Dear Colleagues,
I am afraid that my attention to this list is going to distract me from writing the book on Niles. At the same time, this forum proves to be a most interesting source of discussion concerning aspects of Niles's career as a "folk musician."

I freely admit that it is often difficult to externally "authenticate" "kernels" of Niles's collecting which lead to his original collecting. On the other hand, I find myself convinced by the integrity of these notebooks after examining them over a period of 25 years. He would have had to be an extraordinary fraud to have created these notebooks from 1906 to the end of his life.   The sketches are very convincing in the way he worked out the bits of melodic or text fragment. For instance, the oft-repeated story of "I Wonder As I Wander" which was collected from the singing of Annie Morgan....Niles noted that he heard her sing this fragment 8 times and tried to write it down, paying her 25 cents each time. The journal does record eight different transcriptions scrawled in pencil with slight variations in them. Niles also noted paying her a quarter for her various attempts and described the scene at Murphy, NC in pretty specific detail. H e would have had to be an enormous fraud to create such sketches and conjure such ffully fledged stories and musical sketches on page after page of these notebooks. In "Black Is the Color" it is very clear the way in which he adapted the text, exploring different options while remaining true to the two versions he collected in Perry County, KY. These sketches closely resemble North Carolina versions (and Jean Ritchie's family version, so there is no doubt about the "kernel" in this case.

The ballad scholarship is a little more difficult to address. A scholar visited me at the University of Kentucky to "prove" that Niles manufactured his version of the "Corpus Christi Carol" ("Down in Yon Forest." The results of this thorough investigation are printed in a fine article in _Southern Folklore_ 49:2 (volume 49) 1992. David Reed Parker did find that Niles had collected a version of this rare ancient carol in the New World, but he also noted various sorts of anomalies in the recorded versions by both Niles and Gilchrist.

The sources for "Judy, My Judy" are described in some depth in his journals as well as his Autobiography (unpublished) but I have not been able to track down descendents of the singers to "authenticate" the versions. The sketch books do provide a pretty clear record of what Niles "thought" he heard. I believe he tried to record ballads with fidelity, though he certainly also affected the "way" that his source performed by badgering informants, etc.

In any event, Niles preserved some interesting music and text, and wrote some wonderful songs in the style of folk music. His voice was peculiar and ecentric, but audiences seemed to find his stage presence very charismatic at a time when "authenticity" was not the measuring stick for his type of public performance. Remember, I noted that he was essentially a vaudeville performer who had access to a folk derived repertoire.

I hope that this additional posting helps lift a little of the fog surrounding Niles's complex career. Please know how much I appreciate the contributions many of you have made to this thread and other related conversations concerning Niles. You are a particularly astute congregation.