"Favorite Historicalstories" has been a fascinating thread! It's already quite long and this post is going to be very long, so I thought I'd start a new thread, although it's actually a continuation. I've seen mentioned so many historical ballads that I'm familiar with: Steeleye Span's Montrose, The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, Killiecrankie, The Massacre of Glencoe, Bonnie Dundee, Sink the Bismark, Woody Guthrie's Reuben James and Deportee (which some I think are referring to as the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos or 1913 Massacre) and Three Score and Ten. Incidently, I just came across an Irish song, My Lovely Rose of Clare, which has the same tune as Three Score and Ten (at least the melody that I learned -- from a Johnny McEvoy recording) -- does anyone know the history of this melody, beautiful and sometimes haunting?I think that some distinction needs to be made between "historical" ballads (some others that come to mind are Roddy McCorley, Derwentwater's Farewell, The Black Douglas, Bannockburn, Follow Me Up To Carlow, Johnny Cope)and just good songs that tell a story. The Irish Rover, for example, is certainly not historical and others like Whiskey In the Jar, Brennan on the Moor are of doubtful historicity, though all are great songs. A third type are those that are not historically specific, but relate to actual events, social conditions or people. (The Band Played Waltzing Matilda should probably go here along with Belfast Mill, Bonniewood Green, Come My Little Son, Fighting For Strangers, Freedom's Sword, Welcome Royal Charlie -- and many other "Bonnie Prince Charlie" songs like the Skye Boat Song -- Many Young Men of Twenty, The Rising of the Moon, and two of my absolute favorites The Old Man's Song and Yesterday's Men. Oh, and don't leave out The Great White Sheep an extraordinarily powerful song about the Highland Clearances.)
Then there are many that refer to people that MAY have been real people in the situations related by the song or WERE actual people but where the situation related in the song may or may not be factual. I'm thinking here of Sir James the Rose, Geordie, Arthur McBride, The Flower of Northumberland, Dowie Dens of Yarrow, The Heidless Cross, Jock o' Hazeldean, Cape Ann, Slattery's Mounted Foot, Fenians of Cahirciveen, Johnson's Motor Car, Moses Ri-Too-Ra-Li-Ay, and another all-time favorite of mine, Willie McBride, plus more "Robin Hood" songs than can be mentioned.
I've mentioned mainly Irish and Scottish ballads and won't try to list many Am. Civil War songs (The Cumberland and The Merrimac, The Alabama), or "disaster" songs like Casey Jones, Wreck of th Old 97, The Edmund Fitzgerald, Springhill Mine Disaster, or the Frank Slide (a landslide that wiped out a small Canadian town in the Crows Nest Pass area of the Rockies -- later a baby girl was found alive among the debris and since no one knew who she was, she was given the name of "Frankie Slide").
I think, without question, historical ballads or stories are my favorite genre of "folk" music. But I think it's risky to think, as someone observed, that one can "learn history" from the songs. May are truly "historical" in the best sense of the word, but many are not. This was brought home to me most vividly when my partner and I (as The Reivers) began singing The Haughs of Cromdale. We always tried to give a little background when we sang songs that referred to historical people or events. This one baffled us for some time until a lot of digging revealed that the "second" battle described in the song was actually a battle fought many years before and many miles away from the battle at Cromdale -- and that the hero of the battle in the song(Montrose) had been dead for 40 some years at the time referred to in the song! A great song, nevertheless -- but the story it tells can hardly be called "Historical."