There has been a lot of ballad scholarship all over the European continent, and it's been going on for centuries, apparently. I can't remember who all now (it's in my notes somewhere), but the Brothers Grimm were pretty high-profile, and they had a strong influence on Child. Also, many of the ballads in the Child collection are found all over Europe. Some maintain that they were carried all over by wandering minstrels and troubadours, others claim that that's much too romantic an idea to be true (but I kind of like it).

Back in winter quarter of 1958 I took Prof. David C. Fowler's course, English 401, The Popular Ballad, at the University of Washington. This course acquainted me with the humongous amount of source material available—if you know where to look. The term paper consisted of researching a ballad. The only logical starting place was the Child collection. From there, we went on to other collections and journals, tracing the thing wherever it led us.

I picked The Cruel Mother (Child #20). I came up with a whole mess of stuff: several texts, some tunes, and over a hundred references, most of which I wasn't able to track down because the book or journal wasn't available in any of the local libraries. But if I couldn't look at the texts and notes themselves, at least I could add the references to my bibliography. I also found a version (I had my pick of several) that I particularly liked, and still sing.

A friend and classmate named Bob Tomson (aka "Moose"—he's a gent of monumental proportions) made my efforts look pale by what he managed to accomplished. His ballad was Lord Randal (Child #12). I'm not sure how many texts and tunes he came up with, but he found references to 1,013 versions of the ballad. English, Irish, and Scottish of course, and not surprisingly, many Scandinavian and continental European variants. But then, over into the Balkans, through the Middle East, and on around to North Africa. He found many American versions, most of which were serious variants of the traditional tragic ballad, but not all. He found a propaganda song, possibly put forth by the dairy industry, in which "Jimmy Randall" is poisoned because his sweetheart fed him rancid oleomargarine instead of butter. And, of course, he ran across several references to Billy Boy, an obvious parody of Lord Randal.

As I say, there is an immense amount of source material out there if you know where to look. And without the Child collection as a starting point, most of it would be next to impossible to find.

Don Firth