Some Currents of British Folk Song in America 1916-1958
by Evelyn K. Wells
Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Dec., 1958), pp. 129-141
SOME CURRENTS OF BRITISH FOLK SONG IN AMERICA 1916-1958
BY EVELYN K. WELLS
LIKE the ballad collector's field notes, my folk-song diary is uneven. I go for weeks and months with no news, then everything comes at once. On such a day in early December my mail contained the following items: a notice of a concert of 'American
and International Folksongs, Ballads, and Divers Ditties', with a picture of the singer and his guitar, his head well thrown back in song; a subscription blank for Sing Out, a continuation of the People's Songs movement of the 1940s; an announcement of
John Langstaff's 'Christmas Revels for Children', with a Mummer's play, a Morris, the Horn Dance, two carols sung by Langstaff and acted out in modern dance, other carols by 'neighbors' children' and by the audience; and finally, The Journal of American
Folklore, containing, among other articles in the broader field of folklore, a study of a new 'Water Birch' version of 'Little Sir Hugh', more discussion on the historicity of Robin Hood and the Raglan-Bascom controversy on the origins of myth and ritual,
a lively exchange of five views on Sam Hinton's 'The Singer and his Conscience' (recently reprinted in English Dance and Song, and in Sing Out), and a learned article by the eminent musicologist, Charles Seeger, presenting all that is known and can be conjectured about the Appalachian dulcimer.
To extend the scene beyond my own mailbox, the hundred people who came to the Folk Music Week of the Country Dance Society's summer school at Pinewoods Camp, Massachusetts, last year, personify this diversity.
I think particularly of a few: those at first inseparable from their guitars and songs of protest; those who modestly echoed the singing and dulcimer descant of Jean Ritchie; whole families with recorders; the Canadian looking for a theme for a folk opera; the Midwest music student with a lovely coloratura voice who is discovering the possibilities for her in the literature of folk song; the programme chairman of the woman's club with an eye out for talent; the two semi-professionals, one a programme chairman herself for her southern folklore society, and with her own radio following, the other a costume recitalist with considerable musical ability and some interesting songs (e.g. an Irish ballad to the tune of 'Of Noble Race was Shinkin'), the Square dancer who at one of our first schools asked, 'Why do we have to sing all these songs we don't know?' and who now couldn't be stumped in a folk-song quiz; the social worker, editor of Israeli folk songs, who sang us a ballad she had written-in good broadside verse and to a good folk tune-about a local historical incident near her summer camp; the second-generation Morris man with a love of folk songs and a good voice, who has selected his college in a part of the country where there may still be songs to collect. These are some of the balance wheels for a movement which has sometimes been accused of preciousness. This melange is a sort of text of what has been happening to English folk song in America since Cecil Sharp's first visit.
An adequate discussion of Anglo-American folk song in the last 40 years would extend into regions beyond the scope of this perforce limited article, and many peripheral but illuminating aspects of the subject have been excluded. There is only brief mention of the knowledge and practice of English folk song in this country prior to 1916, no consideration of its relation to other ethnic traditions in America, no pursuit of the roads radiating from the central study of the Child ballad and its American survivals-such well-travelled roads as the non-traditional song, the local legend made into song in the English pattern, the song made into fiction, used in folk drama, borrowed by the white spiritual. There is only a glance at the critical writing in musical and literary journals, no mention of the stories of the picturesque and exciting salvage of song, and its salvagers, in the popular monthlies, weeklies and newspapers. Readers will note other omissions. I have been able to high-light only some of the details on a crowded canvas.
But to make a positive approach. We must remind ourselves that when Sharp first came to the Appalachians in 1916, many people were already at work. Kittredge had published some interesting songs from Kentucky; the U.S. Bureau of Education had
sent to rural school teachers a list of Child's 305 ballads, urging prompt report on any findings; scholars were collecting, albeit in a tentative and amateur way, voicing difficulties that might be to-day's-the singer has forgotten his 'old fool songs', texts
are sadly corrupted and have landed in the nursery, or, worse still, in the parlour; tunes and variants need more study. But one man writes that 'the South is on the eve of contributing a highly important and significant chapter to the history of balladry
in America'[1], How closely this agreed with Sharp's opinion, when he went south after the memorable inspection of Mrs. Campbell's manuscript, and how congenially he worked with scholars already in the field is told in the Sharp biography.[2]
Thus, great though his influence and contribution were, no doubt some kind of folk song renaissance would have taken place if he had never come. The particular direction it took was however largely due to him.
COLLECTIONS
And now, 40 years later, what have we salvaged? From 20 states and three larger areas full-scale scholarly collections; specialized studies of the songs of the mine patch, the lumber camp, the cowboy and the shantyman; the yield from some particularly remote pockets of folk song, like the Texas 'Big Thicket' and the outer coastal islands of Virginia.
In the early days teachers' institutes, educational journals and newspaper columns set many people to work. The Folklore Society of Virginia organized collecting in that state. Substance, editorial method, and discussion of theory in the books of Reed
Smith, A. K. Davis, and John H. Cox set standards for books to come. Early work on tunes, however, was either lacking or untrustworthy, because of untrained notation and transcription, and the primitive nature of recording machines, whenever they
were used.
The human side of collecting, from the angle of both searcher and informant, has grown in importance as we have come to realize its part in the whole picture of folk song. This is progressively evident in Mackenzie's Quest of the Ballad, Dorothy Scarborough's Song-Catcher in Southern Mountains, the anecdotes of Mellinger Henry, Arnold's emphasis on the whole repertoire of a singer, Greenway's American Folk Songs of Protest with its highly pertinent sketches of some of the singers, and
Mrs. Flanders's Ballads Migrant in New England, based upon her own migrations.
Our two largest collections, the four-volume Ozark Folksongs and the five-volume Frank C. Brown Collection, of which three parts are in print, each devote a separate volume to Anglo-American songs. The former adds evidence of the westward trek from Tennessee and Kentucky, and the attendant corruption and adaptation of the songs. The Brown collection, long awaited, contains many rare ballads (Child No. 10 with an 'Edinboro" refrain, and Nos. 11, 14, 36, 37, 58, 63, 76, 77, 118, 140, 181),
and 150 which are broadside-derived. Editorial policy has deferred the printing of the tunes until another volume, due to come out this year. In the meantime opinion on such unusual texts as those of 'Thomas Rymer' (37), 'Sir Patrick Spens' (58), and
'Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne' (140) is suspended, and when the tunes do appear, the scholar must work from two or three unwieldy books at the same time. In the Ozark collection, too, it is unfortunate that the tunes have not received their due.
They are clumsily and incorrectly noted and reproduced, at times disquietingly close to printed sources, at others quite unlike the actual deposited recordings of the singers.
But it must be said in justice to the editor, Vance Randolph, that he makes no secret of his musical inadequacy, and that he deserves all praise for his valiant work of salvage, carried on under many disadvantages.
The need to cull from tradition songs for groups and individual performers has been partly met in such a series of pamphlets as Schirmer's American Folk Songs, edited by Josiah Combs, John Jacob Niles, Mellinger Henry, and Mrs. Flanders; by Gladys
Jameson's Wake and Sing, published for the centenary of Berea College in Kentucky, by Jackson's American Folk Music for High School and other Choral Groups, and others. Unusual teaching techniques are suggested in Ruth Seeger's books of folk
songs for children. Several volumes have been set for the soloist by well-known composers.
Arrangements of single songs for mixed voices are numerous. Three large popular collections with piano accompaniment and suggested guitar chording, Folk Song USA, The Fireside Book of Folk Songs, and A Treasury of the World's Finest Folk Songs, handsomely illustrated, are on many American pianos, and have, for better and worse, indoctrinated a generation. Among the paper-backs, Songs of All Time, edited first by Olive D. Campbell and reissued by Edna Ritchie and three other southern recreation workers, combines Anglo-American songs with a few from other countries, all well chosen and tested; Richard Chase's recent American Folk Tales and Songs with its documentary record also restores to mountain singers their own
songs; the Burl Ives Songbook and the Kolbs' A Treasury of Folk Song have had a large sale to rural and urban singers.
Certain shifts of emphasis may be inferred from the dates of publication of these collections. The 1920s produce Folk Songs of the South, Traditional Ballads of Virginia, and British Ballads from Maine, the first book to deal adequately with tunes. Louise
Pound's American Ballads and Songs introduces to students a few American texts of native and imported songs, with model notes. In the 1930s there is the largest crop, mostly from university presses-the collections of Cambiaire and Chappell, four from New England, two from Mellinger Henry, two from the Lomaxes, dealing largely with the west and southwest, and, in addition to the two-volume Sharp-Karpeles collection, others from Mississippi, Ohio, New York State, Southern Illinois, Kentucky, Western Pennsylvania, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.
The U.S. Works Progress Administration project, which kept collectors and scholars in the field during the depression years, gives us a valuable series of pamphlets on American folk song edited by George Herzog and Herbert Halpert, which include stimulating essays, and songs not otherwise accessible, with stress on the musical aspect. More and more books appear with tunes, although the collectors usually deprecate their musical skill.
In the 1940s collecting drops off, except in Missouri and Indiana. The three large popular collections belong to this decade. In the 1950s collections appear again, from Alabama, Florida, and Texas; there is a second gleaning from Nova Scotia and New
England, the Ozarks collection is completed and the Brown collection begun. The Sharp-Karpeles volumes are reprinted. The paper-backs increase. Another sign of the times is the reprinting of a book which was outdated even in 1927 when it first
appeared, the mountain songs of Ethel Park Richardson, with foreword by Sigmund Spaeth. Mrs. Richardson has won $100,000 on a TV folk-song quiz.
In addition to these main streams, trickles and rivulets of folk song sent in to the journals show the percolation of English-born songs throughout the country. A group of songs from a Kentucky family isolated in Northern Wisconsin is found,[3] and some
treasures from Utah, including a 'Broomfield Hill' sung by an old man of 93, who learned it and 48 other songs 'while freighting from Southern Utah to Salt Lake City in 1870'.[4] Along with some curious fragments of Mummers' plays from Eastern
Kentucky comes a full text of 'The Holly and the Ivy',[5] possibly suspect because of nearness to settlement schools.
The growing need for classroom presentation to a generation increasingly familiar with folk songs is reflected in three anthologies of the 1950s. B. J. Whiting's paper-back edition of 35 Child ballads is presented with comment both witty and learned. MacEdward Leach's Ballad Book and Albert Friedman's Viking Book of Ballads summarize the essentials of ballad criticism and give a body of Child ballads with some American additions, which Friedman supplements from New Zealand, and Leach with Scandinavian analogues. Friedman's departure from the rigid order of Child brings together some strange companions (under 'Tabloid Crime', for instance, 'Lord Rendal' and 'Pearl Bryan'). He prints a few tunes. Leach omits them, on the ground of the inadequacy of notation systems, the general musical illiteracy of the readers, and expense; but he insists that ballads should be listened to, sung by a traditional singer if possible, or on an authentic recording. There are records to accompany both books, made, however, by sophisticated singers, and indifferently successful. The Ballad Tree is in a sense an anthology, although it is usually classified as criticism and literary history.
ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES
The nation's largest collection of field recordings in the Library of Congress in Washington was notably increased by the Lomaxes and others in the 1930s and 1940s. The first albums of Anglo-American songs, issued in 1941, are now appearing on
LP, together with some new albums, two or three of which will be devoted to Child ballads. Recent limitation of funds has retarded some of the necessary functions of the archive, such as field work and transferring the present collection to tape for reference.
The collection is growing, however, with the deposits of private collectors. The increase in commercial recording has introduced many young people to folk music, and they come to the Library for further research in its authentic material. A large New England collection, gathered by the tireless and devoted Mrs. Helen Hartness Flanders, is housed at Middlebury College in Vermont. Although geographically remote, its high quality has attracted many scholars. Further cataloguing and a proposed new library will make it more available. The curator, Miss Marguerite Olney, hopes to add one or two more records to the present single album. In a nearby summer school of English, which draws people of all professions from all parts of the
country, ballad students have been instructed and inspired by listening to these authentic recordings.
Of the many special folk music sections in university and city libraries, the Child collection at Harvard is one of the most inclusive. Photostat copies of Sharp's notebooks and a microfilm of Gavin Greig's collection at Aberdeen are housed there.
A growing center for folklore scholars is at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana-the only institution, I believe, which grants an advanced degree in folklore.
The recently opened British and American Folk Music Collection of the Denver Public Library in Colorado will, if the goal of its friends is reached, be the most important collection of books on folk music in the western part of the country. In addition to the standard scholarly collections and criticism, it contains many rare books now out of print.
Some guidance through this accumulation is offered by such books as Davis's Descriptive Index, Haywood's gigantic Bibliography, and some privately printed lists. In 1942 the Library of Congress issued a three-volume check list of recorded
songs in the English language deposited in its archive. The Standard Dictionary of Folklore contains valuable articles on folk song, the ballad, the carol, etc. The perennial uncertainty of definition is perhaps reflected by the inclusion, under 'Folklore', of
statements by 20 different scholars. A much needed and long promised index has not yet appeared. At the moment the most useful books are Coffin's listing of British Traditional Ballads in North America, and two by Laws, Native American Balladry
(which incidentally states that there are more British than indigenous songs current in America) and American Balladry from British Broadsides, which shows the great number of songs from printed sources which have passed into tradition.
RECORDS AND SINGERS
In these days when a shelf of records is as much a part of a room as a shelf of books, and when not only music of all sorts and levels, but the readings of poets, authors, and and actors are on tap, folk song records have found a ready market in Hi-Fi addicts and others less particular about the quality of the sounds they listen to. The growth of technical skills and the simplification of equipment have sent more collectors into the field, whose privately issued records often contain rare songs.
Small companies have their little day. Larger ones are doing a flourishing business, sometimes, unfortunately, with resulting commercialization of the singer, who finds his concert programmes impoverished by the requirements of the companies and managers that he sing only those songs which can be bought on disks. But a happier trend is noted in the demand for better songs by better singers, from the saving remnant who want something more than commercialized folk song. Several companies now have the backing of considerable knowledge and taste. Elektra, for instance, states that it 'aims to reflect, with feeling and respect, the style and accent of the people', choosing the song and the manner of the singer, rather than the performer with the big name.
Among the scores of excellent recordings of Anglo-American song now available, such disks as Jean Ritchie's Field Trip and Matching Songs by Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl are of especial interest in showing parallels of the same song. The most notable addition to recorded 'musts' is the five-album English and Scottish Popular Ballads, reviewed elsewhere in this Journal. The editors plan to follow this series with American versions of Child ballads, sung by American singers. The student's need to listen to as well as read ballads is shown in the provision of records to accompany the anthologies.
We are fortunate in having a number of good singers, especially women such as Hally Wood, Peggy Seeger, and Jean Ritchie, though only the last named is a folk singer by long inheritance. Her simple musical style has been a wholesome corrective
for young imitators. As a concert singer, John Langstaff has the good taste, and the technical skill, to let the song speak for itself. Burl Ives, with his contagious manner and fine voice, did more on his early records to popularize folk songs than any other singer. Richard Dyer-Bennet's large repertoire takes one into many ballad by-ways. But it is invidious, in the case of records and singers, to single out a few names from the many. I might add, however, that the number of recent British imports may indicate a new migration from England to America.
There is a plethora of guitar, banjo and dulcimer accompaniment of varying skills, from the prevalent monotonous strum to the virtuosity of Dyer-Bennet on the guitar, and Pete Seeger on the banjo. More players are exploring the haunting tones and
deceptively simple technique of the Kentucky dulcimer. A few singers interject an unaccompanied song now and then; a very few say they prefer it. One hopes that the more familiar we become with the better playing of suitable instruments, and the more we yield to the charm of the voice alone, the more critical we will be of inferior performance; and that soon the generation of 'folk singers' who get a guitar so they can learn to sing will have given way to one that reverses the process. I recently asked a young man who called on me with not one but two guitars if he had ever tried to sing without an instrument. Yes, he said, but nobody listened.
CRITICISM
The stream of criticism, swelling with that of collecting, has now attained to some extent a seasoned philosophical perspective. Musical and literary journals carry articles on folk song, but most of the meat is in the folklore periodicals-the parent Journal of American Folklore and its offspring from Texas, the South, the West and Midwest, and New York State. From 1930 to 1937 the influential critic Phillips Barry published the Bulletin of the Folk Song Society of the Northeast. A good deal of the early criticism is 'the victim of the dissertation habit', to quote one writer, and even to-day many articles seem to be tasks set for the graduate student, indeed the undergraduate.
The passage of time brings more freedom. Ballads are studied in relation to their European analogues and in the light of comparative literature; the priority of texts, analyses of changes, curious parallels, and readings of manuscripts are disputed;
research throws new light on ancient ballad feuds; hoaxes are discovered, even bragged about. Literary pollution in the clear stream of tradition is spotted: in a North Carolina 'Lord Lovel' collected from a girl who learned it from her new England
teacher at a settlement school,[6] and a 'Mary Hamilton' recording put out in good faith by the Library of Congress, sung by a Virginian singer of otherwise impeccable repertoire, which turns out to have been taught her by an enthusiastic visiting folklorist.[7] Aunt Molly Jackson's remarkable Robin Hood ballads were inspired, or at least influenced, by the copy of Child lent her by a collector.[8]
The debate on communal authorship has finally exhausted itself, so that now even the text books have stopped telling us about the singing dancing throng, but other moot questions continue. Historicity competes with myth; the ballad, like other literature, is psychoanalyzed; in the present revival through the means of radio, recordings, and urban practice, some see the death of true 'home-made' folk song; others the seeds of a new life. Warning is sounded against the propagandist who distorts folk song into a weapon for stirring up division and hatred. Much of the alarm about this always present danger is objectively reasoned, but it is sometimes absurd, as in an effort made, during the height of McCarthyism, to outlaw that 'communist', Robin Hood, from the schools. True to the pattern of literary criticism, a questioning of authority has arisen. The strictures of the older scholars-Grundtvig, Child, Kittredge, Sharp-are tested against new findings, and awaken a sense of undue constraint, indeed resentment, sometimes with satirical comment on 'genuflections' to the past generation. This critical spirit has no doubt made for freer inquiry. Now, however, there is evidence of a return to dependence on the older scholars and older works.
A chronology of reviews reflects the tides of opinion, especially in the response to Sharp's influence. Mackenzie's insistence on the need for music is praised; there is
appreciation of Sharp's assistance in collecting in Virginia, which has obviated much
of the difficulty of accurate notation and has enabled Davis to include in an appendix
a number of 'the best tunes in America'. The harmonizing of Jean Thomas's 'Devil's
Ditties' is viewed with alarm. By 1933, when practically every collection appears with
tunes, America's attention to folk music is said to place her first in ballad scholarship.
Hendren's book on ballad rhythms is called a landmark; Belden's regret at his musical
incompetency is noted. Although one reviewer of the Sharp-Karpeles collection finds
it to be simply an expansion of the earlier book, and hopes that the tide will now turn
to renewed textual study[9], it is the opinion of another that 'as a historical record,
detailed, accurate, and veracious, the worth of [this collection] 500 years hence will
be beyond all calculation'.[10] A reviewer of the reprinted biography regrets that it was
not substantially rewritten, since there is need for revaluation of 'one of the greatest
of folksong collectors', whose adulation 'has become almost a cult'.", For the last ten
years review columns have been giving increasing space to commercial recordings.
One early prophetic note regrets that Burl Ives and Josh White are singing for a
'Personality Series' which stresses mannerisms and which will inseminate listeners
and imitators; artists must grow a conscience and stop outfolking the folk. In general,
record reviewing shows a growing insistence on proper documentation, simple singing,
and good musicianship.
There is now a recognized corpus of standard criticism, including such books by
American scholars as Louise Pound's Poetic Origins and the Ballad, which disposes finally
of the communal origin theory, Wimberly's assemblage of early beliefs in Folklore in
the English and Scottish Ballads, Hustvedt's Ballad Books and Ballad Men, which traces
Child's literary descent and publishes his correspondence with Grundtvig, Gerould's
Ballad of Tradition (now happily in print again, in paper-back), which establishes the
the ballad in literary history as nothing else has done, Gerould's student Hendren's
Study of Ballad Rhythm, the first close analysis of the interdependence of text and tune,
and Taylor's study of variants in 'Edward' and 'Sven i Rosengard'.
These books, with the new bibliographies of Coffin and Laws, are the basic library for the student. At present there is an expressed need for a nation-wide survey, that collecting may be less haphazard, objectives defined, and critical dicta weighed against scientific data. In such a co-ordination, with its emphasis on new specific studies, contact between singer
and scholar, admission of the importance of 'popular' song, and continued reference
to the work of the older scholars, is seen the hope for fresh and sounder generalization
than some of that of the past. The most substantial recent resume of our findings,
methods, prospects and philosophy is the special report on folk song to which the
Southern Folklore Quarterly for June 1953 is devoted.
The incremental repetition throughout this scattered commentary is 'study the
folk song as song'. It was inevitable that after the appearance of Sharp's first collection,
the problem of folk music should become an articulate concern, with opinion converging on the high quality of the American tunes and the problem of classifying
them. Hustvedt's ingenious but inadequate melodic index of 1936 was an early
attempt. To-day two musical theorists are attracting attention. Samuel Bayard, in
his 'Prolegomena', reduces a great mass of apparently unrelated melodies to certain
'tune families', which went into countless variants, dispersing, merging and diverging
again. Bertrand Bronson's many articles in journals and papers read before learned
societies over a number of years have focused more and more on the morphology of
the hitherto apparently amorphous ballad tune, and have awakened our anticipations
of his Melodic Tradition of the Popular Ballads, the first volume of which, dealing with
Child ballads 1-53, is now in the press, and which eventually will classify all
known tunes of Child ballads, from printed and oral sources. With this musical
companion to Child's texts (now again reprinted in full), the wheel of collecting,
criticism, and scholarship comes full circle.
OTHER CONTRIBUTING FACTORS
Explicit in this discussion are those scholars, collectors and performers who have been mentioned by name; implicit are the many anonymous contributors. Two or three movements, however, must be mentioned.
Sarah Gertrude Knott's national festivals, taking place usually in St. Louis, with
newspaper sponsorship, began in the 1930s in a small way in scattered rural communities.
Her programmes have grown steadily more authentic, as she has been
increasingly able to select her performers. In this way many otherwise unknown
singers, dancers, and musicians have come to notice.
The group known as 'The Weavers', organized by Pete Seeger, had by 1950 moved
from night-club informality into the world of commercial recording, taking 'folk
song', to paraphrase Time Magazine, out of the province of the long-haired esthete
and the academic lecture-recital. 'People's Songs' had involved many of the same
leaders and attracted the same following. This popularizing of folk song, real and
pseudo, in some respects deplorable, is not to be discounted, since to-day's devotees
of popular song sometimes become tomorrow's students of folk song, and since
comparison of the two is wholesome for the traditionalist.
Out of small beginnings under the late John C. Campbell in 1913 has grown the
Council of Southern Mountain Workers, which publishes a quarterly, sponsors a
widespread recreation movement, meets in yearly conference, and has for nearly
20 years supported Christmas vacation schools and spring festivals of folk song and
folk dance at Berea, Kentucky. The part played by folk song in these gatherings is the
liveliest example of the restoration of a living tradition to its heirs, who are both
consciously and unconsciously responding to its values. There are other Appalachian
workshops and study courses in folk song, notably that at the John C. Campbell
Folk School at Brasstown, North Carolina. Richard Chase, lecturer, teacher, collector,
and editor of tales and songs, is building up a folk arts center at his North
Carolina headquarters, and he directs a summer course for academic credit at a
nearby teacher training college.
The continual interchange of visits between recreation workers in and outside of the mountain area, by means of these small gatherings for study and practice, has spread the knowledge of folk song. The visits of the 'Southerneers' to the Country
Dance Society's northern schools stem directly from a relationship that began when
Cecil Sharp first went to the Appalachians. And finally, readers of this Journal need
no reminder of the steady, informed, enthusiastic work of the Country Dance Society
under the direction of May Gadd. The exchanges of visits between English and Americans
at our respective schools have continued to inspire and inform us. How far into
the American scene the influence of the visiting English at Pinewoods Camp has
penetrated is perhaps suggested by my initial sketch of the diverse elements in our
Country Dance Society.
To-day our archives are bulging-and partly uncatalogued. Our great collections
are in print, our scholarly methods have taken shape, our criticism is in the main
balanced and mature. Our record libraries are pushing out the walls of our rooms.
Folk singers-with and without quotation marks-sing all the way from night-clubs
to Carnegie Hall, to say nothing of appearances on the air. Symphonic orchestras
play compositions based on folk music. The student who 25 years ago had learned
'The Raggle Taggle Gypsies' at summer camp is the expert to-day on radio and disk
singers. The folk song has come to town. But the road goes in the other direction, too.
When I last visited Singing Willie Nolan, his son sang 'Sweet William and Fair
Ellen' along with his father, but he read the words off the printed page, though Willie
still sang as he always had, eyes closed. Mrs. Grover, when I last saw her, sang with
her own book of songs open before her. When Maud Karpeles and I visited some of
Cecil Sharp's singers and their descendants in 1955, two sisters who certainly had not
forgotten their parents' songs preferred to sing them out of Sharp's book, and the
grand-daughter of another notable singer told us she had prepared for her women's
club a programme of his songs-which she had learned out of the Sharp-Karpeles
collection in the University of Virginia library. Thus the two worlds of city and
country, scholar and singer, have come together.
Our focus on Anglo-American folksong in 1916 was clear and definite, but limited.
If to-day our vision is blurred by the expanded field, it is correspondingly enlarged and
deepened by 40 years' evidence of the thorough percolation of our British inheritance
of song to the corners of the country, and its assimilation into the texture of American
culture. The strength and quality of that inheritance was first and unforgettably shown
to us in the clear light thrown by Cecil Sharp on the Anglo-American folk songs of the
Appalachians.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arnold, Byron D. Folksongs of Alabama, University, Ala., 1950.
Barry, Phillips, ed. Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast, Nos. 1-12,
Cambridge, Mass., 1930-1937.
Barry, Phillips, F. H. Eckstorm British Ballads from Maine, New Haven, Conn., 1929.
and M. W. Smyth.
Bayard, Samuel. 'Prolegomena to a Study of the Principal Melodic Families of
British-American Folk Song', Journal of American Folk Lore, vol. 63, 1950.
Beck, Earl C. The Lore of the Lumber Camps, Lansing, Mich., 1938.
Belden, H. M., ed. Ballads and Songs collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society (Univ. of Mo. Studies) Columbia, Mo., 1940.
Best, Dick and Beth, eds. Song Fest, New York, 1955. Songs, Ballads, Rounds, etc,
Boni, Margaret,a nd TheF iresideB ook of Folk Songs,N ew York, 1947. Norman Lloyd.
Brewster, Paul G. Ballads and Songs of Indiana, Bloomington, Ind., 1942.
Brown, Frank C. See White, Newman I., ed.
Cambiaire,C . P. East Tennesseea nd WestV irginiaM ountainB allads,L ondon, 1934.
Campbell,J ohn C. TheS outhernH ighlandera nd His HomelandN, ew York, 1921.
Campbell, Olive D. and English Folksongs from the Southern Appalachians, New York,
Cecil Sharp. 1917.
Chappell, L ouis W. Folk Songs o f Roanoke and the Albemarle, Morgantown,W est Va., 1939.
Chase, Richard. American F olk Tales a nd S ongs (SignetK ey Book), New York, 1956.
Coffin Tristram P. The B ritishT raditionaBl alladi n Nott h America( Publicationso f the American Folk Lore Society, Bibliographical Series, II), Philadelphia, 1950.
Cox, John Harrington. Folk-Songs of the South, Cambridge, Mass., 1925.
Creighton,H elen. Songsa ndB alladsf rom NovaS cotia, Toronto, 1933.
Creighton,H elen, and TraditionaSl ongsf rom Nova Scotia, Toronto, 1950.
Doreen Senior.
Davidson, Levette J. A Guidet o AmericanF olklore,D enver, Col., 1951.
Davis, Arthur K. Folk-Songs of Virginia, A Descriptive Index and Classification,
Durham, N.C., 1949.
Davis, ArthurK . TraditionaBl alladso f VirginiaC, ambridge,M ass., 1929.
Deutsch, Leonhard. A Treasuryo f the World'sF inestF olk Songs, New York, 1942.
Doerflinger,W illiam. Shantymena ndS hantyboysN, ew York, 1951.
Eddy, Mary 0. Ballads and Songs from Ohio, New York, 1939.
Flanders, Helen Hartness. A Garland of Green Mountain Song (Green Mountain Pamphlets
No. 1), Northfield, Vt., 1934.
Flanders,H elen Hartness VermonFt olk-Songsa ndB allads,B rattleboro,V t., 1931.
and George Brown.
Flanders, Helen Hartness Ballads Migrant in New England, New York, 1953.
and Marguerite Olney.
Fox Strangways, A. H., and Cecil Sharp, 2nd ed., London, 1955.
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Greenleaf,E lizabethB ., and Ballads and Sea-Songs from NewfoundlandC, ambridge, Mass.,
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140
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---------------------
I Reed Smith, 'The Traditional B allad in the South', Journal o f American F olklore( JAFL),V ol. 27 (1914), p. 66.
2 See Bibliography fo r complete references, s hortened h ere in the interest o f easier reading.
3 Asher E. Treat, 'Kentucky Folk Song in Northern Wisconsin', JAFL, Vol. 52 (1939), pp. 1-51.
4 Lester A. Hubbard and LeRoy J. Robertson, 'Traditional Ballads from Utah', JAFL, Vol. 64
(1951), pp. 37-53.
5 Marie Campbell, 'Survivals of Old Folk Drama in the Kentucky Mountains', JAFL, Vol. 51
(1938), pp. 10-24.
6 Dorothy ScarboroughA, Song-Catcher in Southern Mountains (1937), p. 100. The singer mentioned learned the song from E. K. Wells at the Pine Mountain School.
7 A. H. Scouten, 'Notes and Queries', JAFL, Vol. 64 (1951), pp. 131-32.
8 John Greenway, 'Aunt Molly Jackson and Robin Hood', JAFL, Vol. 69 (1956), p. 25.
9 Louise Pound, JAFL, Vol. 46 (1933), pp. 199-200.
10 Bertrand H. Bronson, JAFL, Vol. 67 (1954), p. 95.
11 D. K. Wilgus, Southern Folklore Quarterly, Vol. 21 (1957), pp. 122-23.