The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #22617 Message #3344298
Posted By: Jim Carroll
28-Apr-12 - 03:49 AM
Thread Name: Origin: High Germany
Subject: RE: Origin: High Germany
"I didn't mention skill or novelists."
You said ".....like most literature, is pure fiction," which I took to be a reference to novelists - what else?
As far as I am concerned, this discussion centres around your definitive, sweeping and often dismissive suggestion that the (English) folk did not make their songs, but contracted them out for
professionals to make for them (because they were too busy....).
This, to me, is total nonsense which flies in the face of everything we know (or we think we know) about our song traditions, and without proof, which you have singularly failed to provide; presented as it is, it is little more than arrogant flag-flying.
You have compounded this arrogance with your inclusion of most of the other folk disciplines (in case you claim I am misrepresenting you - in full "Sorry, Jim, this is just not true, except one would presume with folk painting, much of the rest originated in high art! Or certainly higher than the common folk, sophisticated sources in other words. Dances in particular.")
You have accompanied your claims with derisory terms like "Merrie England" and whistling ploughboys" - patronising at best, downright insulting on occasion (especially when accompanied by statements of how long you have been at it, as if the rest of us have only just come on board and are still looking for our cabins).
The only thing we know for certain about the making of our traditional songs is that we have not the faintest idea who made the vast majority of them.
We are pretty certain that 'ordinary people' (that appalling term which is sometimes used to describe often very extraordinary people) all over the world, made songs and tales to describe their lives, experiences, beliefs, values, aspirations..... There is no reason whatever that this should not include 'ordinary' English people.
Your claims, if accepted, would lay waste to most of the folk song scholarship of the 20th century. What is needed is documented proof, not the might-have-beens and perhapses we have been given so far.
"The word 'hack' I personally feel is unfair."
Then you should use another term for them - and parhaps give us a little more information on who they were and what were their backgounds - I have failed to find any so far and, beyong vague claims, you haven't been very forthcoming.
You accuse me of misrepresenting what you say - I haven't, not deliberately anyway, but I do find much of what you do say confusingly contradictory.
"Just teasing ya."
Just as well Lighter - we have some idea of where Shakespere went to for his references.
Jim Carroll