The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #64916   Message #1064556
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
02-Dec-03 - 01:48 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Fanny Blair (Uncensored!!)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Fanny Blair (Uncensored!!)
There are indeed 17 sheets at the Bodleian, but I wasn't counting duplicate copies as separate entries (neither do they).

Of the two sets here in the DT (see thread head), the first is from Huntington, and the second is the Sharp re-write. On comparing the tune Huntington used with the Sharp one, they turn out to be quite different, though a casual reading of the note attached gives a rather misleading impression. The DT midi is unplayable online, as the music in it does not start until the 308th bar; mind you, when I eventually found the little bit of music tucked away there, the key-signature was wrong and so was the barring! The midi with the Sharp set is an accurate transcription from his One Hundred English Folk Songs.

The only really significant differences between Sharp's re-write and the broadside(s) he used are his alterations of "eleven" to "eighteen" and "never had dealings with her" to "never stole with her". I've seen far more drastic (and silly) editorial changes made to songs nowadays in the name of political correctness, of which this is merely the equivalent of a century ago.

The set in Loraine Wyman's Twenty Kentucky Mountain Songs (Boston: Oliver Ditson, c.1920. 102-4) retains "eleven" and "dealings", but whether or not the original meaning will have been clear to her readership I wouldn't know. The book can be seen in facsimile at Kentuckiana Digital Library:

Twenty Kentucky mountain songs