The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #38077   Message #987906
Posted By: Nerd
22-Jul-03 - 02:27 AM
Thread Name: What's so special about F. J. Child?
Subject: RE: What's so special about F. J. Child?
He did leave out some -not very many- that, with hindsight, we would tend to include. Not on "moral" grounds, though; we can be confident of that.

I'm not so confident. Although for some there are no obvious moral reasons (Long A-Growing, Bruton Town), for others there are. The Crab Fish is simply more graphic about genitalia, etc, than anything he printed, and The Bitter Withy shows Christ getting a bare-bum spanking, not at all dignified! These I feel sure he left out at least partly on moral grounds. He was, it should be said, also a slave to subscription sales; if he printed songs his subscribers found morally objectionable, he would have no buyers for future volumes.