Phil Tanner (16 February 1862 – 19 February 1950) was a
traditional singer
A traditional singer, also known as a source singer, is someone who has learned folk songs in the oral tradition, usually from older people within their community.
From around the beginning of the twentieth century, song collectors such as Cecil ...
from
Llangenith
Llangennith ( cy, Llangenydd/Llangynydd) is a village in the City and County of Swansea, South Wales. It is located in the Gower. Moor Lane leads westwards to a caravan park near Rhossili Bay and Burrows Lane leads northwards to a caravan park ...
in the
Gower Peninsula
Gower ( cy, Gŵyr) or the Gower Peninsula () in southwest Wales, projects towards the Bristol Channel. It is the most westerly part of the historic county of Glamorgan. In 1956, the majority of Gower became the first area in the United Kingdom ...
(
South Wales).
Songs and singing style
Tanner was an invaluable source of several once popular English language folk songs, such as the
Child Ballads
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as '' ...
"
Barbara Allen" and "
Henry Martin", as well as the songs "
Sweet Primroses" and "
The Bonny Bunch of Roses", all of which were recorded in the 1930s and 40s. His performance of the local Gower
wassailing
The tradition of wassailing (''alt sp'' wasselling) falls into two distinct categories: the house-visiting wassail and the orchard-visiting wassail. The house-visiting wassail is the practice of people going door-to-door, singing and offering a ...
song became known as "
Gower Wassail
The Gower Wassail is a wassail song from Gower in Wales, UK. Wassailing is a midwinter tradition wherein either orchards or households are blessed by guisers, which came to Wales through exposure to English custom. The song is printed in A.L. L ...
" and was printed by
A.L. Lloyd
Albert Lancaster Lloyd (29 February 1908 – 29 September 1982),Eder, Bruce. (29 September 1982A. L. Lloyd - Music Biography, Credits and Discography AllMusic. Retrieved on 2013-02-24. usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English fo ...
and covered by popular folk groups including
Steeleye Span.
His songs were all in the English language, using the
Gower dialect
The Gower dialect refers to the older vocabulary or slang of the Gower Peninsula on the south Wales coast. It was Normanised/Anglicised relatively early after the Norman conquest of England. Relatively cut off from the Welsh hinterland, but with co ...
, since the Gower of his youth was still culturally distinct from the rest of Wales, and his style of singing is compared to that of
English singers.
Audience and broadcasts
Renowned locally as "the Gower Nightingale", he reached a national audience in his seventies with recordings for
Columbia and the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
''. Shortly before he died, he was featured in an article by
recalling "the voice of the sanest, happiest, kindest eccentric I ever knew, the voice of Phil Tanner, the Gower Nightingale".
His recordings have been reissued several times, most notably on the CD ''The Gower Nightingale'', which also includes the Wynford Vaughan-Thomas radio programme.
The editor of one reissue, the eminent
wrote: "When Phil died, England lost her best traditional singer".
Folk revival musicians were inspired by Tanner's songs, particularly "
".
"Welsh Folk Singer Phil Tanner Didles the Gower Reel and Sings the Wassail Song 1947"