Traditional Ballads & Folk Songs Mainly from West Virginia- John Harrington Cox- 1939 Edited by George Herzog and Herbert Halpert 1939 and George Boswell, 1964.
[Intro pages and contents (this page) proofed once. Raw text added, many song texts, song notes not proofed]
[This is Cox's follow-up publication to his Folk Songs From the South, a book that had ballads and songs almost entirely from West Virginia. There are two editions here: the first is numbered 1-29 and is mainly ballads from the British Isles; the second, numbered 1-35 is mainly American folk-songs (there are several of English origin).
On this page will be CONTENTS, INTRODUCTION, INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, EDITOR'S STATEMENT; PREFACE 1st edition and PREFACE 2nd edition.
I've attached individual ballads and songs to this page. The quality of the original is poor and very labor intensive- I'm not sure how much of this I will do. In some cases raw text- unedited- has been added, this will be edited at some point.
R. Matteson 2014]
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
INTR0DUCTORY ESSAY
EDITORS' STATEMENT
TITLE PAGE (Ballads)
PREFACE (Ballads)
TITLE PAGE (Folk-Songs)
PREFACE (Folk-Songs)
BALLADS (Book 1)
1A. THE FALSE SIR JOHN
(Lady Isabel and The Elf Knight, Child, No. 4)........(with melody)
1B. SIX KING'S DAUGHTERS
(Lady Isabel and The Elf Knight, Child, No. 4)
2A. THERE WAS AN OLD FARMER
(The Twa Sisters, Child, No. 10)........ (with melody)
2B. ALL BOW DOWN
(The Twa Sisters, Child No. 10)
3. THE JEALOUS LOVER
(Lord Randal, Child, No. 10).......(with melody)
4. EDWARD
(Edward, Child, No. 13).......(with melody)
5. THE CROW SONG
(The Three Ravens, Child, No.26)...........(with melody)
6. THE TWO BROTHERS
(The Twa Brothers, Child, No.49)...........(With melody)
7A. A TURKISH LADY
(Young Beichan, Child No.53)............(with melody)
7B. TURKISH LADY
(Young Beichan, Child No.53)............(with melody)
7C LORD WETRAM
(Young Beichan, Child No.53)............(with melody)
8A. LORD LOVEL
(Lord Lovel, Child, No. 75)........(with melody)
8B. LORD LOVEL
(Lord Lovel, Child, No. 75)........(with melody)
8C. LORD LOVEL (A Parody)
9. SLACK YOUR ROPE
(The Maid Freed From The Gallows, Child, No. 95) (with melody)
10A. GYPSY DAVY
(The Gypsy Laddie, Child No. 200).... (with melody)
10B THE RAGGLE TAGGLE GYPSIES, O
(The Gypsy Laddie, child, No. 200).... (with melody)
10C THE RAGGLE TAGGLE GYPSIES, O
(The Gypsy Laddie, child, No. 200).... (with melody)
11 LEEZIE LINDSAY
(Lizie Lindsay, Child, No. 226).........(with melody)
12A THE HOUSE CARPENTER
(James Harris The Daemon Lover, Child No.243).......(with melody)
12B THE HOUSE CARPENTER
(James Harris The Daemon Lover, Child No.243)......(with melody)
12C THE HOUSE CARPENTER'S WIFE
(James Harris The Daemon Lover, Child No.243).....(with melody)
12D THE HOUSE CARPENTER
(James Harris The Daemon Lover, Child No.243)
13A THE WIFE WRAPPED IN WETHER'S SKIN
(Child, No. 277) (with melody)
13B THE WIFE WRAPPED IS WETHER'S SKIN
(Child, No.277).
15C DANDOO
(The Wife Wrapped In Wether's Skin, Child, No.277)
14 THE JOLLY BEGGAR
(Child, No. 279).........(with melody)
15A THE GOLDEN VANITY
(The Sweet Trinity, Child, No. 286).......(with melody)
158 THE MARY GOLDEN TREE
(The Sweet Trinity Child, No. 286)
15C THE GREEN WILLOW TREE
(The Golden Vanity, Child, 286)
16 THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER
(The Bramble Briar)..........(with melody)
17A PRETTY POLLY
(Polly's Love or The Cruel Ship Carpenter).....(with melody)
17B PRETTY POLLY
(Polly's Love or The Cruel Ship Carpenter)
17C COME, POLLY, PRETTY POLLY
(Polly's Love or The Cruel Ship Carpenter)......(with melody)
18 'TWAS EARLY IN THE SPRING
(Early In The Spring)............(with melody)
19 FAIR CHARLOTTE
(Caroline of Edinburgh Town)....... .. (with melody)
20 THE FARMER AND HIS BRIDE
(Dog And Gun).... ..........(with melody)
21A POOR MAN, O POOR MAN
(The Jolly Thresherman)......................(with melody)
21B THERE WAS A RICH ENGLISHMAN
(The Jolly Thresherman)
22 BABES IN THE WOOD..........(with melody)
23 THE WEALTHY MERCHANT.................(with melody)
24A THE NIGHTINGALE..............(with melody)
24B. ONE MORNING IN MAY
(The Nightingale).............(with melody)
24C ONE MORNING IN MAY
(The Nightingale)
25 THE MODESTY ANSWER
(Seventeen Come Sunday).... (with melody)
26 GRANDMA......... (with melody)
27 MARY OF THE WILD MOOR................(with melody)
28 THE SOLDIER'S POOR LITTLE BOY........(with melody)
29 THE BOSTON BURGLAR...................(with melody)
___________FOLK-SONGS (Book 2)____________________________
1A THE ROWAN COUNTY CREW .........(with melody)
1B THE ROWAN COUNTY CREW..........(with melody)
1c THE ROWAN COUNTY CREW
2A THE WRECK OF THE OLD SOUTHERN NINETY-SEVEN.......(with melody)
2B THE WRECK OF THE OLD 97
(The Wreck of the Old Southern Ninety-seven)...(with melody)
3A SPRINGFIELD MOUNTAIN............(with melody)
3B SPRINGFIELD M0UNTAIN
3C THE VENOMOUS BLACK SNAKE
(Springfield Mountain)
4A FAIR CHARLOTTE
(Young Charlotte ) ............ (with melody)
4B YOUNG CHARLOTTE
5A THE JEALOUS L0VER..................(with melody)
5B BLUE-EYED ELLEN
(The Jealous Lover)
6A MoAFEE'S CONFESSION................(with melody)
6B. McAFEE'S CONFESSION
7 THE JAM AT GERRY'S ROCK.................(with melody)
8A. THE DYING C0WBOY...............(with melody)
8B THE DYING COWBOY...............(with melody)
9 THE LONE PRAIRIE..................(with melody)
10. THE DYING RANGER................(with melody)
11 A SOLDIER'S LIFE
(Sweet William)............ (with melody)
12A THE PRETTY MOHEE
(The Pretty Mohea)........ ...(with melody)
12B THE LITTTE MAUMEE
(The Pretty Mohea)...... (with melody)
12C THE PRETTY MOHEE
(The Pretty Mohea).................(with melody)
13 OLD SMOKY................(with melody)
14 A WARNING TO GIRLS..........(with melody)
15 YOU CAN'T COME AGAIN...........(with melody)
16 OLD MAID SONG.. .......... .....(with melody)
17 THE TWELVE APOSTLES......(with melody)
18A THE MILLER AND HIS SONS
(The Dishonest Miller).. ........(with melody)
18B. THE MILLER
(The Dishonest Miller )
19A. THE FOOLISH 80Y................(with melody)
I9B JOHNNY BOBEENS
(The Foolish Boy)
20 POURQUOI ...........(with melody)
21 THE FOX........(with melody)
22A. MR. MOUSE WENT A-COURTING
(The Frog and the Mouse)..................(with melody)
22B THE FROG AND THE MOUSE...............(with melody)
22C FROG WENT A-COURTING
(The Frog and the Mouse).................(with melody)
22D A FROG HE WOULD A-WOOING GO
(The Frog and the Mouse)................(with melody)
22E. FROG WENT A-COURTING
(The Frog and the Mouse)........... (with melody)
26 AUNT JEMIMA'S PLASTER...........(with melody)
24A JOE BOWERS.................(with melody)
24B JOE BOWERS
25 REVOLUTIONARY TEA .....(with melody)
26 Mr OLD BROWN COAT ..........(with melody)
27 THE PRISONER'S SONG........................(with melody)
2BA A LITTLE ROSEWOOD CASKET.. ..,............(with melody)
28B. A LITTLE ROSEWOOD CASKET................(with melody)
29 THE BLIND CHILD'S PRAYER...........,..(with melody)
30 THE GYPSY'S WARNING......................(with melody)
31A TEMPERANCE SONG
(The Drunkard's Doom)..................(with melody)
31B THE DRUNKARD
(The Drunkard's Doom)...........(with melody)
32. THE DRUNKARD'S RAGGED WEE ANE.........(with melody)
33. POOR LITTLE JOE............ (with melody)
34. THE ARKANSAW TRAVELER
( Old-time Fiddler' s Tune )....(with melody)
35. OFF SHE GOES
(Old-Time Fiddler's Tune).............(with melody)
ABBREVIATI0NS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
___________________________
INTRODUCTION- Boswell
It is to be hoped that unlike too many cooks spoiling the broth, a seemingly inordinate number of editors does not necessarily spoil a collection of folksongs. Though never before printed, this is the second issuance of these songs. In 1939 they came out in two mimeographed booklets, entitled "Traditional Ballads Mainly from West Virginie" and "Folk-songs Mainly from West Virginia," under the editorship of John Harrington Cox, Herbert Halpert, and Dr. George Herzog. (see the original title page in facsimile, (pp. 1 & 107). Last year the undersigned was asked by Professor Tristram P. Coffin to check over the collection once more, to update the notes, and to prepare it for merited publication in one volume by the American Folklore Society. The reader now has it before him.
As Dr. Harpert said of "Traditional Ballads" "The thirty-seven folk tunes and forty-five texts (fragments and variants included) in this volume make an important addition to (Cox's) Folk Songs of the south, in which only twenty-nine tunes accompanied the large collection of texts. In the second booklet, "Folk-songs," there are forty-six tunes and fifty-three texts. Those eighty-three tunes and 102 texts are presented herein. Accompanying editorial apparatus has been kept to a minimum but brought, up to date, in every instance possible.
Of the sixty-four separate pieces fifteen are child ballads, presented in the order and numbering given them by professor F. J. Child in his English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Twenty-five are British or American folk or "broadside" ballads as identified by G. Malcolm Laws in his two manuals, American Balladry from British Broadsides and Native American Balladry (Laws's number is given in the notes.) The remaining twenty-four items are love songs, songs of poverty, songs of sentiment and sympathy, counting songs, crime songs, disaster songs, comic songs, westerns, marital laments, a cumulative song, animal songs, tall tales, patriotic songs, temperance songs, and fiddle tunes.
Headnotes to pieces are as appeared in the 1939 volume. It was felt, however, that little purpose would be served by repeating the other original reference notes, so only certain sections of them have been retained and are given at the ends of tunes and texts. The name Cox, Herzog, or Halpert in parentheses after a comment means that it is tho work of professor Cox, Herzog, or Halpert respectively. The musical structure of each tune is given together with a concise analysis of it in accordance with the Bronson system. This system was explained by Dr. Bertrand Bronson in Musical Quarterly, XXXII (1946), and used by him in his The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads. Finally, for every song one reference is given to an occurrence in other collection whenever possible to The Frank C. Brown collection of North Carolina Folklore, (NC). Of course detailed bibliographies for all Child ballads can be found by consulting Tristram P. Coffin, The British Traditional Ballad in North America; for all Laws ballads by consulting his handbooks. Any musical errata pointed out by Dr. Herzog are silently corrected in the scores.
GEORGE W. BOSWELL
_________________
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
Truth in Folk-songs - some observations on the Folk-singer's Attitude.
The fact that ballads and songs of of British ancestry are still sung over large sections of the United states is now taken for granted. Save for negro spirituals no other group of American folksongs, or American by adoption to use Phillips Barry's phrase, has received such generous attention from collectors. Yet the problems of the human relationships to the song, which not only should be of interest lo collectors and sociologists but would appeal to people at large, have been generally ignored.
Why these songs and ballads are still sung, and what they mean to those who sing or hear them are pregnant questions. Indeed, what does it mean for people in a democracy and particularly those living a rural, pioneer form of life to sing about, "Lord Bateman" and about "Lord Lovel and Lady Nancy"? What does it mean to an inland people, most of whom have never seen the sea, to sing about a cabin boy sinking an enemy ship?
Dr. Herzog has suggested that one method of gathering such data was ready at hand for any collector and could be gathered through reporting incidental observations, comments of singers, and so on.*
When I followed the trail of just such material in the summer of 1957 among the "Piney's of southern New Jersey and with singers along the Delaware River in New York state, I made observations which probably would be paralleled elsewhere. For that reason it seem justified to discuss them in a volume of ballads which stem from the same tradition even though not from the same locale. The study tn New Jersey branched out in various directions. Similar investigations will have to be made elsewhere to broaden the basis of the validity of my generalizations. One aspect was to examine the feeling and belief which the singer has in singing the American ballads and songs.**
To me a most striking phenomenon was the folk singer's intense belief in the factual basis of his songs. This was expressed in different ways.
--------------------
*See Southern Folklore Quarterly, vol. 2, No. 2.
** This section of the essay was first used as part of a paper read before the American Folk-Lore Society in New Haven, Dec. 28, 1937.
__________________________
One singer, who had sung for me several Civil War songs, gave me a fragmentary version of the ballad Geordie. Now in most versions, George has stolen some of the king's horses, "white steeds," and sold them. At his trial, his true love attempts to have him freed, but in the more common versions she fails and George is hanged - with something better than a common rope as is demanded by his rank. What my singer recalled was that
"He was hung by a golden chain,
Such chains there are not many". . .
but it was because he had stolen "six of the king's white slaves, and sold them in Virginny. When to my surprise he informed me that George had stolen the slaves from the king of England, sailed to Virginia and sold them; there he had been captured and returned to England for hanging. There was a complete hypothesis, so matter-of-fact that I confess I failed to ask the singer whether Virginia ever had had white slaves.
Of course, this ingenious theory may have arisen simply through misunderstanding. One informant in a long version of "Brennan on the Moor" came to the stanza describing how the highwayman, Tilly Brennan, was captured. He sang one line which stated that Willy was based to load a trey. "A trey is a three in cards," he said, but I can't figure out just what it means here to lead a trey. And it saved me from many complications when I realized that Brennan probably was basely betrayed."
Equally startling with lines from "Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor":
"He dressed himself in a gallant stray
Where all his deers were seen" --
which another singer remarked "must have been the girls he went with."
But one cannot be too sure that such changes have come purely through mishearing or misunderstanding. Singers sometimes take matters into their own hands. A singer told me he had heard the last line of a song as "while the nightingale(s) sing," but thought that it made more sense to sing, it "while the night and one sing." I could take my choice.
But this phase of the folk singer's belief that a song makes sense, is not as readily apparent as his intense emotional participation in the song narrative. In one version of The Golden Vanity, the little cabin boy, on the promise of a reward, sunk the Neilly ship, but when he swims back to his own ship the captain refuses to take him on board. He sings:
"If it wasn't for the love I had for your men,
I'd do unto you as I done unto them,
I'd sink you in the low, the lowlands so low."
The singer interjaculated vehemently: "I'd have sunk them anyway," said a woman who sang a different version of the ballad asked me can you understand how anyone can be so mean?" Mackenzie tells of one Nova Scotian singer who interrupted himself at one point in a ballad describing a treacherous murder with a howl of rage, and wished he were behind the traitor with a sword in his hand so that, he could drive it through his body.[4] Randolph also describes the emotional participation of singer and audience in the songs.**
Another widespread phenomenon which exhibits the folk-singer's belief in the actuality of the events in a song is the tendency to localize songs. The extremely well known "Butcher Boy" hails variously from London, New York, Jersey City, and points south, and the nearly as familiar "Boston Burglar" apparently shifts his native habitat with equal ease. The version in the present collection, as seems only proper, has him "born in West Virginia, a place we all know well."
This statement indeed reaches the heart of the matter. It is a place we all know well, in almost all cases, Cecil Sharp says of the English folk singer, "To him there is no tale like the true tale; and to heighten the sense of reality, he will often lay the scene of his story in his own locality. I have heard Torquay substituted for turkey in the ballad of Lord Bateman though this may admit of another explanation.*** Of course, this is a little shocking to the city person interested in the ballad. We like the antique charm of "Scarlet Town" from which Barbara Allen comes in a very well known version and we feel sharply the loss of this aure when Barbary Ellen sings:
"In Jersey City where I did dwell,
On Broadway was my dwellin'."
It seems like the jump from an old story to a newspaper account. But this giving of a local habitation and a name to a song strengthens the folk audience's belief in it. You have brought in a low though mute witness to the truth of your story - a known place. Dickens recognizes strength of this appear to concrete evidence when he makes Rogue Riderhood protest, " 'E told me 'e did the deed right outside the Six Jolly Fellowships and there is the Six Jolly Fellowships. Now call me a liar."
-----------------
*W. Roy Mackenzie, "The Quest of the Ballad," p. 237
**Vance Randolph, "Ozark Folk-Songs" pp. 179
***Cecil J. Sharp, English Folk Song: Some Conclusions, p. 99
_____________________________________
This offering in evidence anything which can be pointed to as actually existent, no matter how irrelevant it may be to the point at issue, is common with folk singers. Such corroboration frequently takes the form of personal testimony. For example, in New Jersey a ballad written after a very famous murder that had been widely reported in the newspapers fifty years before, is still sung by many singers, each of whom is confident that his version is the only accurate one. Garbled texts, where even such readily verifiable facts as the names of the protagonists were incorrect, are staunchly vouched for with such reasons as a claim that the singer's father was on the jury, or that a relative owned a piece of property mentioned in the song.
With no attempt to give oven such proofs, other informants are equally dogmatic* to the truth and accuracy of their versions of other ballads. As Phillips Barry said "The way a certain folk singer sings a certain song is, for him, the right way; it may be sung differently by other singers whose deviations from his way meet, now with kindly tolerance, now with bitter intolerance."*
To verify the implications of the material collected some two years ago, Dr. George Herzog suggested the method of direct questioning for use in the field. With his assistance I devised a questionnaire, and on a new expedition last summer** returned to the same areas with the express purpose of getting more explicit data on the singers attitudes to their songs. The items of the questionnaire, phrased very simply, and were presented to each singer during an informal conversation. Those relevant to this paper frequently centered on his reminiscences about "the good old days." "Are the songs true?" "Why do you think so?" "How do you think they were made up?" And then, since singers often make a formal distinction between true and "made-up" songs - "Which kind do you like?"
One singer said that Dixie's Sunny Land, a song about prison life during the Civil War, was "a true song. I've drunk barrels of rum on the strength of that songs." I asked who treated. "Why, the old soldiers that had the real experience." It was these old soldiers who verified the truth of the song for him. A woman said she liked "old-fashioned war songs, songs that's been sung for a hundred years."
--------------------
*Phillips Barry's "American Folk Music," Southern Folklore Quarterly, Vol.1, pp 30.
**Made possible by the generosity the American Council of Learned Music Southern Folklore Quarterly, of the Committee on Musicology of Societies.]
______________________________________
Father used to sing them. Sure they were true. They were made-up about the war."* Those songs, then, seemed true because they were verified by people who had participated is a wide general. experience during the same period of history to which the singers described their song. So because there had beyond the possibility of doubt, been a Civil War, both singer and interviewer must believe that,
"The man upon the lookout cried down to them below
'I see something floating yonder looks like a turtle's back,
It's that infernal steamer that they call the Merrimac."
and that those were the exact words spoken. But when I protested that the song said the entire crew had refused to leave the ship and had gone down with its "flag still a-waving; I don't know about that," said my 77 year old informant. '"There must have been one saved for to built the Monitor and, by golly, they licked the Merrimac."
But in addition to this acceptance of specific details, which can be used to fill in the general outline of the immediate past, there are two equally basic reasons which are offered by singers as sufficient reason for belief in their songs. the first is the fact that in rural tradition where reading and writing for non-utilitarian purposes are comparatively unimportant, the generally accepted evidence is hearsay evidence and information is preserved and transmitted by oral tradition.
"How do you know the songs were true?" I asked a blind old singer. He answered sharply. "How do we know anything's true? From history. And then more humorously: "Old people never used to lie as they do today. We had a decent kind of world in those days."* And another singer was equally sharp with his wife's skepticism. "You've got to take somebody else's word for anything unless you see it yourself. Even then you night not got it right."
This emphasis on oral tradition also gives rise to the respect for the words of the old. For old persons, generally, are the chief repositories of oral knowledge. In addition to their age and standing in the community, they know more. Their length of life has allowed, them to participate in actions now historical. They can verify the truth of older happenings. They transmit such traditional lore as proverbs, which help to explain life, and folk medicine, which helps to preserve it. There is also the feeling that the aged are the
----------------
*I must point out here that "war songs to these singers form a general classification in which they include many folk-songs of English origin as well as songs about the Civil War.
_____________________________________________
most truthful bearers of tradition. One needs only to have casual dealings with rural people in order to meet with the sometimes exasperating care with which statements are made. Ask where someone lives and you get, "Have heard he moved to ----, but I can't say for sure." Or, ask for information and you are told, "Someone told me that --------, but I don't know," or "He said that ------, but I don't know if it's sorta hearsay evidence, you see, must not be trusted unless received from a trustworthy source, when it can be fully trusted. Therefore songs learned from the old receive this added credence,"I know they were true." They were sung by the old people and they didn't tell no lies; they told the truth." An old man told me, "Those songs were true. Yes, Yes," and his wife said, "People lived so different then. They was more truthful."
Testimony was not, however, the only check by which singers tested the truth of their songs. They also relied heavily on analogy. Frequently they quoted to me recent songs, which they know to be based on facts, and suggested that the older songs must have been made up in the sane way about things that had happened earlier, "Wreck of the Old 97," "Floyd Collins"- We all know that they were true. The old ones are taken the same way. Barb'ry Allen was. The old pieces were taken from facts."
The singer mentioned earlier, whose father's presence on the jury justified her belief in her version of the song about the murder said, "We know that took place. Maybe they, (older songs) were taken just the same--I think all was taken from life sometime or other. Even today they're taken from nature."
In a recent short story an English novelist has very well expressed this feeling of the folk singer for reality.
". . . one of them sang. At one stanza there was an outburst from Pablo and one other; "knocked at the miller's door," Pablo insisted. That was the concreteness of the peasant in him. It must be the miller's door, not just any door, because it had been the miller's door.
And all of it is true. . .
. . . All of it and much more."
from - JARAMA BALLAD
Most singers seemed pretty well convinced that a song had to be built on a factual basis. To explain how the songs were made up, one singer from New York State suggested, "I should think it would be something that happened. It would be made up from life, from their own experience or the experience of others. Seems to me it stands to reason that's the way they'd do it." And another man said, "Some of these songs I really think is true because they had to have something to start to compose it on. You've got to have something to start with."
Again from a lady in Jersey, who had given me information about Civil War songs, came this justification. "The Rolling Sea" (a version of the Golden Vanity) "was about sea pirates sinkin' it for money. It was true because in the olden times they used to go on sea and rob boats. That's what they made it up about."
They believe that one can judge whether or not a song is based on facts. "I think the way the words go, you can tell." And my blind informant made an interesting comparison, "On an average, by hearing the way the song goes you tell a whole lot about it. you could find out just as you find out about people -- whether they're trying to tell the truth.'' Furthermore, probability is used to decide whether a song can be trusted: ''Mary of the Wild Moor, she left home and got a worthless husband. That's thought it was." Incidentally this song of Mary, who dies at her father's door, from the "winds that blow 'cross the wild moor" is widely regarded as a very moving tale of real life. The fact that "such things could be so, is one that all singers recognize. They feel that human nature can be relied on to be consistent, and so a singer bases his judgement on his experience of human behavior; or rather, on his understanding of that behavior. One singer said of a song, "The Journeyman Tailor Marrying a Queen - "I never thought much of that and never tried to learn it. Such things aren't so."
We then come to our concluding question, "Why do singers like the songs?" Why does the quality of truth enhance the song for them? That it does is clearly shown in their comments on old songs compared to new ones. The old ones "had more sense to them." That phrase is a very common summing up of their approval. One of my younger informants, a woman of twenty-one, liked them for the story. "Same as if you lived the story, I get right into it. It seems so real." Another said, "If it was something we knowed was real - talks about our soldiers or seamon or anything they done, great things like they have done, we take it more to heart. Songs they write now - - millions are like continued stories.* The things in it are impossible."
There can be no doubt that here verisimilitude is a very high
---------------
*Serial stories in weekly newspapers.
_________________________________________
aesthetic quality. Said one man of true songs; "They was made up to rhyme and they fit in better all in rhyme. The others didn't fit in as good. " Truth apparently even rhymes better than a story without facts behind it
And this aesthetic feeling for truth is inseparably linked with moral feeling. "Ain't true songs better than story songs? The truth is always better than anything, that isn't true" Very much an indicator not only is what is truthful beautiful , but it is also morally right. "You wouldn't want a man to lie to you, would you? Would you want him to sing a lie to you?"
t or some singers this moral sanction is coupled with a sentimental or religious sanction. "The reason I like true songs best? My mother was a religious woman and liked everything true."
These quotations have been selected almost at random from many times their number. They indicate that there is in the thought and feeling of the folk singer a wealth of material, in some ways of as much interest as the songs he sings.
HERBERT HALPERT
______________________
PREFACE- Halpert
One important group of folk songs from the large collection (containing folklore or many types) which has been assembled by professor John Harrington Cox, under the auspices of the West Virginia Folklore Society, was published under his editorship in Folk-Songs of the South, Harvard University Press, 1925. Professor Cox's exhaustive headnotes and references for individual ballads and songs made that book a standard work. However, since its appearence much additional material has been assembled. Although the whole of this will be put into book form at some future date, professor Cox has generously permitted us to issue in this series most of the folk tunes accompanied by texts from the unpublished collection. This volume contains almost all of the group of songs of British ancestry, which are mainly ballads. A few children's songs also included in this 'imported' group have been omitted here for lack of space and will probably appear in some later number of AMERICAN F0LK-SONG PUBLICATIONS.
We are fortunate in having very full notes and references on tho ballads furnished by Professor Cox. I have, in addition, supplied some supplementary ones to bring them up to date. My responsibility is indicated by an asterisk pretending those items which I have included in the bibliography, and by parentheses enclosing additions to the notes which follow the original notes and references intentions of a few title changes have also been placed in parentheses, and will be found immediately after the added references.
Dr. George Herzog of Columbia University is responsible for editing the melodies. A few slight changes seemed necessary for clarity's sake. These are referred to in the notes and follow the additions and title changes, since the interpretation of our folk melodies as major or minor in tonality is often unwarrented, the number of sharps or flats in the signatures does not follow conventional notation, only those sharps and flats are placed there which actually occur in the melodies.
Tho thirty-seven folk tunes and forty-nine texts (fragments and variants included) in this volume make an important addition to FOLK SONGS OF THE SOUTH, in which only twenty-nine tunes accompanied the large collection of texts. seven of the ballads and songs given here were not represented in the earlier book: "Edward, "Lizie Lindsay," "The Jolly Beggar" (Child Nos.*, 13, 226, 279). "The Boatsman and the chest," "Babes in the Wood," "The Jolly Thresherman" and "The Nightingale." Of these "Lizie Lindsay," and "Jolly Beggarman" are quite rare in the United States. Fourteen of the titles of ballads and songs given here with tunes appear in the earlier book as titles of texts without tunes. The eight remaining titles in this volume supplement texts and tunes in FOLK-S0NGS OF THE S0UTH with variants.
As the title of the volume indicates, the songs in the collection come mainly from West Virginia. Taking them by states, twenty-eight come from West Virginia, ten from Kentucky, six from California, two from Indiana, and one each from Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. A longer history of their travels has been supplied for seven of the songs by the persons communicating theme and is found with those songs as part of the acknowledgement of source.
Footnote:
*Refers to the numbers in tho standard ballad compilation, THE ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH POPULAR BALLADS, by professor F. J. Child.
H. H.
__________________
PREFACE (to 2nd edition, Folk Songs)
This is the second group of folk songs from the large collection of Professor John Harrington Cox to appear in the National Service Bureau's folk song series. Like the first section, TRADITIONAL BALLADS MAINLY FROM WEST VIRGINIA (American Folk-song publications #3), it contains only part of the songs he has assembled since the publication of FOLK-SONGS OF THE SOUTH by the Harvard University Press in 1925. Together those are only a small part of an extensive folklore collection which will be published in more complete form at some later time.
FOLK-SONGS 0F THE SOUTH was for years been a standard reference work. The fact that this volume, like the earlier one in the series, is also enriched by Professor Cox's notes and references will be particularly appreciated by all students. I have again attempted to bring the notes and references up to the present. My supplementary material for individual songs follows Professor Cox's and is indicated by being enclosed in parentheses. In the bibliography my responsibility for additions is shown by an asterisk before a title.
In the notes montlon ls mads of occasional discrepancies between the verse shown under the mrsic and the same stanza-(generally the first) presented as part of the text. Dr. Herzog's comments apply very well here.
Some of the text variation is possibly due to the singer's lot giving quite the same text on two different occasions. Some of it, however, must arise from the circumstances attendant upon recording song texts. A comparison of our texts with those in the book shows that when the text is recorded from dictation, certain elements tend to become lost. Syllables like "etc. and," and the like tend to drop out -- perhaps inconsequential from the textual point of view but certainly not when text and music are taken together.*
Occasionally where the differences are more marked there is always the possibility that the singer also knows or has heard a different version of the song from the one first given. Collectors are strongly urged to inquire of the singer whether he has ever heard the song sung in a different way, and if so to note how much of it he recalls.
Dr. George Herzog of Columbia University has once more assumed the task of editing the melodies. He says a few slight changes seemed necessary for clarity's sake. These are referred to in the notes. Since the interpretation of our folk melodies as major or minor in tonality is often unwarranted, the number of sharps or flats in the signatures does not follow conventional notation. Only those sharps and flats are placed there which actually occur in the melodies.
Thirty-six of the fifty-four items in this volume came from West Virginia. other states are represented as follows: ten from California, five from Kentucky, and one each from Missouri, Pennsylvania, and New York. A provenience, other than the state in which it was recorded; is given for seven of the songs. The forty-five folk tunes (including two fiddle tunes) and the fifty-five texts (fragments and variants included) in the volume, make another important addition to FOLK-S0NGS 0F THE SOUTH, where only a handful of tunes accompanied the largo number of texts. Seventeen of the thirty-five titles given here were not represented at all in the earlier book. Twelve titles given in that book with texts only appear here in variants with tunes. For six of the titles with both texts and tunes in F0LK-S0NGS 0F THE SOUTH, additional variants are given in this book.
Herbort Halpert
* Introduction to Folk Songs from Mississippi