Review: Edward & Svend I Rosengard- Barry 1933
[From Bulletin of the Folk Song Society of the Northeast by Phillips Barry, No. 5, p. 20, 1933. Who would be better to write this review than Berry? No one-- except maybe Kittredge who was still around (d. 1941). It's important to read this review to understand Coffin's position in 1949 (the incest motive), which according to Berry was revealed by a traditional singer to Cecil Sharp. Berry did not name Sharp's informant.
R. Matteson 2014]
Reviews
Edward and Svend I Rosengard. A Study in the Dissemination of a Ballad. Archer Taylor. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago., Illinois, 1931. Pp. ix, 111.
Dr. Taylor applies the Finnish method to the study of a popular ballad. His thesis is two-fold. First, the agricultural back-ground of the American and Nordic (Scando-Finnish) texts, contrasting with the courtly background of the Anglo-Scottish group, shows deterioration in American and Nordic tradition. Second, Britain was the original home of the ballad.
With the first conclusion, we have no quarrel. Ballad matter deteriorates by democratization of an aristocratic tradition. The presentation of the argument is not always strong. Dr. Taylor holds that the hawk in the story was replaced by the hound when hawking declined. True, hawking is medieval, but hunting with hounds is as old as civilization and universal. And why argue that American texts are unimportant, until one identifies the strange birds therein mentioned. Just because hawks are now hunted and not hunted with is no proof that the Appalachian tradition is not old. Neither is the absence of the courtly background in American and Nordic tradition proof that neither had it originally.
Percy's text, Child B, is a crux. It is so fine a poem with its unparalleled drama of the Oedipus-complex, that it is too good to be true. Motherwell felt this and Mr. Taylor knows it, but glosses it over. On page 23, he puts rip to the folk-singer, the change from Cain to Oedipus: on page 26, he admits that the text has been rewritten. It is immaterial that in the second case he is concerned with an alleged improper use of the word penance. He admits that the textual tradition is not pure. But why was it rewritten? Percy antiqued the spelling: he had motives to do more. His affection for his younger brother would make his soul revolt at fratricide, while his dislike for his elder brother may have been a masked Oedipus-complex. The friend from whom he had the ballad was Sir David Dalrymple. A Scot speaks the name Edward only in anger: Percy was English, and for his friend's sake would avoid the "Davie" of Child A. The alteration may be limited to two words; if Percy so altered the text, he completed the re-creation of the ballad beyond the power of poet or singer to change except for the worse.
Just because Percy's text is not original, it must be used with caution. But we do not object to the word penance. True, pro crimine flagitiossimo, one might be set adrift in a boat without sails or oars, as in the passage of the Vita Offae Secundi mis-translated on page 27. But the penance-voyage is a trait of such Middle-Irish tales as the Imram Curaig Maelduzn ("The Rowing of Muldoon's Coracle") and the lmram H'ui Corra ("The Rowing of the O'Corra). In a disguised form it is common in ballads; for example Jon Remordsson's Did Paa Haavet ("John Remordsson's Death at Sea"), Herr Peders Sjoresa ("Sir Peter's Sea-Voyage"), Brown Robin's Confession and an interesting Slavic group.
One important detail of the Finnish tradition is waved aside: the motive for the fratricide in Finnish B, C. Except for the Oedipus-complex in Child B, and the implied blaming of the mother in Child A,--perhaps borrowed from B--no known texts but Finnish B, C, supply, save in a kenning, the motive for the killing. Murders do not just happen. The explanation in Finnish B, C, the seduction of the other's wife by the one brother makes the motive clear and helps to connect the ballad with the common radical of several ballads of sibling-murder, which in its simplest form, makes an elder brother slay a younger for love of their sister. Child A, C, and the American texts generally make the motive the breaking of a little bush: a kenning which Cecil Sharp said was interpreted by a singer to refer to a very young girl. Dr. Taylor is impressed with the antiquity of the detail; not understanding the symbolism, he cannot accept the Finnish trait as original.
The Achilles-heel of the Finnish method is that it leads to subjective judgment. Consider the curse on the mother in Child A. Dr. Taylor rightly denies it as original, but argues that it may have intruded from Lord Randall. One Italian and two German texts mentioned by Child do fix the poisoning on the mother, against the overwhelming evidence of tradition elsewhere. Only by reversing the judgment applied against the primitive trait in Finnish B, C does Dr. Taylor conclude that hatred of the son for the mother is a fixed trait in Lord Randall: an unjustified deduction.
Finally, there is the music. The air to the Nordic tradition, extant in a number of sets from Scandinavia and Finland, is apparently derived from the melody to a lament for the loss of Jutland in 1444, found in a Swedish manuscript of c. 1500. (G. O. Hylten-Cavallius och G. Stephens, Sveriges Historiska och Politiska Visor, no. 13). A Finnish set in three nearly identical copies (A. I. Arwidsson, Svenska Fornsanger, II, 87; E. Lonnrot, Kanteletar taikka Suomen Kansan Wanhoja Lauluja ja Wirsia, "The Harp, or, Old Songs and Ballads of the Finnish Folk," melody 4: A. Taylor, Edward and Sven i Rosengard, Finnish D, p. 64, recorded by Pippings-kold), is about the closest of any in Nordic tradition to this probable original. Such unity of musical tradition is important: it might point to an early original of the ballad, working westward from Finland. Unlike the case of The Two Sisters, (BSSNE, Bulletin 3, p. 12), there is no proof that the Nordic air has entered British tradition, though one Appalachian melody to Edward has a phrase elusively suggestive of it. We do not argue that Dr. Taylor is wrong in claiming a British original: we only demand that, since there is a musical, as well as a textual tradition to every popular ballad, all the evidence in the case be used. Not all the evidence has been used: except for the printing, without note or comment, of Pippingskold's copy of the Finnish set of the Nordic air, the musical tradition has been ignored.
The technical shortcomings of the work are not many. GE-U is not Edward, but a fragment of the Irish-American tradition of the Witham Miller, (FSSNE., Bulletin 1, p. 12). GE-L and GE-S, printed as distinct, are but a longer and a shorter copy of the Moncure-Cross family version, (Gordon; The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 9, 1927: Davis; Traditional Ballads of Virginia, p. 124). On Page 38, The Cruel Brother is wrongly called The Two Brothers. If Child's texts A and B of Lizie Wan were held worth reprinting in part, the unique American text of this ballad, Sharp MSS., 510, should not have been left out. Stanza 8 of the Finnish text FF A, reprinted from von Schroter's Finnische Runen, 124-128 (not 126-729), has been omitted, involving a false reference on page 31. What we cannot forgive, however, is the lack of a bibliography and a much needed index.
P. B.