A memorable folk trail

Rick Jones steps into Vaughan Williams’s shoes and dons his boater as he follows the composer’s folksong trail around Surrey and Sussex

- Rick Jones

Those editorial types at BBC Music Magazine clearly like to dress me up and send me back in time and on long journeys. In April 2015, I was invited to don a tweed suit, mount an ancient Sunbeam bicycle and, assuming the persona of Elgar, travel the roads once graced by the English composer. The following January, I was the Shakespearean clown Will Kemp, dancing from London to Norwich; and then in March 2017, I was trooping around the capital itself, this time as Joseph Haydn.

Now, as we reach the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vaughan Williams on 12 October, it’s time to similarly pay tribute to the great man, himself an avid walker. Boots tied, boater on, I’m back on the road. And, filled with the spirit of VW, I’ve shared a few tales that I like to think he might have told from beyond the grave. Over to you, Ralph…

IN 1955, I RECEIVED an invitation from a young woman – my wife Ursula said she was gypsy – to a pub in the New Forest to hear this fortune teller haunt me with folk tunes she knew. I was 83 at the time, working on my Eighth Symphony, and no one had made such a proposal to me for 40 years. However, I found myself transported back to the first decade of the century, when I had collected such folksongs with enthusiasm.