Yes, there should be a mountain for the early collectors and compilers of folk songs and ballads.

This is an excerpt from a book I am writing.

Here, I talk about Dr. David Fowler's English 401 (The Popular Ballad), a course I took when I was attending the University of Washington in the 1950s:

Most of what I learned about the early minstrels and troubadours came from Dr. Fowler and from some of the books he recommended, such as The Wandering Scholars, by Helen Waddell. During one class, we listened to a recording of Carl Orff's setting of Carmina Burana, a collection of poetry and song, thought to have been written by some of these wandering scholars and compiled sometime in the 13th century.   

Dr. Fowler also recounted stories of some of the early ballad collectors: for example, the bizarre happenstance of how an 18th century clergyman, Bishop Thomas Percy, the Dean of Carlisle, rescued a priceless collection of ballads from piecemeal oblivion. While visiting friends in Shropshire, he noticed the chambermaid was lighting his fire with pages from an old manuscript that she kept under a dresser. Curious, he pulled it out, examined it—and immediately appropriated it. A scholar and antiquarian as well as a theologian, Bishop Percy recognized it as a hundred-year-old hand-written collection of poems and songs, many of which were ballads. Bishop Percy edited what was left of the collection, combined it with other material he had accumulated, and in 1765 published it as Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

Sometime around 1784, a thirteen-year-old Scottish lad came by a copy of Percy's Reliques. Already fascinated by the history, poetry, and legends of the Scottish Border country, he was enthralled by the ballads in the Reliques. This had a powerful influence on his life. As a young man he turned to collecting ballads, and soon abandoned his Edinburgh law practice in favor of a literary career. One of his first published works, in 1802, was his own collection of ballads, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. This was followed by The Lay of the Last Minstrel, The Lady of the Lake, Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Bride of Lammermoor (upon which Gaetano Donizetti based his opera "Lucia di Lammermoor"). Then there was perhaps his most famous work, Ivanhoe, the classic adventure story of knights, ladies, chivalry, pageantry, and 13th century villainy and skullduggery, complete with castles under siege, a mysterious Black Knight, and lots of jousting and swordplay. Ivanhoe has come out in at least three movie versions. This was, of course, Sir Walter Scott.

The collections of Percy, Scott, and others were important forerunners and contributors to the monumental achievement of Harvard English Professor Francis James Child. While carrying a full teaching schedule at Harvard and working in his spare time, Professor Child amassed every collection he could lay hands on, including many rare books and manuscripts. With little access to primary sources, he corresponded with other scholars and interested parties who assisted him in his quest. Over time, he managed to accumulate a staggering amount of material. He carefully combed through everything, analyzing, editing, annotating, and rejecting spurious material. He discovered that many of the ballads were actually variations of the same ballad. He collated thousands of ballad texts into groups, finally arriving at 305 distinct ballads. The product of nearly twenty-five years' work, this Herculean feat of scholarship, came out in a five-volume set, between 1882 and 1898. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Subsequently, this collection became the definitive and essential reference for ballad scholarship.

Considering the difficulties under which Child worked (many of his colleagues didn't have a clue as to what he was doing and why he even bothered with it), it is astounding that since that time, ballad collectors have found only about a half-dozen additional ballads (and those very rare) beyond the 305 which fit Child's carefully reasoned criteria for what constitutes an authentic folk ballad.

In songbooks and on the backs of record jackets, one sometimes sees notations in parentheses following a song title, e.g., "Lord Randal, (Child #12)" or "Geordie (Child #209)." This identifies the song as one of the 305 ballad types in the Child collection. If one wishes to learn more about a particular ballad or find other versions of it, this is the starting point.

A tribute to Child's scholarship.

Cecil J. Sharp's monumental work in both the U.K. and the United States is equally important. And equally impressive.

Don Firth