Kevin Crossley-Holland et al. in Whiteleaf, near Princes Risborough - between in the middle of the 1940's and at the end of the 1940's

from The Hidden Roads: A Memoir of Childhood, page 9:

When we returned to Crosskeys [a cottage in the village of Whiteleaf, in the Chiltern Hills near Princes Risborough] after the war ended, my sister Sally and I slept on bunk beds in the ground-floor nursery.  I was on top, and played the pocket-general. 

There, Sally and I lay and listened to my father retelling traditional tales, sometimes accompanying himself on his Welsh harp.  An Anglo-Saxon half-line, singan ond secgan (to sing and say), suggests a way of reciting that is pitched but not melodic, and that’s how my father told us stories: he sang-and-said them.

cite as

Kevin Crossley-Holland, The Hidden Roads: A Memoir of Childhood (London, 2009), p. 9. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1546622112511 accessed: 28 March, 2024

location of experience: Whiteleaf, near Princes Risborough

Listeners

Kevin Crossley-Holland
children's author, Novelist, Poet, translator
1941-

Listening to

hide composers
musical story-telling performed by Peter Crossley-Holland

Experience Information

Date/Time between in the middle of the 1940's and at the end of the 1940's
Medium live
Listening Environment in the company of others, in private, indoors

Originally submitted by lcc5 on Fri, 04 Jan 2019 17:15:13 +0000
Approved on Fri, 24 Jul 2020 14:04:58 +0100