The Rev Sabine Baring-Gould is probably best remembered as the composer of the hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. He was born in Exeter in 1834, he died at his home Lewtrenchard Manor, West Devon in 1924. This talk is about the songs he collected from 1888 to 1903. Mike will sing some of the songs from his collection and talk about the Song Men he collected them from.

Most people would think that would be enough to keep any ordinary country parson busy. But then, The Rev Sabine Baring-Gould was anything but an ordinary parson! He was a gifted storyteller and became a very productive novel writer with at one time more novels in the British library than any other Victorian author. His bibliography is in excess of 1200 titles covering many subjects in addition to his novels.

He was the first to collect the old folk songs of Devon some of which had lyrics he thought not suitable for Victorian ears. As a skilled story teller he had no problem cleaning up and re writing passages of songs he thought offensive. Which he then included in his book ‘Songs of the West’ first published in 1892 and it ran for six editions.

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