Tim Hughes speaks to Jackie Oates ahead of her Oxford Folk Weekend gig

For generations, young children have been lulled to sleep by a soporific song. But, like so many things, in recent years the humble lullaby has fallen out of favour.

Few indeed are the mothers who send their offspring to dreamland with a tune. But one Oxford folk musician is determined to help revive the art of the bedtime melody.

Jackie Oates has spent the past 18 months collecting sleep-inducing songs from the centuries, and she will air them at a concert which, she insists, will not have music-lovers nodding-off. “I’m fascinated by lullabies,” she says. “They are a really important facet of the folk idiom, but they have been overlooked.

“They allow mothers to connect with their children and have a calming, bonding effect as well as being a traditional link to the past.”

Jackie’s show at the Old Fire Station is a highlight of this weekend’s Oxford Folk Weekend — which will see the city centre transformed into a reeling, stick-bashing, bell-ringing, fiddle-sawing riot of traditional music and dance. The show is one of scores of folk concerts, workshops and al fresco sets centred on the Old Fire Station and Gloucester Green. And, while aimed squarely at adults, it will be preceded by an afternoon session in the Central Library for children aged up to four.

Jackie’s hometown gig comes amid a national tour to promote the two-time BBC Radio 2 Folk Award-winner’s album called, reasonably enough, Lullabies. But don’t expect too much of an easy ride. Many of the songs, she insists, are dark and even brutal; a way for women to vent fears and frustrations or simply get issues off their chest. Typical subjects include loss, separation and domestic violence.

“They are either really reassuring and full of promises or are full of anger and anxiety,” she says. “They are useful for mothers to let off steam, and can be quite cathartic,” she says.

“Certainly, no one will be sleeping.”

Jackie, 29, who lives in Summertown and plays the fiddle, viola and piano as well as sings, is part of a generation of young musicians who are striving to preserve England’s folk song tradition. Like artists John Spiers and Jon Boden, the Unthanks, Seth Lakeman and Mercury Prize-nominated gypsy song collector Sam Lee, she has set out to record a form of music which has been ignored to the point of near extinction.

“I love the challenge of going out and finding songs which haven’t been recorded before,” she says. “It has been incredibly hard and has taken 18 months of talking to people and delving into song collections.”

The songs she has collected will be preserved as an archive of lullabies to be lodged in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House in London, the home of the English Folk Dance & Song Society. She is also busy sharing them with county pupils — singing to groups of children in Wallingford and Witney. And she hopes the songs will live on.

“I was brought up in a very folky family,” she says. “My parents were involved in the folk revival of the 1960s and I have seen folk go out of fashion and come back in.

“Growing up, most folk music was Scottish or Irish, but the English also have a folk
tradition to celebrate. It has incredible melodies and lyrics and tells you far more about people’s lives than any history book.
“You get a snapshot of people’s lives, experiences and emotions. They tell you what’s like being human. You can relate to people who lived 150 years ago — and it shows that life hasn’t changed that much.

Jackie has gathered songs from as far back as the 1800s. But while the lyrics may be old, she uses her talents as a musician to update the tunes. “I adapt them,” she says. “I write the tunes and arrange material to bring it up to date. I try to take
traditional songs and make them accessible to people my age.”

And that includes some unorthadox musicianship. “I sometimes play two
fiddles at the same time,” she says, cheerfully. “I have one under each arm and pluck them. It’s all about timbre; plucked fiddles have an amazing texture to them.”
She also experiments with the langspil — a three-stringed lap fiddle from Iceland.

When not performing on her own, Jackie plays with folk supergroup Imagined Village alongside Eliza and Martin Carthy and Chris Wood. She is also probably the only folk musician to have a line of cosmetics named after her. Jackie Oates tinted moisturiser was created by handmade cosmetics makers Lush and sold in many of its 830 shops worldwide — including its branch in Cornmarket, Oxford. The idea was the inspiration of the company’s folk-loving founders Mark and Mo Constantine who, she says, were impressed by her pale complexion.

So what lullabies does she like best? “I have included my favourite, it’s Alexander Beetle by AA Milne, about a granny
finding a beetle in a matchbox and letting it escape. I absolutely loved it when I was little, and when I heard it as an adult I wanted to cry.”
Another favourite is the mysterious Worthy Wood Carol, composed by an Exmoor gipsy as far back as the 1920s.
“I’ve often being struck by the way that, for adults, hearing lullabies can bring back strong memories and feelings of being a child again,” she says. “I’ve had a wonderful time exploring these songs in more detail; from the folklore of the cradle with its superstitions and customs, to the way in which lullabies can be outlets for the many aspects of parenthood.

"Through these unique songs, children often uncomprehendingly become a parent’s confidant, hearing of the joys, grievances and anxieties of the adult world. At other times they are moral tales, bribes for good behaviour or spells to comfort. The variety of material, style and purpose has made this a
fascinating journey.

“What, for me, has come to light most of all has been the hidden nature of some of the richest of the traditional lullabies. They have been tucked away in song collections, manuscripts and memories and given little real status in the traditional song repertoire."

And she wants us all to start singing them again. She adds: “I wanted to unearth more and get more people singing to children. And I’m excited to be giving them new life.”