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SERVICE OF REMEMBRANCE AND THANKSGIVING FOR THE LIFE OF

WILLIAM BARNES

This Newsletter will have gone to press before the Annual Service of Remembrance

is held in the Parish Church of St. Peter at Winterbome Came, at 10.30 a.m. on Sunday,

4th April, and the report of the Service will be included in Newsletter No. 49 in November.

SUMMER LUNCH - SATURDAY, 12th JUNE 2004

12.30 for 1.00 p.m.

The Summer Lunch will be held at The Wessex Royale Hotel in Dorchester and our Speaker on this occasion will be Judy Lindsay, Director of the Dorset County Museum. The subject of her talk following the lunch, will be 'The William Barnes Archive and the future development of the Museum'. The Summer Lunch is always an event very much to look forward to and the invitation, with the choice of menus, is enclosed with this Newsletter. If you wish to attend, please return the booking form with a cheque made out to the William Barnes Society, to our Treasurer, Mr. Brian

Caddy, to arrive not later than Saturday, 5th June.

JOINT CHRISTMAS EVENT WITH THE THOMAS HARDY SOCIETY

This was held on Saturday, 6th December at The Brownsword Hall, Poundbury, Dorchester, commencing at 7.00 p.m., and was the second event of the year shared with the Thomas Hardy Society (in succession to that at Wimbome Minster on Saturday, 1 st March 2003). The New Scorpion Band - Brian Gulland, Robin Jeffrey, Sharon Lindo, and Robert A. White, led by Tim Laycock - gave a wonderful performance entitled "The Carnal and the Crane', on their wide range of superb instruments - with vocals - and the packed audience was riveted. Traditional countrywide folk songs, and carols, interspersed with readings from Hardy and Bames, were performed and after an interval during which there was a delicious choice of refreshments, a Blackmore Vale Mummer's

Play (with new as well as the traditional characters) was enacted very dramatically. More music and songs and readings followed and the evening ended with great applause from a very satisfied audience. The Brownsword Hall (a notable feature of Poundbury) was a most comfortable setting for this happy and sociable event of the Festive Season. Grateful thanks are due to Furse and Rosemary Swann and their helpers for making this such a lovely evening.

RB.

TALKS TO THE SOCIETY

    In welcoming all those members present to the first talk in the Society's 2003-2004 Programme, on Thursday, 27th November, our Chairman elaborated briefly on the note 'Awareness of William Barnes' that had appeared on p. 16 in the November Newsletter. This note referred to the major article published in early October in the Dorset Echo Weekend Magazine, in appreciation of Barnes's poems in the dialect, and the Chairman's comments on this were an appropriate prelude to Dr. Alan Chedzoy's talk that then followed, entitled 'Dialect into Poetry.

      Alan began by considering carefully the true meaning of the terms 'dialect' and 'poetry' and as a moving example of their symbiosis read 'The Turnstile', the harmony of the imagery of which with its authentic rural speech being proof that genuine poetry can be written in dialect, something that Baraes consistently achieved. Alan then discussed the rarity, outside the works of Burns, Barnes and Kipling, of good dialect poetry and outlined the probable basis of this. In particular, the low social esteem in which local dialects have so often been held, as well as their alleged incomprehensibility,

the actual difficulties of capturing dialects in print and, latterly, their nationwide decline arising from the notion of 'national' English being a more natural and respectable means of communication. Despite these constraints, there have been numerous writers of verse in the Dorset dialect of whom two in particular stand out (their respective lives having consecutively covered nearly two centuries). These are Robert Young (1811-1908) of Sturminster Newton, who wrote under the pseudonym of 'Rabin Hill', and Cecil 'Skylark' Durston (1910-1996) of Portland. Both were great admirers of William Bames, Robert Young having known him personally.

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