Bluegrass Messengers

NEW YORK FOLKLORE,
Vol. XIV. Nos. 3-4, 1988

[not edited yet]

Anglo-American Folksong Collecting and Singing Traditions in Rural New York State
VAUGHN WARD

The eastern and southern sections of upstate New York were settled during the 17th and 18th centuries primarily by British Isles immigrants and Anglo-Americans from New England who came to New York seeking land and opportunity. Once here, they intermarried with descendants of Dutch, Scots-Irish, German and later Irish immigrants to form a population with a similar ethnic and cultural background to that found throughout the Appalachian mountain chain. Among the cultural treasures brought and preserved by these early New Yorkers and their descendants was a rich tradition of songs and ballads.

Ballads are folk songs differentiated from lyric songs by their storytelling function. Anglo-American ballads are usually related from a thirdperson point of view; the narrative frequently begins in the middle of the tale and moves swiftly to a dramatic conclusion. The Anglo-American ballad is related to a much wider pan-European ballad tradition of great antiquity, but documentation before the late Middle Ages remains sketchy. Other ballads were developed more recently, either in the British Isles or in North America. Examples of older ballads (e.g. "Sir John Randall"' or "Gypsy Davy"), as well as newer ballads composed in North America (e.g. "Jam at Gerry's Rock" or "Jack Haggerty"), have been collected in New York and many continue to be sung today. Ballads, like other forms of folk music, are written by individuals, but the composers' identities are usually quickly forgotten as their songs are adopted and reshaped by other members of their communities.

Ballads attracted the attention of scholars as early as the Renaissance and during the 18th and 19th centuries, a concerted effort was made by individuals to collect and document them. In the United States, a young Boston-born Harvard professor named Francis James Child (1825:1896) undertook a lifelong project to document and catalogue all known Anglo-Celtic ballads. In his landmark publication, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882), Child presents numerous versions or "variants" of 305 ballads.[1] Child's work was based exclusively on written texts rather than on his own field collecting. He culled texts both from earlier manuscript collections and from his voluminous correspondence with British and American scholars. A number of Child's correspondents sent him materials collected in New York State: including WW. Newell, a folklorist best known for his studies of American childrens' games, and Dr. Huntington, Methodist Bishop of Central New York, and various amateur collectors throughout the state (see, for example, Child 1882, N:72, #200K). It should be noted that Child was more interested in ballads as texts than as living folklore; he rarely included the tunes to which they were sung, nor did he discuss performers or performance practices.. This precedent was followed by other American collectors in the early 20th century, who followed Child's lead in their concern with the study of ballad texts: including Henry M. Belden in Missouri, Louise Pound in Nebraska, W. Roy MacKenzie in Nova Scotia, and Frank C. Brown in North Carolina.[2] But it was the field collections of English scholars Cecil Sharp and Maude Karpeles in small Anglo-American communities in the southern Appalachians during 1916-1918 that captured the public's attention.[3] Although many of the same Child and broadside ballads they recorded in the southern mountains could also be found throughout the Northeast and Middle West, their field work led members of the public to mistakenly associate balladry traditions only with the southern Appalachian region.

Early field work led to the notion that balladry was uniquely southern Appalachian. The rich traditions of New York State were neglected. In addition to "Child ballads"  broadside ballads w ere also popular in New York State. This term is used to describe composed narrative ballads that flourished in 17th and 18th century Britain and later in America. Often
written by songwriters of varying talents, and set to well-known tunes,
these versifications of local and national news were printed on single sheets
of paper (i.e. broadsides) and sold to the public for a nominal fee. They
tended towards the sensational - replete with accounts of murders,
outlaws, battles and tragedies, often rendered in doggerel. Because of their
relatively recent origin and their evolution from a single printed source,
broadside ballads texts have remained fairly stable compared with those
of the Child ballads.a Important scholarly work on American broadside
ballads was done by Tiistam P. Coffin inThe British TraditionaBl aIIadi n North
America (1950), and G. Malcolm Laws in Natkte American BaIIadry (1950) and
American BaIIadry f rom British Broadsides ( 1957)!

In addition to Child and broadside ballads, non-narrative or "lyric"
songs were also popular in Anglo-American communities. Still late1, comic
songs, patriotic songs, vaudeville and theatre songs, and sentimental
"heart" songs entered the repertoire of traditional singers.

New York State Collections
That old saying that folklore occurs primarily where folklorists spend
their spare time is applicable to a discussion of New York State's traditional ballads. Although some fine early collections of New York materials were undertaken, the publication of Empire State materials, especially prior to the 1970s, was sparse enough to support Simon Bronner's (177) assertions that the State "has not received the folk cultural appreciation reserved for
New England [and] . . . remains inadequately represented in folklore collections."
The first New York State ballad collections were private songsters/ personal
collections of song texts written down by one person or a succession
of people within one family. Five such manuscript collections from New
York State have been published: A Pioneer S ongster (Cutting 1952), containing texts compiled between 1841 and 1856 by the Stevens-Douglass family in
Wyoming County; The GaiI War Songstero f a Monroe County Farmet (Gravelle
1971),c ompiled by ]ames Polk Edmunds between 1863a nd 1865;A Schoharie
County Songster (McNeil 1969), based on a small chapbook kept by Ida
Finkell of Argusville from L879-1883A; Delanson Manuscript of Songs,( Oster
1952), found in a Delanson antique shop; and The Curtis Collection of Songs
(Thompson 1953), which includes both traditional and popular material
from after the Civil War. These collections provide a look at the repertoire
sung by traditional musicians in rural New York before 1900 and offer a
clue to the songs popular with the parents and grandparents of today's
older traditional singers.

While Cecil Sharp and Maude Karpeles were gleaning songs from the
Appalachians, Evelyn Elizabeth Gardner was beginning one of the earliest
studies of New York State's traditions. Folklore from the Schoharie Hills (1937),
based on field work she conducted between 19\2 and 1914, contains the
music and texts to twenty-nine songs, including Child and broadside
ballads, lullabies and childrens songs.

Thirty years later, Harold Thompson's students from Albany Teachers' College collected ballads and verbal lore from their families and neighbors. Thompson's book, Body, Boots and Britches (1940), which contains a large number of ballads and songs, was based on his students' field research, and is still the best known collection of New York folklore.
In 1944, Edith Cutting, one of Thompsons star pupils, published Lore
of an Adirondack County, a collection of material from her native Essex County which included twenty-one Anglo-American ballads and five local songs.
During the following decades, Cutting was a regular contributor to Near
York Folklore Quarterly - the ancestor of the present journal - and her collected
materials as well as her exceptional documentation of the contexts
in which traditional music was performed and their function in rural communities,
make her work particularly significant. Two of Cutting's song
collections were published in New York F olklore Q uarterly: "Peter Parrott and
His Songsi' (1947), which documents the repertoire of a Franco-American

I-awrence O lder (7972-7982w) as an important woodss inger, raconteu1a nd fiddler,
He was descendefdro m eighteenthc entury English immigrants to northem
Saratoga County. His repertoire includes a number of Child ballads and many
Americanb alladsc ataloguedb y LazasO. lder was recordedb y Folkk gacy Records.
He appeareda, s did Sara Cleaeland,a t the National Folklife Festiaala nd qt the
SmithsonianF estiaalo f American Folklife.P hoto courtesyo f Georgea nd Vaughn
Ward.
singer from Redford, Clinton County; and "Farmers' Songs," a section in
her important special edition on "New York State Farm Lore" (1951).
From 1941 to 1970, Marjorie lansing Porter assiduously collected folklore
in the central and southern Adirondack Mountains. She was especially interested
in ballad singers. Cassette recordings of her original soundscriber
discs are available for study at The Porter Collection of Adirondack Folklore
in the Special Collections, Feinburg Library of SUNY/Plattsburg.6 Although
Porter's notable collection sadly remains unpublished, her inJormants sang
for other collectors whose works are more easily available: Lily Stokes
Delorme sang for folklorist Helen Hartness Flanders; "Yankee" John
Galusha for Anne and Frank Warner; and lawrence Older for Sandy Paton.
While most other collectors concentrated on the most active, or the most
outgoing, singers within a family, Porter was unique for her time in her
attempt to record aII the singers within a single family. This allowed her
to make hypotheses about family repertoire and about the aesthetic choices
of individual singers. (See Porter 1953.)
The 1950s and '60s produced a number of collector/performers who
were interested in recording and presenting material from what was increasingly
a declining tradition. Their work has often served to renew interest
in traditional Anglo-American songs within rural communities. For
example, folklorist Ellen Steckert collected from and performed with singers
from Catskill lumber camps; George Ward collected and presented the
168
ballads, songs and tales of Adirondack communities; Pete Seeger worked
with and presented local songmakers from the Catskills and the Adirondacks;
Margaret MacArthur collected and performed songs from families
who were involved in Helen Hartness Flanders'earlier research; Kenneth
Goldstein documented the repertoire of traditional singer Sara Cleveland
and issued well-annotated recordings of her performances.
In recent years, an increasing amount of research has been done on
New York's traditional music. In the 1970s, Robert Bethke collected songs
and stories of St. Lawrence County woodsmen. Published as Adirondack
VoicesW: oodsmeann dWoodsL ore( 1981),t he work contains a wealth of anecdotal,
biographical and contextual materials relating to the area's traditional
singers and their songs. Bethke's publication includes the texts and music
for twenty-four ballads.
Two "lifework collections" were published in the 1980s. The first of
these, Cazden, Haufrecht & Studer's Folk Songs of the Catskills (1982) includes
178 traditional ballads and songs collected between 1941. and 1962
under the auspices of Camp Woodland. Of these, 9 are local variants of
Child ballads, 37 are Laws variants, and most of the rest can be traced to
Irish or turn-of-the-century popular sources. A few, howevel are locally
produced and commemorate local events and characters, including not a
few skirmishes with the law. This richly annotated collection is the only
work on New York State songs that contains a good comparative study of
tune formation.
A second recent retrospective, Anne Warner's Traditional American FoIk
Songsfr om the Franka nd Anne WamerC ollection( 1984),m akes available some
impirrtant New York State examples collected over the space of forty years
by the author and her husband. Following a method established by Bethke
in AdirondackV oicest,h e collection is organized by artist rather than by song
content or country of origin. The Warners worked extensively with traditional
singer "Yankee" ]ohn Galusha (1859-1950o) f Minerva and collected
material from Steve Wadsworth (b. 1895) of Edinburg. The book includes
careful musical transcriptions by ]erome Epstein. Entries are meticulously
cross-referencedt o other published and recorded materials.
taditional Singers and Repertories
The number of traditional Anglo-American singers is unfortunately
diminishing in rural upstate New York, but a number of prominent exponents
of the genre were active until quite recently. For example, Sara
Cleveland, a native of Washington County who died in 1987, could sing
several hundred songs she had learned from her mother, including a
number of rare variants of Child and Laws ballads and some unusually
complete versions of British broadside ballads.T Other traditional singers
recorded and documented during the 190s and '80s included Grant Rogers,
a Catskill songmaker; Lawrence Older (d. 1982) from Saratoga County; St.
Lawrence County woodsmen Ted and Eddie Ashlaw; and Otsego Coun-
169
SaraC reedonC lneland (1905-1987c)a rriedm oret han four hundred songs/m any
of which were brought by her Scots-Iish and lrish ancestors to Hartford,
Washington County. She sang her mother's songs at home until - in her fifties
- she came to the attention of knneth Goldstein and Sandy Paton, who recorded
most of her extensiaer epertoireM. rs, Clweland'sa ariantso f ancientb alladsw ere
usually complete. Sneral important local ballads - especially local accounts of
Reaolutionary War and the War of 1812 - were in her repertoire' She was known
amongo ther singersf or her pe(ormanceo f the complete,7 2-oerse" BaIIado f I'ake
Chaplain;'A lthough shew asb lindedi n an autoa ccidenitn 1973M, rs' Clneland
continued to perform until her eightieth year. Photo, c. 1968, by Sandy Paton.
ty's Ken Kane. Today, St. Iawrence County's Bill Smith is one of the few
traditional singers actively performing the Anglo-American vocal repertoire.
Given the richness of these few performers, one wonders what Cecil Sharp
might have found had he come to uPstate New York before the tradition
of ballad singing began to wane during the years following the Second
World War.
Based on 19th-century song collections, it seems likely that at one time
more than half of the songs and ballads sung by the "folk" in New York
were imported from the British Isles or evolved from 19th-century American
popular songs. This corresponds to Gardner's earlier findings: British Isles
and American popular songs made up a bit more than half of those she
collected between 1912 and 1914. Forty years lateq, when the songs of
"Yankee" John Galusha were documented by the Warners and Mrs. Porter,
slightly more than ten percent of the songs were of British Isles origin, while
nearly two-thirds were of North American and pre-1900 minshel show provenance.
s During the L970s and '80s, research by other New York State collectors,
including George Ward, Robert Bethke, and myself, has found
similar results.
't70
Many NcusYorSk tates ongsa ren eitherfr om Britishn or
popular music origins; they are local songs set to local
tunes.
Many New York State songs are neither from British Isles nor popular
music origins; rathet they are local songs created along traditional models
and nearly always set to tunes in local circulation. Although these songs
were not usually printed and sold as broadside ballads, they may be seen
as an extension of the broadside tradition of topical songmaking.e Local
ballads in New York follow the pattern described by folklorist Edward D.
Ives. They are, he writes, "ballads and sentimental pieces [based] on the
imported models . . . [and] are part of the cultural landscape wherever
traditional songs are sung" (Ives 1983: 208)" For example, "The Ballad of
Blue Mountain Lake" or "Bert LaFountainls Packard" (which a bootlegger
from the town of Gabriel's is reported to have sung during Sunday morning
sessions at his speakeasy), remain popular because they contain local
names and references.
Any study of material collected after 1930 must take into account the
influence of records, radio and early locally-produced television. In the
1930s, radio stations in upstate New York began to broadcast programs
featuring national touring artists such as Bradley Kincaid and Vernon
Dalhart. Both these artists collected songs from traditional musicians, sang
them on their programs, and distributed them in songbooks to promote
their shows, often claiming copyrights for their own. An example is Bradley
Kincaid's "Favorite Mountain Ballads and Old Time Songs" (New York:
Southern Music Pub., 1938). Although Kincaid claimed a southern origin
for many of his songs, he had a summer home near Stafford's Bridge in
upstate New York. Traditional singer Dick Richards tells of visiting Kincaid
when he was twelve or thirteen and "He'd [Kincaid] give me a chicken
for every song I could sing for him that he didnt already know . . . I always
went home with a couple of chickens swinging from the handle bars of
my bicycle."lo During the 1940s and early 1950s, when- traditional artists
such as Richards, the Blodgett family band, and Jimmy Hamblin, appeared
regularly on local radio programs, it became increasingly difficult to sort
out regional traditions from more general rural influences being aired by
the media. It is interesting to speculate how many southern and western
songs played over early airwaves merely overlaid or redistributed material
already traditional in the northeast.
The movement from home or neighborhood gatherings to public performance
as well as the influence of radio and popular records, has encouraged
a compression of the textF and stories of older ballads. Very long
narratives, which were the test of skill for the previous generation, are
177
[Left to Rightl Mike Spence, West Hebron; lim Cleaeland, Brant Lake; and CoIIeenC
lneland ThompsonB, rant Lake.M ike Spencea ndl ime Cleaelandb othl earned
their songst' romt heir mothersS. pencem's othera nd Clroeland'gsr andmothebr oth
greTtu) p in an lrish settlementn earH artford in WashingtonC ounty.M ike Spence
singss eaerabl alladsc ataloguebdy Lawsa nd Child, and a largen umbero f turnot'-
the-centuraya udeoillea nd minstrels how songs.H e is a aeterano f the local
grangem instrels howc ircuit, u.thichw asa aenuef or the performanceo f traditional
songst hrough the 1950'sl.i m Cleaelanda nd his daughter,C oIIeenT hompson,
are heirs to the Cleaelandt' amily repertoirea nd singing style. Theya rep erforming
here in the "Songs My Mother/Father Thught Me" workshop at the FoIk Arts
Festiaaal t the WashingtonC ounty Fair, 1988,P hotob y Matt kIIy.
usually performed today in considerably shortened versions. Although
Child and laws ballads are performed much less frequently than they once
were, they have been replaced largely by 20th century country songs, which
like their predecessors are narratives. The sentimental themes and values
expressed by these more modern compositions can also be seen as a possible
extension of the earlier Anglo-American values embodied in older songs
and ballads.
Singer Lawrence Older remarked to me on a number of occasions that
the woodsmen he knew sang and listened to ballads with their eyes closed,
and that the song sessions were a private time when tough, scrappy
men allowed their emotions a release. The ballad, wrote Willa Muir (1965:
197) "made a culture for ordinary rural people . . exercising in this way
a basic human gift of imagination which gave them much satisfaction and
172
funj' Sharing family songs, some of which are variants of ballads brought
by early Anglo-American immigrants, allows the descendants of New Yorks
earliest rural settlers this same satisfaction.
AI and Kathy Bain, West Hebron, are area country music stars. AI is descended
from the original Scots-lrish settlers ot' West Hebron, Kathy from the pre-
Rnolutionary settlerso f WestF ortA nn. TheB ainsh aaeb eena zaardeadn apprenticeship
t'rom the Neut York State Council on the Arts, Folk Arts Program, to learn
the songr epertoireo f Clarence" Daddy Dick" Richardso f Corinth. Richards,w ho
is probably the most important liaing source of regional song traditions, learned
his music from both of his parents and from loggers working on the Sacandaga
ResercoirM. onthly meetingso f organizationssu chs s the AI Bain Fan CIub are
the present-dayc ontextf or the sharing of family songsP, hotoW Matt klly, 1987.
173
. NOTES
1. Drawing on a plan developed by svend crundvig in old Popular BaIIads of Denmark (1853), Child
arranged ballads by their stories or "tale types/' and then assigned each ballad story a number.
This was done since it is more common than not for a ballad to exist in numerous "variantsl'
some more complete than others, but often bearing widely di{ferent texts and titles and sung
to completely dilferent tunes than the other variants of the same ballad. Today, scholars working
with Anglo-American ballads frequently use Child s cataloging numbers when refering to a ballad
- for example, the well known ballad "Glpsy taddid' would simply be refened to as_ "Child #200."
2. See Henry M. Belden, BaIIads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society. Columbia, MO.:
University of Missouri studies, XY,
^1940;
reprinted 1955. Belden, A Partial List of song-Ballads and
Other Popular Poetry Known in Missouri. Columbia, ili4o., 1907.Iouise Pound, Folk-Song of Nebraska
and the Centrsl Wesf. Lincoln, Neb.: Academy of Science Publications, IX, 3.1914, W Roy MacKenzte.
BaIIads and Sea Songs fromNoaa Scotia. Cambridge, l/rA, 1928. The Frank C. Brown Collection
of North Carolina Folklore. Newman Ivey l44rite, Paul F. Baum, et. al., ed. Durham, N.C.: Duke
UniversityPress, 1954. GavinGreig,Folk-Songof theNortheast.2vols. Peterhead, 1914. GavinGreig
and Almnder Ke rth, Iast Inaes of Traditional Ballads snd BaIIad Airs. Aberdeen, 1925; Cecil J. Sharp
FoIk Songs of England, 5 vols.
^1908:1912.
Cecil J. Sharp and Rev Charles L. Marson, Folk Songs from
Somersel.5 ser l,ondon and New York, 1904-^1909H; .E.D. Hammon d, Folk Songst 'rom Dorcet I-andon:
Novello, 1908. Ralph Vaughan Williams, FoIk Songs ftom the F'astem Counties london: Novello,
1908.
3. See Cecil J. Sharp, English Folk-songs from the southern Appalachians (1925). Maude Karpeles ed.
2 vols. london: Ox{ord University Press, 1932.
4. For example, in the 1950s, traditional singer lawrence Older from Saratoga County recorded a
version o? the broadside ballad "My Bonny Black Bess" that was almost identical to the 18th century
version printed in England, now in the collection of the English Dance and -9ong Society.
5. The latter author established a classification system similar to Child's that is now used for American
ballads. The previously cited "My Bonnie Black Bess," for example, is referred to as #L8.
6. Porter's materlal on traditional singer "Yankee" John Galusha is in the private collection of Porter's
friend and protdg6e tee Knight.
Z Examples oi Cleveland's singing are found on "Ballads and Songs of the Upper Hudson River
Valley: Sara Cleveland of Brant lake, New York." (Folk tegacy) Notes by Kenneth Goldstein.
8. I am indebted to Simon Bronner and to Anne and Norm Cohen for this system of repertoire
classification.
For an in-depth discussion, see Ives 1983, Sawyer 1954, Studer 192, and King 195!.
Interuiew wiih Dick Richards, April 198& at the home of Al and Kathy Bain, West Hebron, New
York.
9.
10.
ARCHIVES
Much of the material collected on New York balladry and ballad singers remains unpublished. The
following archives are particularly rich in Empire State materials:
Archive of Folksong. U.S. Library of Congress, Washingion, D.C., The Older, Halpert, Warner and
Cleveland collections are deposited here, and a bibliography of New York materials is available
upon request.
l-ouis Jones and Harold Thompson Archives of New York State Folklore. (Special Collections) New
York State Historical Association Library, Cooperstown, NY Contains field work undertaken
by studentsi n Jones'a nd Thompson'sc lassesO. pen by aPPointment.
New York State Folklife Archive. New York State Historical Association Library, Cooperstown, NY
Contains the work of students in the now defunct Cooperstown Graduate Program in
American FolkliIe. Sound recordinqs of all NYS material deposited in the Librarv of Congressb
efore1 975a rea vailableh ere.l ie Sam Eskinc ollectiona lsoc ontainss omeN YS materials.
Open by appointment.
New York State Broadside Collection. Library of the State of New York. (Special Collections) Albany,
NY Broadside ballads. Archival assistance available by apPointment.
Marjorie lansing Porter Collection of North Country Folklore. State University of New York/Plattsburg,
FeinburgL ibrary. (SpecialC ollections)P lattsburg,N Y Cassettet apeso f Porter'so riginal
Soundscribedr iscs.O pen by application.
Early Ballad Colleciion. Vassar College Library. (Special Collection) Poughkeepsie, NY
174
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NEW YORK STAIE & RELATED MATERIALS
IGy: NYF - New York Folklore
I.IYFQ - New York Folklore Quarterly
JAF - Journal of American Folklore
Bethke, Robert D.
1981 Adirondack Voices: Woodsmen and Woodslore. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
1938 Songs My Grandfather Sang. JAF 48:379-383.
Bronneq, Simon
1W7 "I Kicked Three Slats Out of Mv Cradle First Time I Heard Thafl': Ken Kane. Countrv Music
and American Folklore. NYF 1, 3:4, 53'81.
7987 Old{ime Music Makers of New York State. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Bronson, Bertrand
1959 The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads. 4 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Camp Woodland
1943 Fourth Annuai Festival of the Catskills. Phonecia, N.Y.: Camp Woodland.
Cazden, Norman
1952 The Story of a Catskill Ballad. NYFQ 8, 4:245-248.
7954 The Foggy Dew. NYFQ 10,2:273.
1958 The Abelard Folk Song Book. New York: Abelard-Schuman.
1960 Catskill tockup Songs. NYFQ 16,2:90:102,
Cazden, Norman, Herbert Haufrecht, and Norman Studer
7982 Folksongs of the Catskills. Albany: State University of New York.
Child, Francis |ames
1882 The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 5 vols. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
Curtis, Otis F., fr.
1953 The Curtis Collection of Songs. NYFQ 9, 1 and 4.
Cutting, Edith
19M lore of an Adirondack County. Ithaca: Cornell University Prcss.
7947 The Joys of Mary. NYFQ 3, 4: 323.
79Ma Petet Panott and His Songs. NYFQ 3, 2: 1244.33.
1951 New York State Farm tore. Special ed. NYFQ 8, 1.
7952 A Pioneer Songster. ed.
Douglass, Harry S.
1951 Music in the Valleys. NYFQ Z 4.
Dunn, Adda Anna
1951 Songs, Riddles and Tales of Saratoga County. NYFQ 5,3:277-277,
Eames, Frank
1947 landorls Ould Dog and Hogmany Fair NYFQ 3, 3:248.
Flanders, Helen Hartness
1946 Blue Mountain lake and Barbara Allen. NYFQ 2, 1: 52-53.
7965 Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England. 4 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Flannagan, Margaret
7945 A Driller's Dream, NYFQ 1, 2: 88.
Gardnet Emelyn Elizabeth
1937 Folklore from the Schoharie Hills, New York. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Gravelle, Jean F.
7yn The Civil War Songster of a Monroe County Farmer. NYFQ 2Z 2: 763-230.
Gray, Roland Palmer
7936 Balladry of New York State. New York History 18 (April): 147-155.
Haufrecht, Herbert and Norman Cazden
7948 Music of the Catskills. NYFQ 4.
Hopkins, Pandora
1976 Individual Choice and the Control of Musical Change. JAF 89: 449-462.
Ives, Edward D.
1983 "The Study of Regional Songs and Ballads. In Richard M. Dorson, ed., Handbook ol
American Folklore, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 208-215.
lohnson, Robert C.
1949 Balladso f Disasterso n the GreatL rkes. NYFQ 5,3:202-204.
Jo-n1e9s3,6l o uis C.
The Berlin Murder. New York History 77 196-205.
7942 Henry Backus, The Saugerties Bard. New York History 23:139-742-
Kaplan, Israel
1953 A John Brown Ballad. NYFQ 9, 1: 41.
L75
Kaufman, Charles H.
1957 An Ethnomusicological Survey Among the People of the Ramapo Mountains. NYFQ 2e
1:3-44.
King, Ethel M.
1955 The Bard of Saugerties. NYFQ 11, 1: 49-60.
Lutz, Anne
1947 The Ballad of the Butcher Boy in the Ramapo Mountains. NYFQ 3, 1:28-30.
laws, Malcolm
1950 Native American Balladry. Philadelphia: American Folklore Society.
1957 American Balladry from British Broadsides. Philadelphia: American Folklore Society.
McNeil, William K.
'1969 A Schoharie County Songster NYFQ 25, 1: 3-58.
Muir, Willa
1965 Living With Ballads. New York: Oxford University Press.
Neil, Janice
\945 Wa'ntt hat Remarkable!:O tsegoC ounty Textsf rom the Singing of Mrs. R. Thurston. NYFQ
L, 4: 709.
New York Folklore Quarterly
"1945 Old Songs and Ballads. NYFQ 1, 1: 45-49. Including "My Name is Charles Guiteau."
1956 The Adirondacks . 22, 2 (June). Special ed. Including articles by lawrence Olde1, Anne and
Frank Warner, and Marjorie lansing Porter.
Newton, Hilih Foote
1945 Horses and Steamboats on lake Champlain. NYFQ 1, 1.
Oring, Elliott
lWl Whalemen and Their Songs. NYFQ 27,'1.:130:152.
Oster, Harry
1952 A Delanson Manuscript of Songs. NYFQ 4.
Porter, Marjorie Iansing
19Ma The Woods Are Full of 'Em. Ad-i-ron-dac. Sept.-Oct. (Ballads of Lily Delorme.)
1947 Them As Can-Sings. Adi-lron-dac. Nov.-Dec.
1953 Archives of the Porter North Country Collection. NYFQ 9, 1: 56.
Schrader, Arther F.
1968 Arcade Revisted: Some Additional Notes for A PioneerS ongsferN YFQ 24, 7: 116-20.
Seeger, Peter
1954 A Contemporary Ballad-Maker in the Hudson Valley. NYFQ 10. 2: 133-1i|8.
Sharp, Cecil J.
7932 English Folksongs from the Southern Appalachians. Maude Karpeles, ed. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Slyman, Susan Rhodes
7952 Whirling and Applejack in the Catskills. NYFQ 8: 27-28.
1983 John Allison: the Collector as Folk Artist. NYF t 3-4.
Studer, Norman
1951 Boney Quillen of the Catskills. NYFQ Z 4:276-283
Thompson, Harold W
1940 Body, Boots and Britches. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott.
1953 The Curtis Colleciion of Songs. NYFQ ? 1 and 4.
T-v1r9e5ll.8 W illiam G.
New York's Folklore on Recordings. NYFQ 14, 3.
Warner, Anne and Frank M.
1958 A Salute, and a Sampling of Songs. NYFQ 14 3.
7984 Traditional American Folk Songs from the Anne and Frank Warner Collection. Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press.
Wheeler, Ann King
1954 Ballads and Tales of Blue Mountain lake, Adirondacks. NYFQ 10: 115.
Van Epps, Percy
7947 Jones Boys They Build a Mill. NYFQ 3, 3.
Wright, Ruth
7954 Gypsy Davy. NYFQ 10, 1.
Zimm, Iouis Hasbrouck
1955 Two Ballads of the French and Indian War. NYFQ 11, 3.
176
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Many fine recordings of New York State materials are available. This listing includes only recordings
of traditional. singers.
Iawrence Older o{ Middle Grove, New York. Notes by Peter E. McElligott. Sharon, Conn.: Folk tegary
Records (FSA 15), 1965.
Ted Ashlaw: Adirondack Woods Singer. Notes by Robert Bethke. Fenisbqg, Vt.: Philo Records (Philo
1022), 197s.
Ballads and Songs of the Upper Hudson River Valley Sung by Sara Cleveland of Brant Lake, New
York. Notes by Kenneth Goldstein. Sharon, Conn.: Folk tegacy Records (FSA 33),1968.
Sara Cleveland. Notes by Kehneth Goldstein. [North] Ferrisburg, Vt.: Philo Records, 1975.
Brave Boy: New England Traditions in Folk Music. Notes by Edward D. Ives. New York: New World
Records (NW 239), 178. (Despite title, contains some rare New York State field recordings.)
Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties. Coll. and ed. by Edith Fowke. New York: Folkways
Ethnic Library (FM 4l{)52)1, 961.( All butone examplew ere sung on both sideso f the border.)
Songmaker of the Catskills: Grafit Rogers of the Walton, New York. Sharon, Conn.: Folk Legacy
Records (FSA 270).