The Scratches Of Dead Farmers At The Fireplace

I include this post with the caveat that it is really for my own connected memory, so that I do not forget that such a wonderful, truly obsessive collection such as this exists.

The British Library, further proving that it takes a remarkably un-bureaucratic and open-source approach to its research, have released almost a complete collection of George Ewart Evans recordings, for free and without the need to sign up to some residual cough of the library’s website membership scheme, for streaming online. 

George Ewart Evans was a tireless champion of folklore, oral history, local knowledge and took an atavistic pride in documenting nearly everything he came across amongst the ordinary rural peoples of Suffolk, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. All of these recordings were made between 1956 and 1977, and with over 250 seperate recordings, some only a few minute’s conversation with a farmer about horse husbandry when he was a boy, and other severe, hour-long affairs on the demise of folklore in the modern age, this resource is truly one of the most marvellous things that the British Library has ever done.

Enjoy the coughs, caws and chirrups of the dead here.