by Lorraine Gibson.

Dialect poet William Barnes relished Dorset’s country dances, folksongs and carols and often wrote about community celebrations where music played a key part.
This spring, inspired by him, the Ridgeway Singers and Band, led by Tim Laycock and Phil Humphries and supported by Artsreach, are celebrating the county’s rich dialect through music, song and poetry.

William Barnes was the greatest of the English dialect poets, but he was also, as Thomas Hardy wrote ‘probably the most interesting link between present and past forms of rural life that England possessed’.
Born in Bagber, in the Blackmore Vale, in 1801, he attended school in Sturminster Newton.
Multi-talented, he later became an innovative schoolmaster, with a knowledge of more than 70 languages, wrote more than 30 books and was an artist, engraver, musician, folklorist, inventor and parish priest.
Many of Barnes’s contemporaries deemed him hopelessly old-fashioned, with his fondness for old ways, words, and customs; however, there’s cause to be thankful – for his foresight captured the sound of the Dorset speech in a truly imaginative way.
Led by Laycock and Humphries, the Ridgeway Singers and Band are joined by guests from the William Barnes Society to celebrate sounds and stories of old Dorset, performing traditional songs collected across the county, playing dance tunes from Blackmore Vale fiddler, Benjamin Rose, and reciting poems that keep Dorset’s rich dialect alive.

Unable to go? Artsreach, with local film company Pageant Productions, will be live streaming the event online.

Cerne Abbas Village Hall, 3pm, Sunday, February 19.
Tickets include a Dorset Cream tea.
Contact Artsreach on 01305 269512 or artsreach.co.uk.