Hill, George

Gender: Male

George Hill was a blacksmith in Dursley, Gloucestershire, and Miss C. M. Newhouse collected several songs from him which were published in the 1934 edition of the Journal of English Folk Dance & Song Society. Miss Newhouse was the Head Branch Teacher of the EFDSS.

The two songs were:
The Tailor and the Carrion Crow (Roud 891)
A, Bottle, A Bowl, A Dish and a Ladle (Roud 1505)

George Edward Hill was born in Dursley in January 1872 and although his father, William, was a baker, became a blacksmith. At the end of 1893 he married a girl from Uley, Annie Elizabeth Hurn and the couple lived in the hamlet of Woodmancote near Dursley. He died in June 1944. The Journal reported “Mr. Hill is a self-taught musician with experience of brass bands. Of several songs which he gave to Miss Newhouse, variants mostly of familiar songs, not a note had been in his head for fifty years. But hearing “One man shall mow my meadow,” sung at a folk-dance festival recently, started some train of memory which ultimately yielded some half a dozen songs. “A Bowl, A Bottle” was sung by the Gloucestershire team at the All England Festival in the Albert Hall on January 5th, 1934.”

Notes by Paul Burgess