Helen Hartness Flanders (1890- 1972)
[One of the great American and New England collectors, Helen H. Flanders worked closely with Phillips Barry and Marguerite Olney. Originally Helen's collections focused primarily in her native state of Vermont around 1930 but eventually expanded to the New England area. Her great series of books, Ancient Ballads(1960-65), was the culmination of her best versions of the 305 Child ballads found New England.
One of the weaknesses of her collection, as exemplified by their inclusion in her books, were a number of questionable ballads that were clearly recreations by the informants, and therefore not traditional (for example, several ballads by George Edwards of Vermont and Edith Fish). The other weakness was her inability to read and write music. As a protege of Barry, this presented a significant problem (the ballad must have the tune) and is one of the reasons Marguerite Olney became involved with Flanders' collections. The inclusion of questionable ballads seems to have been more than an oversight-- she was clearly pandering to her important informants without questioning or probing their sources.
Following a bio by Wiki is an overview of The Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College.
R. Matteson 2015]
Helen Hartness Flanders Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Helen Hartness Flanders (May 19, 1890 – May 23, 1972), a native of the U.S. state of Vermont, was an internationally recognized ballad collector and an authority on the folk music found in New England and the British Isles. At the initiative of the Vermont Commission on Country Life, Flanders commenced a three-decade career capturing traditional songs that were sung in New England—songs that, in many cases, traced their origin to the British Isles. The timing of her life work was critical, coming as it did when people were turning away from traditional music in favor of listening to the radio. Today her nearly 4,500 field recordings, transcriptions and analyses are housed at the Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont and have been a resource for scholars and folk singers, since the establishment of the collection in 1941.
Biographical
Flanders was born in Springfield, Vermont. Her father was James Hartness, inventor, industrialist, and one-term Governor of Vermont, who headed the Jones and Lamson Machine Tool Company in that town.[1] She graduated from the Dana Hall School in 1909, where she sang in the glee club and was a member of the school French club.[2] In 1911 she married Ralph Flanders, a noted American mechanical engineer, industrialist and Republican U.S. Senator (1946–1959) from Vermont. She and her husband maintained homes in Springfield and Washington, DC where they entertained friends who included Dorothy Canfield Fisher and Robert Frost.[3] They had three children: Elizabeth, (born in 1912), Anna (also known as Nancy—born in 1918), and James (born in 1923).[4] Elizabeth helped her mother from time to time with collecting and transcribing tunes.[5] In addition to her writings on traditional ballads, Flanders published two small volumes of poetry[6][7] and one children's play.[8] She traveled with her husband to the British Isles, Europe and Australia on various occasions.[3]
Ballad and folk song collecting. Background
In 1930, Vermont Governor John E. Weeks invited Flanders[9] to join the Committee on Traditions and Ideals[10] of the Vermont Commission on Country Life.[11] That committee asked her to collect Vermont folk songs, which were passed along orally from one person to another. In the 1930s, people in New England were turning to music on the radio; as a result, interest in traditional songs was on the wane. Flanders understood that unless these songs were collected and recorded for posterity, they would die along with the people who sang them.[12] What began as a committee assignment became not just a hobby, but a passion. She continued collecting for three decades.
Collection methodology
Flanders with Eveline K. Fairbanks (right), one of the singers whose traditional songs she recorded. Photographer unknown. Photo in Helen Hartness Ballad Collection at Middlebury College.
The availability of portable recording devices was key to Flanders’s ability to collect music from singers in remote parts of New England. Initially, she recorded on wax cylinders; then from 1939 to 1949, on aluminum and acetate discs;[9] and in later years, on reel-to-reel tapes.[5] On occasions when electricity was not available in a singer’s home, Flanders plugged a recorder into the cigarette lighter of her car.
Flanders expanded her quest throughout New England and to New York State. The singers that she found came from all walks of life; the majority of them were elderly. Flanders made field recordings with George Brown in 1930, then with the occasional help of Phillips Barry between 1931 and 1937, and with Alan Lomax in 1939. From 1940–1958 Flanders continued to collect, but Marguerite Olney[13] was responsible for major contributions both in the collection management and in the field.
Between 1930 and 1939, Flanders focused mostly on collecting Child ballads. This explains the proportionately large number of those ballads on cylinders. Of the 150 recordings made on disc with Alan Lomax, there were songs, stories and fiddle tunes. Over time, the scope of the field recordings would include religious songs, children's songs, 19th-century American popular songs, dance tunes, as well as folktales.[5]
George Brown, his mother, Alice Brown, Phillips Barry, Marguerite Olney and Elizabeth Flanders Ballard all made musical transcriptions of songs for Flanders's publications. An index of all the field recordings (collected between 1930 and 1958) was published in 1983.[14]
The collection and its significance
In 1941 when there was no longer enough space to store the collection in Flanders’s home, she donated it to Middlebury College in Vermont. Today the Flanders Ballad Collection[5] is housed in Special Collections and includes not only her papers but nearly 4,500 field recordings. Copies of these recordings are also available at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress and at Harvard University. The American Folklife Center also has files of Flanders’s correspondence.
Flanders demonstrated that when songs migrated from the British Isles or Europe, the texts would sometimes undergo changes as singers inserted details from their life in the new world. For example, the "Yorkshire Bite" became the "New Hampshire Bite."[15] Many of the stories in these ballads and folksongs describe aspects of life in New England and Colonial history.[9]
In recognition of her accomplishments as a ballad collector, Middlebury College awarded Flanders an honorary Master of Arts in 1942. She was a member of the National Committee of the National Folk Festival Association and vice president of the Folksong Society of the Northeast. In 1966, the Vermont House of Representatives added Flanders's name to the state's Roll of Distinction in the Arts.[16]
Legacy: Promoting an interest in traditional ballads
Flanders was the author of eight books on ballads and folk music; she also wrote pamphlets, newspaper and magazine articles, and two books of poetry.[5] She wrote a regular column on ballads for the Springfield Sunday Union and Republican (Massachusetts) during the 1930s.[16]
Performers of traditional ballads
Through their concerts and recordings, numerous folksingers have promoted interest in the Flanders Ballad Collection. Foremost among these is ballad singer Margaret MacArthur (1928–2006) who moved to Vermont in the late 1940s.[17] During their ten-year friendship, Flanders encouraged her singing and gave her copies of the field recordings. Although also a collector of traditional songs in New England, MacArthur was especially known in the United States and abroad for her repertoire (and many recordings) of songs derived from the Flanders Collection.[18] In recent years, Vermonter Deborah Flanders has performed and recorded songs collected by her great-aunt Helen.[19]
Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College
The Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College[5] is organized, as follows:
Materials related to field collecting, 1930-1958: The original field recordings consist of 254 wax cylinders. Those recorded on discs comprise the largest body with a variety of songs, a few interviews and stories. Flanders made 77 discs with Alan Lomax, which are catalogued in the Library of Congress. There are 60 discs that contain songs recorded in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine between 1940 and 1947; and 61 that contain fiddle and dance music from all the New England states (16 collected with Alan Lomax); nine discs of fife music made in Massachusetts; and from the 1950s, approximately 55 tapes made on a reel-to-reel recorder.
Manuscript and typescript materials derived directly from field research, 1930-60: Flanders and Marguerite Olney subdivided song texts into the following categories: Child ballads (89 titles), 635 other British song titles (broadsides and others), and 593 American titles. Among these, there were 114 "stage songs" (British and American popular songs from the 19th-early 20th centuries), 73 religious titles and 122 children's songs.
Correspondence, publication materials, lectures and exhibits derived largely from field work, 1931-1967: including Flanders’s correspondence with scholars, articles about her collecting experiences; information about ballad lectures given over a 30 year period throughout New England and in the Washington, D.C. area.
Supporting materials not directly related to field work, 1930-1960: original manuscripts, copybooks, and miscellaneous sheets which contain over 300 songs and tunes—including ballads, broadsides, fiddle and fife tunes which were transcribed between the 18th and the early 20th centuries.
Collection administration, 1940-1967: papers relating to the general operation of the collection.
Personal papers, 1941-65: a limited number personal notes from friends of Helen Flanders and photographs of members of the Flanders family.
References
Roe, Joseph W. (1937). James Hartness—A Representative of the Machine Age at Its Best. New York: The American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
"Helen Hartness Flanders 1909 (1890–1972)". Dana Hall School—Helen Temple Cool Library. Retrieved 2007-11-30.
Flanders, Ralph E. (1961). Senator from Vermont. Boston: Little, Brown & Company.
Hailey, Jean R. (1972-05-25). "Helen H. Flanders, Widow of Senator, Dies at 82". The Washington Post (Washington, D.C): R6.
"Flanders Ballad Collection". Middlebury College. Archived from the original on 2007-07-01. Retrieved 2007-11-30.
Flanders, Helen Hartness (1934). A Garland of Green Mountain Song. Northfield, Vt.: Vermont Commission on Country Life.
Flanders, Helen Hartness (1927). Looking out of Jimmie. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.
Flanders, Helen Hartness (1934). Gypsy Daisy came over the hills. Springfield, Vt.: Springfield Printing Corporation.
Seigel, Nancy-Jean (Fall–Winter 2003). "Helen Hartness Flanders, the Green Mountain Songcatcher". Voices, the Journal of New York Folklore 29.
Seigel, Nancy-Jean (Spring 2001). "Field Days in the Flanders Collection". Folklife Center News, Library of Congress: 13–16.
Taylor, Henry C. (January 1930). "The Vermont Commission on Country Life". American Journal of Agricultural Economics (Agricultural and Applied Economics Association) 12 (1): 164–173. doi:10.2307/1230357.
Noble, June; Noble, William (June 1978). "Vermont’s first Lady of Folk Songs". Yankee Magazine: 95–177.
"Marguerite Olney". The American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Retrieved 2007-11-30.
Quinn, Jennifer P. (1983). An Index to the Field Recordings in the Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont. Middlebury, Vermont: Middlebury College.
Flanders, Helen Hartness; Olney, Marguerite (1953). Ballads Migrant in New England. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Young.
"Helen Hartness Flanders". The American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Retrieved 2007-11-30.
"Musicians Pay Tribute to Vermont Folk Legend". Marlboro College. Retrieved 2014-02-22.
Beck, Jane (2005). "Voice and Dulcimer Traditional Music from Vermont" (PDF). The American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Retrieved 2007-11-30.
"Deb Flanders". Retrieved 2007-11-30.
Bibliography
Flanders, Helen Hartness (1934). A Garland of Green Mountain Song. Northfield, Vt.: Vermont Commission on Country Life.
Flanders, Helen Hartness (1934). Gypsy Daisy came over the hills. Springfield, Vt.: Springfield Printing Corporation.
Flanders, Helen Hartness (1927). Looking out of Jimmie. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.
Flanders, Helen Hartness; Brown, George (1932). Vermont Folk-Songs & Ballads. Brattleboro, Vt.: Stephen Daye Press.
Flanders, Helen Hartness (June 1939). "The quest for Vermont ballads". Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society VII (2): 53–72.
Flanders, Helen Hartness (1937). Country Songs of Vermont. New York: G. Schirmer, Inc.
Flanders, Helen Hartness (June 1939). "Index of ballads and folk-songs in the Archive of Vermont Folk-Songs at Smiley Manse, Springfield, Vermont". Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society VII (2): 73–97.
Flanders, Helen Hartness; Ballard, E.F.; Brown, G.; Barry, P. (1939). The New Green Mountain Songster: Traditional Folk Songs of Vermont. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Flanders, Helen Hartness; Olney, Marguerite (1953). Ballads Migrant in New England. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Young.
Flanders, Helen Hartness (1960–1965). Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England, Volumes 1-4. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Further reading
Johnson, Sally (Spring 1991). "Helen Hartness Flanders Preserved Vermont's Folk Music Traditions". Vermont Life.
Seigel, Nancy-Jean (Fall–Winter 2003). "Helen Hartness Flanders, the Green Mountain Songcatcher". Voices, the Journal of New York Folklore 29.
Seigel, Nancy-Jean (Spring 2001). "Field Days in the Flanders Collection". Folklife Center News, Library of Congress: 13–16.
Seigel, Nancy-Jean (Winter 1999). "Ballad Collector from New England". English Dance and Song Magazine: 6–7.
Noble, June; Noble, William (June 1978). "Vermont’s first Lady of Folk Songs". Yankee Magazine: 95–177.
Bergman, Vonda (1954-12-26). "She Is a Ballad Hunter". The Washington Post and Times Herald (Washington, D.C.): F16.
McNair, Marie (1948-01-16). "Mrs. Flanders to Speak On Her Hobby, Old Songs". The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.): C1
___________________________________________________
The Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection, Middlebury College
Dale Cockrell
Notes, Second Series, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Sep., 1982), pp. 31-42
THE HELEN HARTNESS FLANDERS BALLAD COLLECTION, MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE
BY DALE COCKRELL
Dale Cockrell is assistant professor of music at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont.-Ed. [as of 1982]
In 1930 Helen Hartness Flanders of Springfield, Vermont, was asked by the Committee on Traditions and Ideals of the Vermont Commission on Country Life to spend a few months collecting ballads still in oral tradition in Vermont. These "few months" eventually stretched into a lifelong preoccupation, during which Flanders collected materials in all the New England states. So devoted was her work that her collection is now widely recognized as the largest and most complete record of traditional music from this area.
From the first Flanders employed the methodology taught her by
Phillips Barry.[1] Accordingly, her work is disciplined and rich in detail.
Initially her efforts were directed toward the preservation of unpublished
texts of traditional ballads; she procured these from known balladeers,
from blanket appeals for old ballads made to the readers of
Vermont newspapers, and from the pages of old unpublished manuscripts.
She soon realized that sound recordings of her informants singing
their ballads were necessary, and the archival project was begun.
Along with this work she began a support library of published ballads
and printed music of the sort that might once have served as a source
for some of the folk ballads. The collection today still shows the distinct
outlines of Flanders' original organization.
On 8 March 1941, the "Archive of Vermont Folk-Songs and Ballads," as it was then called, was presented to Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont, and renamed the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection. Organization, analysis, publication, as well as collection of materials continued until 1960 with the joint support of the college and Flanders. Since 1960 the integrity of the collection has been preserved by Horace Beck, its present curator. Beck has also been largely responsible for the expansion of certain holdings, generally of published materials relating to superstition, witchcraft, and other forms of folklore.
The collection is now housed in the Special Collections sector of Starr Library at Middlebury College. There are tape recorders and work areas available for use by scholars and students. It is the policy of the collection, both by condition of the gift and by the responsibility assumed by the college, to encourage the use of this unique resource. Visiting scholars or requests for information are welcomed.
The Collection
The collection of sound recordings holds approximately five thousand
pieces of traditional music. Perhaps another four thousand items
derive from textual sources: letters, broadsides, manuscripts, unsolicited
contributions, and the like. The support library contains chapbooks,
songsters, rare volumes of ballads, tune books, published music,
journals, offprints, and practically all the important publications on folk
music and folklore; in addition its files hold documentation pertaining
to the history and development of the collection itself.
Field Recordings
The Flanders Collection's heart is in its field recordings. These were
made in three different formats. By actual count there are 234 wax
cylinders of ballads, songs, and fiddle tunes, with some recorded commentary
by either the collector or the informant; apparently there were
once 253 cylinders. Although the collection possesses the Dictaphone
machine used to make and play the cylinders, the nature of the materials
requires that they be archival only. Disc recordings number
1,312; the material is either glass-based or, less frequently, aluminum;
disc size may be 6, 10, or 12 inches. Of the total, a number (perhaps
5 percent) are broken or otherwise unplayable; all are in delicate condition
and strictly archival. By the late 1940s, recordings were being
made on magnetic tape; there are sixty-two 5- or 7-inch field tape-recordings
now in the collection; again the fragile condition of old acetate
tape means that these materials are not for everyday use.
A confident estimate has these recordings containing around five
thousand different ballads, songs, tunes, and lore. In addition to the
expected Anglo-American materials, there are French-Canadian songs,
fiddle tunes, fife tunes (gathered on five discs), a collection of Russian
songs, an interview with a centenarian who once lived among the Kiowa
tribe and rode with Jesse James, Celtic songs, and dance call-sets,
among many other categories.
In 1978-79 the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress
duplicated most of the original field recordings onto modern magnetic tape. This project yielded eighty-eight tapes, recorded both ways. Copies
of the masters are now being used in the day-to-day work of the
collection. Recent dubbing of recordings not originally sent to the Library
of Congress has raised the number to ninety-four tapes, or approximately
188 hours of field recordings.
Two card catalogue drawers contain a title index to the recordings,
indexed both to the original format and to number, side, and position
on the newly dubbed tapes. This index represents the only accurate
guide to the field recordings presently available; geographical, informant,
and chronological indices are in the planning. A checklist of the
fiddle tunes in the collection has been prepared by Stephen Green of
Brattleboro, Vermont; he lists some 194 tunes on forty-nine discs.
Unpublished Papers
The approximately four thousand ballads and songs that were collected
from letters, broadsides, manuscripts, unsolicited contributions,
and the like were typed up "literatim et punctatim," headed with information
on collection, and filed in three-ring binders or cardboard
letter files. These are arranged by categories, the most important being
Child ballads, ballads of English origin, and ballads of American origin;
there are smaller numbers in such groups as: Campaign, Temperance,
Games, Rounds, Fiddle Tunes, Stage, Stories, Tall Tales, Religious, and
Broadsides.
In addition, textual transcriptions were made of most of the recorded
ballads (perhaps as many as 75 percent of them). These have been
typed, headed with collection information, and interfiled with the ballads
collected in text versions only. By rough estimation the Flanders
Collection has a total of eight thousand typescript ballad transcriptions.
Most of the other papers now in the collection are in filing folders,
titled, and show evidence of once being organized in a comprehensive
system. Many of the folders contain correspondence with collectors and
scholars such as Fannie Eckstorm, Maud Karpeles, Tristram Coffin,
Bruno Nettl, Horace Beck, Marguerite Olney, and Frances Byrne, who
was Flanders' personal secretary during the last years of the 1950s and
the 1960s. Many other letters can be found in folders that deal with
business and college matters, lecture engagements, acknowledgements,
and so forth. A number of folders contain Flanders' lecture notes. She
was in the habit of writing out the draft beforehand and giving the
lecture from a typescript of that draft; the typescript to many (all?) of
those lectures may be found in the collection's files.
Notes, drafts, and galleys to the books published by Flanders are in
the files, as well as correspondence with the publishers regarding them.
Other folders hold reviews, notices, and clippings concerning these volumes. Business matters, such as royalty payments, and so forth, are handled in letters contained in yet other files. A great number of newspaper and magazine articles written by Flanders, or about the Flanders Collection, can be found in the cabinets.
These are presently wanting a system of organization and easy access.
Several folders have photographs. Generally these are of informants
who contributed actively to the collection in the late 1940s and early
1950s, and who travelled with Flanders on her lecture trips in order
to sing for her audiences. There is also a silent color movie film (16mm)
of a ballad session held at the Breadloaf Campus of Middlebury College.
Marguerite Olney Papers. Marguerite Olney was Flanders' assistant
from 1939 and curator of the collection from 1941 until 1960. The
collection has recently acquired many of her extant papers. Found here
were a number of broadsides (included in the count and discussion of
broadsides below), letters, text transcripts, photographs, and, perhaps
best of all, tune transcriptions to a number of the ballads in the collection.
Olney must have retained the rights to her tune transcriptions and
taken them with her, for the collection did not have, until recently,
many of the ballads and songs in melodic transcription; as it stands
today some of the ballad melodies have been transcribed.
Margaret MacArthur Papers. The executors of Flanders' estate
asked the well-known folksinger Margaret MacArthur to go through
the files left in the collector's possession at her death. Following family
wishes, MacArthur destroyed those letters and papers of a personal
nature. She preserved and retained the papers that dealt with the Flanders
Collection, balladry, or any related area. They are now to be found
in the MacArthur home in Marlboro, Vermont. MacArthur has donated
a portion of this collection to Middlebury College, and hopes that
more of it will eventually be deposited there.
The MacArthur collection has many duplicates of ballad text transcriptions
already found in the Flanders files; when the transcriptions
were originally done, at least three copies were made: one for Middlebury,
one for Flanders' files in Springfield, and one for her files in
Washington, D. C., where she and her husband, Senator Ralph Flanders,
lived during legislative sessions. Some forty-one binder notebooks
contain many of the transcriptions; others, as well as many additional
duplicates, are found in the five metal filing cabinet drawers labelled
British (two drawers), American (also two), Child (one), or in the one
drawer with a number of miscellaneous categories: Campaign, Chanties,
Christmas Carols, College, Drinking Songs, Counting Out, Game,
Foreign, Hymns, Jingles, Jury Texts, Masonry, Nursery, Plot Fragments, Riddles, Rounds, Seeming Non-Folk, Singing School, Stage, Vermont Interest, and Work Songs.
Three filing drawers hold letters, organized and arranged by
MacArthur using Flanders' system. These include folders of correspondence
with: Barry, Bascon, Beck, Beckwith, Belden, Bijur, Botkin,
Bronson, Buchanan, Ciardi, Coffin, Damon, Decker, Eckstorm, Goldstein,
Halpert, Hamilton, Ives, Karpeles, Kittredge, Korson, Leach, A.
Lomax, MacArthur, McCorison, Morrison, Nile, Olney, Peach, Porter,
Rayner, Rugg, Sanderson, Simpson, and Thompson, in addition to
many dozens of other individuals and organizations. There is also a
section in the file that has correspondence with a number of Flanders'
informants. And relations with Middlebury College are richly documented
in a section of one drawer.
One last drawer is of unfiled or unorganized materials. Included
here are letters, tunes, articles, photographs, working notes, poetry by
Flanders (much of it published in 1943 as Green Mountain Verse [New
York: Farrar and Rinehart]), news clippings, and miscellaneous other
ephemerata. A metal letter box contains much the same sort of unfiled
materials.
In three drawers of small index cards are the following: a title index
by categories corresponding to the ones used in organizing the transcriptions;
a geographical index by town of informants; and an alphabetical
listing of informants, possible informants, and others in some
way connected with the collection, including their addresses.
Manuscripts
There are twenty-two separate antiquarian manuscript items in the
Flanders Collection. Many of these uncatalogued, mostly nineteenthcentury
materials of New England provenance, contain ballads; among
this group are manuscripts by Cox, Holt, Patty Mann (2 vols., 101 pp.
total), Townsend, and Whitney, in addition to six others that are anonymous;
Cox, Townsend, and one of the unidentified books also hold
some music. There is also a manuscript libretto to Saintena, a "Grand
Poeto-prosa, Vocalo-recitative, serio-comic Opera," dated 1878; bound
with this are ballads, some tunes, and newspaper clippings. Possibly the
oldest item is a thirty-six page booklet written out by Walter Jones. It
has eight ballads, all on Revolutionary War themes. Subject and binding,
style and paper seem to suggest a late eighteenth-century date.
Most of the above manuscripts were transcribed by Marguerite 01-
ney. The files also contain a number of typescript transcriptions of
manuscripts with traditional ballads that were examined in other collections.
Together the transcriptions total more than thirty.
Of the other manuscripts in the collection, some of the more interesting items have music in them. There is, for example, a single sheet
with tune and complete text to the "Indians Farewell"; it is precisely
dated "Sept 1st: 1841." Unusual for the late date and its assumed New
England provenance is the four-shape notation; it is generally thought
that the "fasola" tradition had moved out of the region by that time.
A number of the music books are of instrumental music. One written
out by Charles L. Webb from 1798-1826 contains fife tunes and a finger
chart for that instrument, in addition to ballad texts, short homilies
and sayings, and casual drawings, some even in watercolors.
Two manuscripts are especially rich in fiddle tunes. One with "S.
Daily" embossed on the cover and "Pittsburg, N. H." inside has fortyfive
pages of tunes, a few in two-part versions; some of the tunes have
accompanying call-sets; there are also the occasional monophonic hymn
tunes. Since the oblong-format collection contains a number of tunes
composed in the 1850s ("Dixie," "Pop Goes the Weasel") it must have
been written after that time. The other book has sixty-four folio pages
of cotillions, contradanses, waltzes, and quadrilles; they are bound together
with six published collections of the same types of dance music.
These were printed both in the United States and in England; one carries
a publication date of 1824.
There are two other manuscripts in the collection that hold sacred
music. Elias Mann provided empty staff lines at the back of his NorthamptonC
ollection( Northampton, Mass.: Printed by A. Wright for D.
Wright, 1802) and an early owner of the Flanders Collection's copy
used that space to fill four pages with favorite hymn, psalm, and anthem
tunes.
Literature on the Flanders Collection in the 1940s and 1950s frequently
mentioned the existence of the "Justin Morgan autograph tunebook."
This book is an oblong-format, leather-bound volume of 138
pages, of which 97 contain music, making up 36 pieces in all. Morgan
is represented in the book by at least three pieces: "Montgomery,"
"Symphony," and the "Judgment Anthem." Rather than belong to Justin
Morgan or being in his hand, however, it seems likely that the volume
is a copybook that belonged to Timothy Brainerd Egerton, who
is identified quite clearly on the flyleaf. The calligraphy is the same
throughout (with the possible exception of the last two, secular pieces),
and no evidence exists to suggest that the hand is other than Egerton's.
Internal evidence also indicates that the book was probably put together
after Morgan's death. Six of the compositions in the book are
identified as taken from the VillageH armonyt;h e copyist even identified
the page numbers in that collection where he found the pieces: "Old
Hundred" (p. 33); "Wells" (p. 73); "Mear" (p. 31); "St. Martins" (p. 94);
"Montgomery" (p. 66); and "Arnheim" (p. 183). These page numbers correspond to those found in the fourth (1798), fifth (1800), and sixth
(1803) editions of the Village Harmony (Exeter, N.H.: H. Ranlet). It is
likely that copying took place some time after the first year that these
editions were published, which was the last year of Morgan's life.
Genealogical research also supports this conclusion. Timothy Brainerd
Egerton was born 1790 into an important and influential Randolph,
Vermont family. It therefore seems probable that the book
would have been copied out around 1805 when Egerton was in his
midteens, likely to be involved in singing school activity, practicing his
musical penmanship, and youthfully inscribing his initials throughout
the book (as is the case).
The book does have some striking Justin Morgan connections, however.
The Morgan family was also an important one in Randolph. And
in fact, one of Justin's daughters married an Egerton, becoming in the
process, Timothy Brainerd Egerton's aunt-by-marriage. The book
eventually ended up in the Morgan family, and was given to the Flanders
Collection by Walter B. Mahony, who was a Morgan descendant.
The compositions that Master Egerton chose to copy are almost all
of American provenance. There are pieces by: Swan, Coan, Weeks,
West, Sumner, Smith, Holyrade, Read, Holyoke, Billings, and Child;
Tans'ur and Martin Luther were the only identified non-Americans.
The final pieces in the book are the only secular ones: "Brays of
Oleintire," and "Corydon and Caroline." That the hand is scrawled,
with different calligraphic characteristics, and that the pieces are not
listed in the index, suggests they might have been added later, perhaps
even by another copyist.2
Chapbooks, Songsters
There are forty-three chapbooks in the collection, which with a single
exception, fall completely into two different groups. Six octavo chapbooks
were printed in Glasgow, Scotland, in the nineteenth century, all
of the same typeface and paper, and probably numbers in a series. The
collection has: #19 ("The Penny-Worth of Wit's Garland"), #20 ("Rosanna;
The Oxford Tragedy"), #25 ("Five Excellent Songs"; two copies),
#26 ("The Berkshire Lady's Garland"), and #61 ("The Jolly Beggar").
Another thirty-six make up a collection of mid-nineteenth-century
Spanish chapbooks. They are dated from 1847 to as late as 1876; some
do not have printing dates. These were published in a number of Spanish cities, although most show Barcelona imprint information. All of
them have rough woodcut illustrations, and one includes tunes.
A single specimen printed by J. Marshal in Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
titled "A Garland of New Songs," is probably older than any of the
other chapbooks.
Songsters in the Flanders Collection, like the chapbooks and most
other loose or paperbound materials, are not catalogued in any systematic
way. This is especially unfortunate since the songster collection
must surely be one of the richest areas of the holdings. The songsters,
which number fifty-five, are quite varied as to date and place of publication.
Most are nineteenth century, but there are songsters from as
early as 1767 and as late as 1912. Most of the publications are American
(usually New York), although others come from England and Scotland.
Ten of the little books have some music in them, and one of these is
even four-shape notation: "The Eolian Songster" (Cincinnati: U. P.
James, n.d.). Subject matter embraces many of the areas of American
entertainment: minstrelsy, Irish music, Harrigan and Hart, Gus Williams,
in addition to areas of American concern, particularly evident in
the number of campaign songsters ("Tippecanoe Melodies," "Log
Cabin and Hard Cider Melodies," "Hancock and English Campaign
Songster," "Grant and Wilson. . .," "Hutchinson's Republican Songster"),
and temperance songsters.
Broadsides
Broadsides represent another especially valuable holding of the Flanders
Collection. There are 608 individual, single-sided imprints. Most
all of these are of nineteenth-century date, the greatest number being
from the last third of the century; there are a few that appear to be
from the late-eighteenth century.
The majority of the broadsides, some 340, are of Irish street ballads.
Of these, 298 are from a single printer, P. Brereton of Dublin. These
broadsides do not have music, are usually decorated with a rough
woodcut, and can be on any of a wide range of subjects: the Church,
romance, comic scenes, the potato blight, Irish emigration, patriotic
songs, war with England, only to name a few. There are a number of
duplicates among the Brereton broadsides. The imprints are not dated,
but an estimate, based upon subject matter and dates of popularity of
tunes suggested for the setting, would be late 1860s to early 1880s. The
other forty-two broadsides are from numerous printers, and sometimes
called Irish as much for their subject matter as for their imprint information
(which may be missing). A much smaller number of the broadsides,
fifteen, are of English/Scottish provenance. Among these are,
however, some of the oldest in the collection.
American imprints make up the other large proportion of the broadside
collection, 226 in number. Those by Auner Printers, of Philadelphia,
some 145 of them, are by far the largest group of this total. These
simple, unadorned broadsides have publication dates as late as 1891,
and subject matter from the mid-1870s (a number of which deal with
the Centennial). Popular sentimental songs, Irish and German stereotypes,
minstrel show and other comic topics are among the most frequently
treated subjects. There appear to be no duplicates among the
Auner imprints. Other American printers with significant representation
in the collection are Andrews and H. de Marsan, from New York,
and Thomas M. Scroggy, from Philadelphia.
The collection also gathered copies of transcriptions of ballad broadsides
from other collections. These number 139. Forty-three are from
the collection at the Vermont Historical Society; the others came from
various sources.
Counted among the broadsides are twenty-seven songsheets, printings
that also contain information on only one side, but of music. All
of these were published by W. Evans and Co. of Paternoster Row, London.
This publisher apparently printed and sold a numbered series of
songsheets, each illustrated appropriately. The collection's holdings of
these include compositions by Handel, Haydn, Burns, Arne, and Percy,
among others. Most are secular solo songs with keyboard accompaniment,
but some few are sacred and for two or more voices. The repertory
represented here is much like what an audience might have
heard at one of London's pleasure gardens at the turn of the nineteenth
century, a fact on which the publisher surely intended to capitalize.
Olney prepared a card index of the broadsides, filed by arbitrary
shelf list numbers; there is not at present any other sort of index to the
broadsides. All broadsides are either mounted, mounted and bound,
or slipped into a cellophane sleeve. Most are in excellent condition.
Published Music
Flanders' collections of published music contains significant numbers
of both American and foreign materials. Of the American, sacred singing
school tunebooks form the largest proportion, numbering 121 individual
titles, some of them in duplicate copies. Most of these are midnineteenth
century, although examples may be found from the lateeighteenth
century, and from as late as the early-twentieth century;
they are commonly of oblong format, and of New England or New
York publication. Probably most significant among the earliest of these
imprints is an uncatalogued copy of William Billings' Singing Master's
Assistant (title page missing). Some pages are missing from the front
and back of this rare book, but most of the finely printed music is in
good condition. The collection also holds a copy of the 1773 edition of
the AmericanH armony( Newburyport: D. Bayley), part one being William
Tans'ur's RoyalM elodyC ompletea, nd part two, A. Williams' Universal
Psalmodist. Other early editions include the Village Harmony (two
different editions: one with title page missing, the other, 13th ed. [Newburyport:
E. Little, 1816]), the DeerfieldC ollection( Greenfield, Mass.:
Published at R. Dickinson's Office, for Simeon Butler, Northampton,
H. Graves Printer: 1814), and a BridgewateCr ollection(t itle page missing);
there is also an 1807 edition of the MiddlesexC ollection( Boston:
Manning and Loring, 1807), with a "Justin Morgan's" rubber-stamped
on the title page that undoubtedly refers to the son of the composer
of that name; the only shape-note tunebook is a later Easy Instructor
(Albany: Websters, Skinners, and Daniel Steele, n.d.). Many other
books may be found catalogued under the names of the best-known
nineteenth-century compilers and composers: Lowell Mason, I. B.
Bradbury, L. O. Emerson, Thomas Hastings, G. F. Root, W. B. Bradbury,
W. O. Perkins, and many others.
Also to be found in the collection are thirteen singing-school books
intended for use by juveniles. These are generally smaller in size than
the books mentioned above, but otherwise with many of the same characteristics.
The secular glee-singing practice of the mid-nineteenth century led
to the publication of music books to serve the new tradition. Flanders
acquired for the collection some forty-one different choral glee books.
These are also generally of northeastern imprint, of oblong format, and
put together by familiar names: Emerson, Palmer, Perkins, Root, Mason,
and others.
The collection obtained thirteen instruction books for musical instruments,
undoubtedly with the thought that they might prove of use in
identification and discussion of the traditional instrumental tunes collected
by Flanders. The majority of these instructors are for either the
fiddle or the flute. Publication dates range from the 1840s to the 1890s.
Printing was done primarily in the Northeast, pointing up once more
the regional nature of the collection.
The Flanders Collection contains very little secular popular music.
Piano music is represented by only four collections; two of these are,
however, bound volumes of piano sheet music. Vocal music is even less
well-represented, and would not even merit mention here but for the
one fine binder's volume. This book, with richly embossed covers, is a
presentation collection of some of the music of the Christy Minstrels.
E. P. Christy's inscription is found on the flyleaf, and a hand-colored
lithograph of the company precedes the gathering.
Books
The Flanders Collection support library contains approximately
2,500 volumes; the general collection of Starr Library has many other
volumes in general circulation that complement the Flanders holdings.
Considered together the standard reference works on American folk
song and folklore are found here; a great many special or rare items
can also be seen. It was the policy during the richest period of bookbuying
(1946-60) to purchase additional volumes having to do with the
non-American folk traditions. Accordingly, there are materials that
deal with many of the world's folk arts. The majority concern the British
Isles, which is not surprising given the close relationship to New
England balladry. The materials on Irish and Scottish song are particularly
rich parts of the collection; volumes devoted to these two subjects
alone number into the hundreds, and many are eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century imprints. Representative works dealing with non-European
folk song and folklore can also be found in the Collection.
Publications
Seven volumes of ballads and songs from the collection have been
published. In order of date of original publication:
Flanders, Helen Hartness, and George Brown. VermonFt olk-Songsa nd
Ballads. Brattleboro, Vt.: Stephen Daye Press, 1931; reprint ed., Hatboro,
Pa.: Folklore Associates, 1968.
One-hundred-twenty ballads, sixty-two with tunes; includes some
ballads found earlier in Vermont by Phillips Barry.
Flanders, Helen Hartness, A Garland of Green Mountain Song. Green
Mountain Pamphlets, no. 1 (n.p.: n.p., 1934).
Twenty-four ballads, all with tunes, in four-part harmonic arrangements.
Flanders,H elen Hartness.C ountryS ongso f VermonNt. ew York:S chirmer,
1937.
Twenty-four ballads, all with tunes, in four-part harmonic arrangements.
Flanders, Helen Hartness, Elizabeth Flanders Ballard, George Brown,
and Phillips Barry. TheN ew GreenM ountainS ongster:T raditionaFl olk
Songso f VermontN. ew Haven: Yale University Press, 1939.
First prepared in 1934; 101 ballads, most with melodies.
Flanders, Helen Hartness. VermonCt hapB ook,B eing a Garlando f Ten
Folk Ballads. Middlebury, Vt.: Middlebury College Press, 1941.3
Woodcuts by Arthur Healy; no music.
Flanders, Helen Hartness, and Marguerite Olney. Ballads Migrant in
New England. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1953; reprint
ed., Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1968.
Ninety-seven ballads, most with tunes, collected from all the New
England states in the 1940s.
Flanders, Helen Hartness. Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England.
4 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960-65.
Compilation of all the ninety-two Child ballads in their nearly five
hundred variants found in the Flanders Collection; critical analyses
of texts by Tristram Coffin; around three hundred melodies reproduced,
with annotations by Bruno Nettl.
One long-playing recording was issued by the Collection in 1953:
Eight TraditionalB ritish-AmericanB allads from Helen Hartness Flanders Collection,
Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont. New England Folksong
Series no. 1.4
No comprehensive index to or catalog of the collection has ever been
published. Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society, vol. 3, no. 2 (June
1940): 214-51 contains an "Index of Ballads and Folk-Songs in the
Archive of Vermont Folk-Songs at Smiley Manse, Springfield, Vermont";
a supplemental "List of Folk-Songs Recorded in Vermont in
November 1939" was published in the September 1940 issue of the
same journal. These indices, of course, do not represent the bulk of
the present collection, since it was added to extensively after 1940.
1. A comparison of materials, techniques of collection, attitudes, organization, even format, of the
Flanders Collection with those of the Phillips Barry Papers at Harvard University, Houghton Library,
clearly points up the close relationship of the two collections. This was pointed out to me by Jennifer
Quinn, an ethnomusicologist now working in the Flanders Collection.
2 Much of the information presented here on the Egerton book was first discovered by Professor
Betty Bandel and kindly passed on to me; her biographyo f Justin Morgan,S ing theL ord'sS ongi n a
StrangeL and( Cranbury,N J.: FairleighD ickinsonU niversityP ress, 1980) discussest his book further.
3 Copies of this volume are still available from The College Store, MiddleburyC ollege, Middlebury, VT 05753; they ask that payment of $3.50 accompany any order.
4Many mint copies of this recording are still available; interested parties may obtain one from The
College Store, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT 05753, upon payment of $6.50