Episode Five – The Shepherd’s Calendar - June - John Clare

The Thunder Mutters

Welcome to the fifth episode of The Thunder Mutters, featuring 'June' from John Clare's 'The Shepherd's Calendar’, performed by Adam Horovitz, and interspersed with tunes from Clare’s tune manuscripts performed by Becky Dellow.

We’ll be coming back next month with July but the next episode will feature your own contributions, so please come back then and take a listen. Please consider putting some money towards the costs of producing the podcast by buying us a virtual coffee at www.ko-fi.com/thethundermutters

All the tunes in this episode have been taken from John Clare's tune manuscript books, and Becky's arrangements used the transcriptions provided by Marion Ross in George Deacon's book John Clare and the Folk Tradition (Sinclair Browne Ltd., 1983).

The tunes, whose histories are discussed in the show, are listed here for your convenience, in order of appearance: Jackson’s Morning Brush, Beef Stake Hornpipe, Come to the Bower, Off She Goes, Young Parker, Tink a tink, Regents Fete, The Ploughman.

As ‘June’ is shorter than many of the other poems from ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar’, we have included three further poems by Clare at the outset of the episode. In order of appearance, these are: ‘The Heat of Noon’, ‘Summer Happiness’ and Wild Bees’.

The Thunder Mutters’ theme tune is ‘The Gardengate’ from John Clare’s tune manuscript book.

References:

Clare, John, Selected Poems (London: Penguin Classics, 1990)

Deacon, George, John Clare and the Folk Tradition (London: Frances Boutle Publishers, 2002)

Kuntz, Andrew, and Valerio Pelliccioni, Traditional Tune Archive (2017) <http://tunearch.org> [Accessed 12 May 2020]

http://www.folktunefinder.com/tunes/26014

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Folk-Lore_Journal_Volume_4_1886.djvu/268

https://www.regencyhistory.net/2012/06/prince-regents-fete.html