Sabine Baring-Gould



The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould (28 January 1834 - 2 January 1924) was an English hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist and eclectic scholar. His bibliography consists of more than 1240 publications, though this list continues to grow. He is remembered particularly as a writer of hymns, the best-known being "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "Now the Day Is Over". He also translated the carol "Gabriel's Message" from the Basque language to the English.

Life
Sabine Baring-Gould (later Sabine Baring Baring-Gould) was born in the parish of St Sidwell, Exeter on 28 January 1834 - the eldest son of Edward Baring-Gould and his first wife Sophia Charlotte née Bond. He was named for an uncle, the Arctic explorer Sir Edward Sabine. Because the family spent much of his childhood travelling round Europe, most of his education was by private tutors. He only spent about two years in formal schooling, first at King's College School in London (then located in Somerset House) and then, for a few months, at Warwick Grammar School (now Warwick School). Here his time was ended by a bronchial disease of the kind that was to plague him throughout his long life. His father considered his ill-health as a good reason for another European tour.

In 1852 he was admitted to Cambridge University, earning the degrees of Bachelor of Arts in 1857, then Master of Arts in 1860 from Clare College, Cambridge. During 1864, he became the curate at Horbury Bridge, West Riding of Yorkshire. It was while acting as a curate that he met Grace Taylor, the 16-year-old daughter of a mill hand. His vicar arranged for Grace to live for two years with relatives in York to learn middle class manners. Sabine, meanwhile, relocated to become perpetual curate at Dalton, near Thirsk. He and Grace were married in 1868 at Wakefield. Their marriage lasted until her death 48 years later, and the couple had 15 children, all but one of whom lived to adulthood. When he buried his wife in 1916 he had carved on her tombstone the Latin motto Dimidium Animae Meae ("Half my Soul").

Baring-Gould became the rector of East Mersea in Essex in 1871 and spent ten years there. In 1880 he inherited the 3,000 acre (12 km²) family estates of Lew Trenchard in Devon, which included the gift of the living of Lew Trenchard parish. When the living became vacant during 1881, he was able to appoint himself to it, becoming parson as well as squire. He did a great deal of work restoring St. Peter’s Church, Lew Trenchard, and (from 1883–1914) thoroughly remodelled his home, Lew Trenchard Manor.

Folk songs
He regarded as his principal achievement the collection of folk songs that he made with the help of the ordinary people of Devon and Cornwall. His first book of songs, Songs and Ballads of the West (1889–91), was the first folk song collection published for the mass market. The musical editor for this collection was Henry Fleetwood Sheppard, though some of the songs included were noted by Baring-Gould's other collaborator Frederick Bussell.

Baring-Gould and Sheppard produced a second collection named A Garland of Country Songs during 1895. A new edition of Songs of the West was proposed for publication in 1905. Sheppard had died in 1901 and so the collector Cecil Sharp was invited to undertake the musical editorship for the new edition. Sharp and Baring-Gould also collaborated on English Folk Songs for Schools during 1907. This collection of 53 songs was widely used in British schools for the next 60 years.

Although he had to modify the words of some songs which were too rude for the time, he left his original manuscripts for future students of folk song, thereby preserving many beautiful pieces of music and their lyrics which otherwise might have been lost.

The folk-song manuscripts from Baring-Gould's personal library and from public libraries have been published as a microfiche edition available for study in the main Devon Libraries and other places (including the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in London). Thirty boxes of unpublished manuscript material on other topics (the Killerton manuscripts) are kept in the Devon Record Office in Exeter. The folksong manuscripts, including the notebooks used for gathering information in the field, were given by Baring-Gould to Plymouth Public Library in 1914 and deposited with the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office in 2006. The complete collection of folk song manuscripts (including two notebooks not included in the microfiches edition) has been digitized and will be published online during 2011 by the Devon Tradition Project in association with the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

Cecil Sharp dedicated his English Folk Song—Some Conclusions to Baring-Gould.

Literature
Baring-Gould wrote many novels (including Mehalah) and Guavas, the Tinner (1897), a collection of ghost stories, a 16-volume The Lives of the Saints, and the biography of the eccentric poet-vicar of Morwenstow, Robert Stephen Hawker. His folkloric studies resulted in The Book of Were-Wolves (1865), one of the most frequently cited studies of lycanthropy. He habitually wrote while standing, and his desk can be seen in the manor.

One of his most enduringly popular works was Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, first published in two parts during 1866 and 1868, and republished in many other editions since then. "Each of the book's twenty-four chapters deals with a particular medieval superstition and its variants and antecedents," writes critic Steven J. Mariconda. H. P. Lovecraft termed it "that curious body of medieval lore which the late Mr. Baring-Gould so effectively assembled in book form."

He wrote much about the Westcountry: his works of this topic include:
 * A Book of the West. 2 vols. I: Devon; II: Cornwall. London : Methuen, 1899
 * Cornish Characters and Strange Events. London: John Lane, 1909 (reissued in 1925 in 2 vols., First series and Second series
 * Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.

Baring-Gould served as President of the Royal Institution of Cornwall for ten years from 1897.

Dartmoor
Baring-Gould along with his friend Robert Burnard organised the first scientific archaeological excavations of hut-circles on Dartmoor at Grimspound during 1893. This resulted in the formation of the Committee of the Devonshire Association for the exploration of Dartmoor. The Committee co-opted Mr. R. N. Worth, Mr. R. Hansford Worth, Rev. W. A. G. Gray, and Dr. Prowse. Baring-Gould was the Secretary and author of the first ten annual reports until 1905. The Dartmoor Exploration Committee performed many archaeological digs of prehistoric settlements on Dartmoor and systematically recorded and in some cases restored prehistoric sites. The current state of many prehistoric stone rows and stone circles on Dartmoor owes much to the work of Sabine Baring-Gould and Robert Burnard and the Dartmoor Exploration Committee. Baring-Gould was President of the Devonshire Association for the year 1896.

He wrote much about Dartmoor: his works of this topic include:
 * Dartmoor idylls (1896).
 * A Book of Dartmoor (1906). London : Methuen, 1900. Republished Halsgrove, 2002



Family
He married Grace Taylor on 25 May 1868 at Horbury. They had 15 children: Mary (b. 1869), Margaret Daisy (b. 1870, an artist who painted part of the screen in Lew Trenchard Church), Edward Sabine (b. 1871), Beatrice Gracieuse (b. 1874, d. 1876, aged 2 years), Veronica (b. 1875), Julian (b. 1877), William Drake (b. 1878), Barbara (b. 1880), Diana Amelia (b. 1881), Felicitas (bpt 1883), Henry (b. 1885), Joan (b. 1887), Cecily Sophia (b. 1889), John Hillary (b. 1890), and Grace (b. 1891).

His wife Grace died in April 1916, and he did not remarry.

Baring-Gould died on 2 January 1924 at his home at Lew Trenchard and was buried next to his wife, Grace.

He wrote two volumes of Reminiscences: Early Reminiscences, 1834-1864 and Further Reminiscences, 1864-1894.

Recognition
His family home, Lew Trenchard Manor near Okehampton, Devon, has been preserved as he had it rebuilt and is now a hotel.

One grandson, William Stuart Baring-Gould, was a noted Sherlock Holmes scholar who wrote a fictional biography of the great detective &mdash; in which, to make up for the lack of information about Holmes's early life, he based his account on the childhood of Sabine Baring-Gould. Sabine himself is a major character of Laurie R. King's Sherlock Holmes novel The Moor, a Sherlockian pastiche. In this novel it is revealed that Sabine Baring-Gould is the godfather of Sherlock Holmes.

Publications

 * The Book of Were-Wolves, being an account of a terrible superstition (1865)
 * Curious myths of the Middle ages (1866)
 * The Lives of the Saints - a sixteen-volume collection (1872 and 1877)
 * Mehalah, A Story of the Salt Marshes (1880)
 * Red spider (1887)
 * Grettir the outlaw: a story of Iceland (1890)
 * Dartmoor idylls (1896)
 * Songs of the West: folksongs of Devon & Cornwall (1905)
 * A Book of Dartmoor (1906)
 * Devon (1907)