f38 Priddy Folk Festival

It’s a small but perfectly formed village event tucked away in Somerset’s rolling Mendip Hills. Words: Elizabeth Kinder. Photos: Judith Burrows.

M

y friend Wendie and I drove across one field and pulled up as directed, behind the hedge of the second, to park the car.

We’d arrived at the enchanting three-day Priddy Folk Festival, somewhere in its mid- dle on a timeless English Saturday in July. Given our combined attendance at historic Frome Cheese Show days, we felt prepared for anything that Priddy, this small and pretty village nestling in the Mendips, might throw at us. We were wrong.

Looking along the narrow road by the field, past grass verges and old stone cot- tages, we could see the main festival site on the village green. Large tents with their bright coloured pennants flying in the breeze looked positively mediæval amongst the food and drink stalls. We walked towards the action with a group of people dressed in traditional costumes featuring clogs.

It was as if we’d entered a place where time had not stood exactly still but existed in a different dimension: a place outside

time where past, present and future are meaningless concepts: where as yet unwrit- ten songs are already old and the works of Thomas Hardy are not classic literature but current affairs.

Slightly disconcerted and somewhat weary (it had been a long drive), on reach- ing the green we immediately bumped into the editor of this magazine, aka The Man In Black (TMIB) and in this crowd easy to spot, even though the organisers had minimised the tie-dye hemp quota by putting the mer- chandise sellers in a separate field. Taking one look at us, he marched us straight to the beer tent with its convivial atmosphere and lively queue where he was quickly served, but as the place was living up to its name, ie no spirits, he suggested we go to the pub – and get lunch while we were at it.

The pub was packed inside and out, featuring lone singer-songwriters with gui- tars in the garden, a fine instrumental ensemble in the snug, a close harmony singing group in the bar and another in the dining room: it was awash with fabulous

sound as old folk tunes, ballads, polkas and jigs bounced off the walls and intermingled.

It would have been easy to get lost in the eternal joy-in-the-moment of it all, what with the lunch of one olive with the vodka martini and chilled white wine, but tearing ourselves away we dashed back down the lane, back past the old red phone box with it’s new defibrillator, back past a busking three-part harmony group and their wiry-haired lurcher and into the action on the village green. More fine singing brought us to the open mic session in the fringe tent, which had earlier fea- tured workshops on collective song-writ- ing and performances by festival stalwarts like Ant Noel and the Peabody Drakes. In the Eastwater tent The Blue School Folk Club’s lovely performance was proving the great benefits of the music and arts fund- ing that the festival provides, and sitting outside it TMIB could be spotted deep in conversation with guitar legend Wizz Jones before the latter’s top set in the Swildons concert tent.