from the magnificent 1971 Leader 4LP box set A Song for Every Season. The lyric of this 'canonic' version goes as follows:

The time passes over more cheerful and gay,

Since we've learnt a new act to drive sorrows away.

Sorrows away, sorrows away, sorrows away,

Since we've learnt a new act to drive sorrows away.

Bright Phoebe awakes so high up in the sky

With her red rosy cheeks and her sparkling eye,

Sparkling eye, sparkling eye, sparkling eye,

With her red rosy cheeks and her sparkling eye.

If you ask for my credit, you'll find I have none,

With my bottle and friend you will find me at home.

Find me at home, find me at home, find me at home,

With my bottle and friend you will find me at home.

Although I'm not rich and although I'm not poor

I'm as happy as those that's got thousands or more,

Thousands or more, thousands or more, thousands or more,

I'm as happy as those that's got thousands or more.

Of the remaining 7 entries in the VWML collection, 2 are - respectively - from Boscastle in Cornwall, and Holme in West Yorkshire. Both are later recordings (1975 and 1985), and so faithful to the Rottingdean blueprint that I take them to have migrated hundreds of miles due to the popularity of the Copper's work.

The final 5 are all from Sussex - from within a 20 mile radius of Rottingdean, in fact (3 from Cuckfield all featuring George Tompsett and other locals; 1 from Glynde; and 1 from Lewes). The latter two also seem broadly the same as the Copper version, but the Cuckfield strain shows some interesting variations of both lyric and tune, to a degree that makes one feel the song had perhaps lived 'in the wild', and diverged from a shared ancestor at some prior point. 

For starters, this version begins:

A Rich merchant's daughter in London did dwell, 

And for wit and for beauty non did 'er excel,

None did excel (none did excel)

And for wit and for beauty, non did 'er excel

...And adds several other novel verses, whilst only containing two of the familiar ones from the Copper 'standard'. In the Cuckfield version, the second half of the second line also only repeats twice, rather than 3 times as per the dominant variant. 

A Song For Every Season, Leader, 1971

The origins are difficult to track further back than the Coppers; indeed, the trail seems to go cold from the 1936 Copper Family Song Book-backwards. Disappointingly, Thousands or More doesn't seem to be one of the songs that Kate Lee collected from James 'Brasser' Copper (1845-1924) in 1898, to be published in the inaugural Journal of the Folk Song Society the following year. 

'Thousands or More' is often cited as perhaps Bob Copper's own favourite from the family repertoire - and this was re-confirmed to me on Mudcat by John Dudley, the husband of Bob's daughter Jill. John also notes that Bob had fond childhood memories of his grandfather James 'Brasser' Copper singing this song, so it may have been with the Coppers since the mid-19th Century.

Enigmatically, in light of this status, it isn't mentioned directly in the accompanying book for A Song for Every Season (Paladin, 1971); and neither can I find anecdotal reference to it in Early to Rise: A Sussex Boyhood (Heinemann, 1976), though the lyrics and music can be found there (admittedly, I haven't read the book cover-to-cover, so am happy to be corrected!). I don't currently own Bob's other books (Songs and Southern Breezes, 1973; Across Sussex With Belloc, 1995; Bob Copper's Sussex, 1997; A Man of No Consequence, posthumously published in 2013); but if anyone is aware of direct reference to the song in any of those, I'd love to know about it.

The liner notes to the 4LP version of A Song for Every Season are also short on detail, in comparison to the rich information given about some other songs included; but, they do tell us that the Coppers learnt the song from their neighbour 'Bing' Dudeney. John Dudley helpfully informs me that this is a misprint of 'Bung'; and we can find a bit more detail about this character in the sleeve notes to Bob's solo LP Sweet Rose in June (Topic, 1977):

          William ‘Bung’ Dudeney, as his name implies, had a propensity for drinking beer... He once fell asleep after dinner and his clay pipe fell from his mouth, set a haystack on fire and eventually burnt down a barn and outbuilding at a place called Combe Bottom. One night when the pints were coming up thick and fast I took another over to Bung who already had two lined up on the table in front of him. “Come on, Bung,” l said, “ol’ Ron is just ordering you another.” “Agh, boy,” he said, sucking the ends of his moustache, “I’m buggered if ‘e mairn’t."

...But where might 'Bung' have encountered the song?

In Folk Songs of Britain and Ireland (Oak Publications, 1975) Peter Kennedy writes that:

          This song is one of our finest drinking songs, yet it has not appeared in any of the well-known published collections. It has much in common with, and may be a version of 'Drive the Cold Winter Away', which William Chappell included in National English Airs (1838), the tune of which appeared in [John] Playford's English Dancing Master (1650-90). The song ['Drive the Cold Winter Away'] was also published in [Thomas] D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1707).

This is interesting, and there are a handful of similarities to 'Drive the Cold Winter Away', a Christmas song of relative antiquity. As well as the titular line, the second verse declares of festive revellers, 'all sorrows aside they lay'. Furthermore, the tune as found in Playford is called 'When Phoebus Did Rest', which echoes the second verse of 'Thousands or More'. However, these points of connection are sparse, and I'm not convinced that 'Thousands Or More' is a direct descendant.

Oak; picture credit uncertain, happy to remove on request

As noted by Mainly Norfolk (and kindly brought to my attention by that website's compiler Reinhard Zierke), an intriguing alternative lead is signalled in the liner-notes to Oak's 1971 Topic LP Welcome to Our Fair:

          Oak got this one from the singing of the Copper family of Peacehaven, Sussex. The good old folk singer George Townsend, who lived not far from Peacehaven, used to sing a similar version in two-part harmony with his father. It’s a composition by Samuel Arnold, proprietor of the Marylebone Entertainment Gardens and founder of several London glee clubs at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thousands or More became popular with country singers towards the middle of last century, when the choral society and part-singing club movement began to affect villages close to the towns.

Oak may have received this insight from A.L. Lloyd (who produced the LP, and co-wrote the sleeve notes), but I've not been able to verify this; 'Thousands or More' doesn't feature in Lloyd and Ralph Vaughan-Williams's 1959 Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, nor Lloyd's own Folk Song in England (Lawrence & Wishart, 1967).

Samuel Arnold; picture credit uncertain, happy to remove on request

Samuel Arnold (1740-1802) seems a fascinating figure; alongside his writing of glees, part-songs and operettas in proto-music hall contexts, as described above, he was an early English acolyte of Bach who made the first known attempt to compile the complete works of Handel (in 180 volumes; some consider it the first credible attempt to assemble the complete works of any composer). After his time as music director at Marylebone Gardens, Arnold held a similar role at the Little Theatre, Haymarket; but then went on to become the first organist and composer to the Chapel Royal (1783); conductor of the Academy of Ancient Music (1789), and organist at Westminster Abbey (1793).

In Folk Song In England (Faber, 2017), Steve Roud cites Roger Fiske's description of Arnold as an 'early folk song collector', noting:

          Perhaps because of his broad and prodigious output, [Arnold] incorporated popular ballad tunes in many of his pieces, and Fiske even surmises that he had some unpublished source from which he drew this traditional material... This borrowing from 'folk' sources was often a deliberate and stylistic choice. Ballad tunes tended to be given to working-class or old-fashioned characters, or were used blatantly to give a Scottish or Irish flavour to the piece.

...Intriguingly, Arnold also arranged William Tyler's 1790 volume A selection of the most favourite Scots songs chiefly pastoral. Adapted for the harpsichord, with an accompaniment for a violin, by eminent masters. Nichla Smith, in her very interesting 2017 University of Melbourne PhD thesis, Hidden Depths: Cultural, Political, and Social Commentary in Eighteenth-Century English Comic Opera Libretti, also notes the heavy use of folk song in Arnold's work - including, in The Enchanted Wood (1792), a version of 'The Derby Ram.' 

Unfortunately, despite extensive online foraging including a search of all available manuscripts at the Internet Archive, I've not been able to identify a more specific source for Arnold's authorship of 'Thousands or More', beyond the aforementioned Oak quote. I've gone so far as attempting to contact the leading scholar on Arnold's Work, Professor Robert Hoskins, but without results at present; if that progresses I'll update this blog accordingly! Also, if you have suggestions for volumes or archives to consult in my quest, please do message me, or leave a comment below. I very much hope that further light might be shone; there's a beguiling arc to the story of a song by a man indebted to traditional material for inspiration being re-absorbed into the folk canon 150 years later. 

For now, I'll sign off with a tantalising potential connection that I *did* uncover between 'Thousands or More', the Copper Family and the part songs and choral works of the early 19th Century; 'Bright Phoebus', penned by Arnold's contemporary James Hook (1746-1827), appears to bear strong lyrical similarities to both 'Thousands or More', and another Copper staple - hunting song 'The Innocent Hare'. The plot thickens...!