Six-time BBC Folk Awards nominee Jim Causley and Miranda Sykes of Award-Winning Show of Hands and Daphne’s Flight come together for the first time to celebrate the centenary of a Victorian superstar through his music and stories.
Sabine Baring-Gould inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Sherlock Holme’s Hound and Bernard Shaw’s Doolittle. He brought Ghostly Aunt Eliza, wretched heroine Mehalah and Norse hero Grettir to life. He mentored folk song collector Cecil Sharp – and wrote Onward Christian Soldiers
He was a giant of his time. He was a top ten best-selling novelist; the writer of what is still the go-to book on werewolves; author of a nerve-tingling book of ghost stories; storyteller of the Norse Myths of Iceland; compiler of a classic Dartmoor history book and composer of numerous popular hymns.
But he says the most important thing he did in his life was to collect songs from the countryfolk of Devon and Cornwall. A pioneer collector, starting a decade before Sharp and Vaughan Williams, he amassed more than 2000 songs.