12 Facts About Henry Burstow

Henry Burstow was a shoemaker and bellringer from Horsham, Sussex, best known for his vast repertoire of songs, many of which were collected in the folksong revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Henry Burstow was the author of Reminiscences of Horsham, which gives a lively picture of life in a rural town in the mid-nineteenth century.

Henry Burstow was born in Horsham on 11 December 1826, the son of William and Ellen Burstow, makers of clay tobacco pipes.

Henry Burstow attended school into his teens, sometimes working part-time for his mother or for a harness maker, until in 1840 he was apprenticed to a shoemaker.

Henry Burstow died on 30 January 1916, having lived all his life in Horsham.

Henry Burstow's chief talent was a remarkably strong memory, as he himself was well aware:.

Henry Burstow kept a list of them, which he gives at the end of his book.

Henry Burstow once set his heart upon learning a very long ballad "off" a fellow bell-ringer, a ploughman in a neighbouring village.

Henry Burstow induced a friend to lure the ploughman into the front parlour of a tavern, himself hiding in the back room.

In 1892 or 1893, Henry Burstow wrote to the folksong collector Lucy Broadwood and she collected a large number of songs from him, so that his is the major contribution to her English Traditional Songs and Carols.

Henry Burstow's repertoire contained many folksongs as understood by the collectors of the time, but much unwanted material from known and published composers and from relatively recent broadside ballads.

Henry Burstow had listened with interest to the old man's reminiscences of life in the first half of the century.