Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 06:49 AM

More generally, much of this discussion seems to reflect the difference between preserving a tradition , in the sense of maintaining some perceived, fixed integrity and keeping a tradition alive in the sense of accepting that change is inevitable. In the latter case, we can only try to ensure that any changes WE (as individuals) make contribute to the song's longevity rather than hasten its demise!

Can I be a bit rude here and say this is complete bullshit?

Which would make us parrots rather than creative singers - crackers!.

You miss my point. The creativity of being a Revival Singer is in the sourcing, learning & (ultimately) the singing of a song. None of us are parrots, or wannabes in this respect (Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be... Paddy Tunney!) (actually you get far more imitation of Revival singers but that's another issue). What we do is by way of Revival Conceit, not by way of Continuing a Tradition (see GUEST,^&*'s post above - how many others feel this way I wonder?) It is this innability to differentiate between Revival and Traditional that is the most troubling thing here.

I often stop and ponder how different the status of Traditional Song would have been if it wasn't for The Revival messing things up and generally obscuring trhings. If all we had were the collected archives and field-recordings, might there be a greater value accorded to Traditional Song by way of our Genuine Island Heritage on a par with Chaucer, Shakespeare etc. etc.? Just a thought as I say, for folk is my country too, but, as with This England, I oft despair at the way we treat it in the name of Progress or the way it's governed in the name of Tradition!

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,^&*
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 07:02 AM

More generally, much of this discussion seems to reflect the difference between preserving a tradition , in the sense of maintaining some perceived, fixed integrity and keeping a tradition alive in the sense of accepting that change is inevitable. In the latter case, we can only try to ensure that any changes WE (as individuals) make contribute to the song's longevity rather than hasten its demise!

Can I be a bit rude here and say this is complete bullshit?
------------------------------------------------------

What, exactly, is "bullshit" here, please?

FWIW, Suibhne, I agree with most of what you say about "revival" (I particularly like your "revival conceit" concept!). But I live where a tradition remains alive - not without "revival" inputs as well, of course. MARINER, for example, could tell you how to avoid the Keeragh Rocks - and introduce you to the descendants of the lifeboat crew.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: kendall
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 07:45 AM

Yes. I will not sing a word that doesn't make sense. Oscar Brand's sea songs are full of them.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 07:49 AM

What, exactly, is "bullshit" here, please?

I hold the traditional singers and the songs they sang to be sacrosanct. Both are dead, likewise the tradition they were part of. The Revival (of which I am part) is, at best, a conceited & impertinent gloss which might serve as a signpost to the unitiated; at worst, however, it is a hell on earth where the glories of (say) The Plains of Waterloo might sit alongside such turgid trash as The Band Played Waltzing Matilda - as they did in June Tabor's early repertoire. Even as a wide-eyed 14-year-old dazzled by Ms Tabor's evident genius one night in the Grey Horse in Shiremoor circa 1976 I rejoiced at the genuine emotion of the former and baulked at the mawkish sentiment of the latter. They were two very different creatures and yet the wisdom was that they belonged together - not in my heart they don't! Whilst we can't preserve a Tradition, we can make some attempt at maintaining the integrity by which it has come down to us. This is something The Revival has singularly failed to do simply by conflating two very different things to the detriment of the status of Traditional Song which is now tainted by association. As I've said elsewhere, it wouldn't bother me if no one sang these songs at all - they have been sung, that is enough.

Do I have to add that this is only my personal opinion and I don't let it inferere with my appreciation & participation in the Folk Scene as a whole? I don't throw people out of my singarounds for changing old songs nor for singing new ones; my mind and heart remain open to all, just my personal Ideal remains intact to define a very particular relationship with the soul of Taditional Song and this is what I'm talking about here. People can, and will, do what they want, but as I said earlier in this thread, to do so in the name of The Tradition and The Folk Process is misleading, unless ingenuous, in which case it's all part of the learning curve.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,^&*
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 07:54 AM

Suibhne

Oh - that bullshit? I agree completely - but it's nothing to do with my point.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 08:34 AM

There seems to be a danger of this polarising into a yes-no response; I don't believe it to be that easy.
While I have no principled objection to the changing of words, I share Crow Sister's reservations about 'tidying up' old songs, but I think this permissable, even desirable in some cases, if done with sensitivity. For me, the beauty of many of the songs lie in the words, sometimes archaic, and how they lie within the overall text.
Perhaps the answer to the question should be - "yes, if you feel you must", and only then if it can be done without sacrificing the integrity and the beauty of the song.
I have to say I'm a little at a loss to understand Suibhne's approach to this one.
He and I have fallen out in the past, mainly due to my insensitivity in heavyhandedly criticising his singing of a ballad (for which I apologised to him privately and do so here publicly).
Without wishing to give more offence (certainly none intended), I find his approach to some songs bears no relation to that of any traditional singer I have ever met.
Perhaps I have missed something in his argument?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 10:53 AM

Is this discussion "a tradition" or "a revival"? It's been around long enough. Around and around and around.

It's quite enjoyable in its way. Maybe it's true that old songs are the best, and the same is true for old arguments. And every now and then an interesting variant comes up, or an old favourite makes its appearance once again.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 11:02 AM

Getting back to Mariner's original point, looking at the words on this thread, it occurred to me to wonder whether there might have been a mistake in writing it down and the relevant lines might have been meant to be

The Captain of the Mexico, as you may understand,
And the crew was made of strangers from many a foreign land

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 11:14 AM

McGrath, I don't think that your suggested line about the captain can be correct.

"The captain of the Mexico, as you may understand" is fine as far as it goes, as an introduction to some description, perhaps, but what is it about to tell about him? That he was tall? That he was aboard? That he couldn't swim?

The verse then would abandon the good captain as the subject of a sentence, but without a verb, and would go on to deal with the crew instead.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 12:18 PM

"would go on to deal with the crew instead."

No - go on deal with the rest of the crew as well. They are all "strangers from many a forign land".

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: terrier
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 03:12 PM

Suibhne Astray posted: That wouldn't be the same Mexico that was lost off Lancashire on the 9th

December 1886 would it? Be nice to see the song anyway.


Southport Lifeboat Disaster

Listen without to the westerly wind
does it whisper and gently sigh,
or rage and roar, shaking the door,
demanding that seafarers die.

On such a night in the distant past
when the surf raged high up the beach,
the 'Mexico' barque, on a bank she was fast,
no port that night she would reach.

Three lifeboats to her aid were sent,
by fishermen manned, with good intent;
one lifeboat returned, one crew to save,
the others would drown in that terrible gale.

To this place they brought them, herein to rest.
No man can do more than give of his best.
A nation mourned but in mourning new pride,
the pride of a nation, in vain not they died.

Mark well the hour.

At twelve o'clock on the ninth of december,
pray silence and gentlemen rise.
Hark to mine host, as he gives the toast,
"to the coxwains and crews who died."

This is from memory so I can't guarantee I havn't changed some of the words from the original.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,^&*
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 03:15 PM

terrier

Great to see that one also. Thanks

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 03:56 PM

My response to the original question "is it permissible....?":

There are many who will proceed to make changes, constructive and otherwise, without asking permission. And, for those who feel a need for permission, who would they ask?

The word "sacrosanctity" immediately occurred to me when reading some of the more hard-core traditionalist responses. I was pleasantly surprised to see one of the contributors with whom I most wholeheartedly disagree to use that very word:

"I hold the traditional singers and the songs they sang to be sacrosanct."

Admirable indeed. However, in reality (I would argue), what you are holding sacrosanct are versions of traditional songs as transcribed/recorded by collectors. The preservation of a particular version of a given song, as opposed to other interpretations, is an absolute accident of history ~ if Child, or Sharp, or Lomax, or whoever, had wandered into the next valley over, or found his/her way to a different fishing villiage, it's very likely that another variant of the same song (or a similar song) would have become that song's sacred untouchable text. Silly!

Also, we need to keep in mind that our forebearers the folksong collectors were urban educated types with their own preconceptions and prejudices. When they ventured into isolated rural communities, to confront anachronistic and relatively alien subcultures, they were very likely to misunderstand and misinterpret at least a few subtleties of the local idiom and customs.

(I have no doubt that this disconnect often held sway when white northeastern American academics ventured into the very separate world of the early-20th-century African-American south. By extention, I feel safe in assuming that similar problems could have existed when Oxford/Cambridge types visited the more isolated folk cultres of the British Isles.)

Plus which, of course, the local folks may have felt an awareness that they were being perceived as unsophisticated oddities, and might well have deliberately "put on" their interrogators. (I believe the British expression is "taking the piss.") How hilarious that today's sacred untouchable text of some ballad or another might still contain some "primitive" person's idea of a good joke played upon a pretentious visitor to his/her village!

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 03:57 PM

the Traditional Songs aren't ours

Whose are they then? Or to put it another way, if William Kimber claimed ownership by saying you can't change his tunes, he was trying it on. Just because you know tunes or songs, it doesn't mean you are the ultimate authority on what those tunes or songs mean - except to yourself.

As for the songs being "accorded more respect" if we didn't sing them, that sounds awfully close to destroying a village in order to save it.

It's simply a fact that songs have bobbed in and out of the written tradition since printing was invented, which is a fairly long time ago now. Both before and after that, they were learnt by singers from other singers and from written sources - "collected" in fact. And sometimes as they get "collected" they get consciously or unconsciously altered by the collector (ballad printer, revivalist, folklorist, child, peasant, worker, folk club singer) to suit their view of what the song is (or ought to be) about, as well as the accidental accretions like mishearing or filling in for poor memory. Credit the "source" singers with intelligence greater than mere human record players- perhaps some were, but perhaps you can just about accept that some were, and thought themselves as, creative artists.

Ballad printers were often back- street Chattertons or McPhersons deliberately and guiltlessly forging their little Rowleys and Ossians for their "Ballads lately discovered", just as Scott and his butties did, as it seems Lloyd and McColl did, and I bet Baring-Gould, Kidson, Grainger, Quiller-Couch and the rest did too. And I also bet you sing some of them!

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 05:24 PM

I am firmly in the group that says I would really rather you didn't although I won't press charges, that is unless you go around changing male to female and back again.

I think you must, unless perhaps you are in a small, private company of scholars, delete the word "nigger" in songs. There are some others as well that are offensive.

If someone has not made it scan nicely, my opinion is that in that case you can. This would not be true in the case of most old songs so it is not usually a worry.

Whoever tried to rhyme warrior and bore ya should have that line changed by everybody.

But in general, people generally do a bad job changing words and lose some of the beauty as well as the history. Shoudl they change Belfast City to Belgrade City in I'll tell my ma if they are from Belgrade? They probably couldn't help it. Should they change Aragon Mill to Belfast Mill? I would rather they didn't but again I won't press charges..I can see why they would want to.

Can they improve on songs by Stephen Foster? Robert Burns? Gordon Bok? They try but I have never heard an improvement, alhtough in SF sometimes words now considered racist should be taken away.

Oh well..most "improvements" are anything but and changing male to female is awful in my opinion. Most people do not have the ear or the skill to improve a song or the sense to leave it alone. But to each his own. mg

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 05:38 PM

houdl they change Belfast City to Belgrade City in I'll tell my ma if they are from Belgrade?

Bad example. That song wasn't a Belfast song; that is only the most widely known version of it. My mother knew a version from west of Manchester (UK) from her childhood in the 1920s.

So in that case, no problem changing it to anything that can be made to scan. And as, I argued, by the same token no problem with changes to any other song either.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 06:01 PM

The band played waltzing Matilda turgid trash?
Well, you don't want to hear my opinion of that statement.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 06:08 PM

Whoever tried to rhyme warrior and bore ya should have that line changed by everybody.

It certainly wouldn't rhyme where I live - but I have often heard Americans pronounce "warrior" in a way that makes that a perfect rhyme.
.............................................

Of course it's as well to remember that a lot of songs were collected from people trying to remember and reconstruct songs they hadn't sung in a long while and maybe weren't too sure of all the words in the first place. If a version of a song looks like it's got the odd mondegreen, there's nothing disrespectful to the tradition in trying to correct that.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 06:17 PM

Well, given the ages of some of the singers whose songs were collected by Sharp, Baring-Gould etc, I think there were quite a few senior moments that resulted in oddities. Including the version of Young Edwin in the Lowlands Low sung by Mrs Hopkins and included in the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, where the rhyming pattern changes in the final verse, and I think that's just because the lines came out in the wrong order...!

Kitty

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Deckman
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 06:23 PM

I'm finding this thread rather interesting. I'll make a couple of comments in the hope that it adds to the discussion:

Back in 1959, I had the pleasure of meeting James Stevens, the composer of "The Frozen Logger." The occasion was a live TV show we were preparing for and we were in the green room, just before the show started. Don Firth (GREAT SINGER) had just sung "The Frozen Logger" for Jim, but in his best Swedish accent. Jim LOVED it, but he said, with some heat, that "no one sings it the way I wrote it." The third line of the first verse is usually sung: "A forty year old Waitress ...". Jim said: "I wote it: a six foot seven waitress ...". I've always made point of singing it that way since.

Another thought, and this might bring a smile to Mary Garvey's face. By the way, in case you don't know it, Mary is a superb and prolific songwriter. Mary, do you remember a couple of years ago when we were having lunch in Illwaco, and I asked your permission to change two words in your wonderful song: "Bring The Salmon Home"? You gave me permisison and I did. But I wanted your permission first ... I feel that the composer of a song has "first rights"!. CHEERS, bob(deckman)nelson

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 06:28 PM

Kendall - I've heard some dire, turgid and mawkish renditions of the Band played Waltzing Matilda, but June's wasn't one of them!

(The first song I remember hearing June sing was Dido Bendigo, round a campfire at Sidmouth festival in 1968...)

Kitty

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Genie
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 06:35 PM

GUEST said "I'd suggest either giving a brief intro explaining that the song contains the [currently offensive] language and attitudes of a previous era or simply avoiding the song altogether."

I think an awful lot of very good songs from earlier eras would be lost if everyone followed that rule.   Many music programs are not meant as history lessons per se and don't work well with extended explanatory introductions to songs. Plus, sometimes there are people in the audience who would, perhaps rightly, still be very offended by the use of some words, even if you've explained the context.    I think if altering the words can minimize such offense without really changing the character of a song, why not modify them as needed? But if 'sanitizing' them (e.g., "... You're a bunch of stinkers all, gosh darn your eyes") really messes up a song, don't sing that song for that audience.

I don't think there's a hard and fast rule that applies for all songs and situations.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Deckman
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 06:47 PM

Hi Genie ... Funny that you should mention "Sam Hall." Last Fall I was teaching a class in "History As Found In Folk Music." I wanted to include "Sam Hall" as an example I wanted to make. I cautioned the students about the rough language they were going to hear. It was well received and I didn't get fired! bob

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 07:27 PM

I also have heard awful renditions of many a fine song, but the rendition is one thing and the song another.
The Band Played Waltzing Matilda is one of the best songs I have ever heard, and Eric Bogle likes the way I did it. That's good enough for me.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,Betsy
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 07:27 PM

Simple answer is yes - unless you ruin the integrity and intent of the original song e.g Oh yes John yes John Oh !!!!

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 08:13 PM

Thanks Bob....

It's funny..I don't mind if people change words to "my" songs, which I don't consider mine...maybe unless they changed the gender which drives me nuts..first it hurts my ears if I have heard another version, and whichever version I hear first I think is the correct version and what if I heard the wrong one? Then I would spend the rest of my life in confusion. Also the song is about a particular person. A particular person is generally a man or a woman and it does not matter what the singer is..or they match the person in the song...to me at least.

To me, that is the most outrageous reason for changing words in a song and I can not think of ever it being a good idea. mg

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 03:20 AM

MG, I'm not clear whether by "my songs" you mean songs you have written, or songs which are in your repertoire.

I don't mind the gender being changed, provided it is done in a way which is sympathetic to the original sense of the song. Even if the original composer had a specific person in mind, a singer may well have someone of their own in mind, which gives the song a particular meaning for them.

For composed songs, then it is a matter of courtesy (and I believe copyright law) to get the original composer's permission to make changes. With traditional songs, it is different - there is no "correct" version, and singers throughout the ages have made changes, either deliberately or by accident. In either case, what is important is the integrity of the song.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 05:02 AM

Credit the "source" singers with intelligence greater than mere human record players- perhaps some were, but perhaps you can just about accept that some were, and thought themselves as, creative artists.

Oh but I do. As I've said here on innumerable occasions the Traditional Songs were made & re-made by creative masters of an exacting idiom and as a consequence existed in a state of fluidity even from one rendering to the next. But this was in their natural habitat - The Tradition if you like - as evidenced by the collections and versions which have come down to us, which are, as PoggaGator suggests, a chance of a partuicular collector hearing any given song at any given time. Go to the Max Hunter archive and you may hear the same song sung differently by the same singer on separate occasions - not as a consequence of bad memory, rather because they shape it differently each time they sing it, so undoubtedly the next performance of any collected song would have been different. We find many accounts of The Folk Process on Mudcat, and a good number seem to favour poor memory, mondegreens and other such random factors. Earlier on someone spoke of correcting them, and in another thread it was shown how The Shepherd of the Downs derives from The Shephed Adonis which I would imagine is less of a mondegreen than a deliberate change in order to remove the Arcadian element and bring it closer to home. Whatever the case, it remains an area that makes for fascinating exploration on any level, from casual amateur to professional academic, and though no purist myself, I do derive much pleasure from those whose dedication to Traditional Folk Song gives us a glimpse into a world now lost to us.

As for The Band Played Waltzing Matilda... Like I say I first heard this sung by June Tabor in a set of otherwise traditional unaccompanied songs when I was just getting into going to folk clubs and it struck me just how incongruous such material was alongside the real stuff. At the time, aged 14, I was naive enough to believe that Folk Music should be devoted 100% to traditional material in which I found salve from the cares of 1976, and provided respite from the ear-bashing I regularly subjected myself to listening to prog & Krautrock and emergent punk. Like kicking over ancient clay pipe-bowls in the furrows, or pondering overgrown mills and following along old wagonways, the songs gave a human dimension to a landscape whivch, like the old songs, was shaped by a very different history than that into which I was born. The Band Played Waltzing Matilda had no place in such a context; I felt (and still feel) that such songs belong elsewhere, that The Revival has become diluted by such material to the extent where most folk clubs I've been to over years favour that sort of folk over the real thing. There was worse to come of course - I stopped going to see June Tabor entirely after hearing her sing Unicorns and (horror of horrors) The King of Rome - songs which have me fleeing for the door even to this day. Anyway, some good has come of it, for if wasn't for The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, Ron Baxter would never have written Morecambe. Just personal taste though; and after a few pints I'll even sing along quite happily - hell, after a few pints I'll even sing along with Sally Weatley!

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Marje
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 05:42 AM

I see traditional songs as our songs. They don't belong to anyone else, do they? Who would give or deny permission to adapt them?

We (the revivalists, the song carriers, whatever you like to call us) have inherited these songs and have every right to adapt and use them as we wish. We and the generation before us have been doing this now for about half a century, which may not be long enough for some people to regard it as a "tradition", but it's getting close to one by any definition.

We should remember that any version of a traditional song that has been recorded, either on paper or in sound, is simply a snapshot of how one (or several) singers sang a particular song in a certain place one day, probably in the early 20th century. It's a big mistake to assume that this version is somehow definitive or original - there were earlier versions which almost certainly differed in some respects, just as there will be later ones.

The "oral tradition" is neither the only method of transmission used in the past, nor extinct today. The singer who is regarded as a "source" singer may have learnt the song orally within the family, or from a printed source such as a broadside version, or a family song-book. Similarly, many modern singers have learnt the tunes of their songs orally - there are many singers who can't read music - and in some cases the words too. Most of us will know, for example, several popular shanties we've never seen in print.

So in my view, all this gives us the right to make modest changes to the words of songs to suit us and our audiences. Exactly what sort of changes constitute an improvement is a matter for further debate - some people want to modernise the context, change the genders, or remove offensive words, while others simply want to regularise the rhythm and the rhymes, and perhaps tweak the vocabulary if it doesn't make any sense to the modern ear. Many singers shorten songs by omitting or conflating verses, and it's quite common practice for a singer to consider several "traditional" versions and then combine them into one that seems satisfying and complete. Why anyone should object to this is beyond me. As someone has pointed out, if a change spoils the song, it's not likely to be taken up and perpetuated by other singers.

Marje

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 06:29 AM

"As I've said here on innumerable occasions the Traditional Songs were made & re-made by creative masters of an exacting idiom "
And you've been challenged on innumerable occasions on the same issue.
Within a living tradition, such as existed in West Clare in Ireland at least into the 1940s, some (a tiny handful) of the songs were written by people known as songmakers and poets, but most that we know about were made (in some cases, not even written down) by people with hardly any skill at all and were taken up by others who firmed them up and re-shaped them until they reached a form good enough to be accepted and established by the community. We know this from descriptions of the circumstances of some of these having been made.
One song we know of, dealing with an arson attempt at a local police station during the Irish War of Independence, was made by four men standing on a street corner throwing lines and verses at each other until they finally came up with a roughly arrived-at product, which we were lucky enough to record in 1976.
Even songs that must have been made within the lifetimes of the singers who gave them to us, all came without known authors (even the singer who gave us the above song, made within his lifetime, couldn't give us the name of one of the makers).
The same applies to the Travelling communities which were still making songs here up to the middle of the 1970s, yet all of their self made ones still come with the signature 'Anon'. Several songs we've recorded come with descriptions of having been composed in similar circumstances as 'The Quilty Burning' as described above - by people passing ideas to one another until some sort of final product was arrived at. Quite often it appears that the songs were not launched as finished works of 'creative masters, but of mud-caked rough diamonds, very much in need of cutting and polishing, and the recipients, far from being exacting, did the best they could, then passed them on to the next singer to add his or her efforts.
It appears, to us at least, who have spent some time interviewing traditional singers on the subject, that the songs are the products of many singers of various levels of ability, over time, sometimes centuries. each adding and taking away what suits or doesn't suit them. What we have was the product of the end of that process.
If your argument has any validity whatever, the songs would have come to us with known authors and some knowledge of the people who composed them, especially as songmaking went on within a thriving tradition here in West Clare right up to the beginning of the 1950s, and still goes on in a very reduced and stumbling form.
The existence of a 'school' of anonymous composers using similar techniques to make songs which were so well composed and accepted as to have lasted for centuries, is inconceivable.
I would be interested to learn the name of one of these 'creative masters' if you had one - if not, why not?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 07:24 AM

I would be interested to learn the name of one of these 'creative masters' if you had one - if not, why not?

We've been here before, Jim - and as I said last time, the process you describe exactly accounts for what I mean by creative masters - i.e. the uniquely gifted working-class people entirely immersed and fully coversant with the idioms & conventions of traditional song as they were with their every day labours - be it cooper, farrier, brewer, carpenter, mason, wheelwright, bricklayer, ploughman, fisherman etc. etc. I could name a couple whose names have come down to us - George Bruce Thompson, who wrote M'Ginty's Mean an' Ale circa 1911, and Tommy Armstrong (1848-1920) who wrote innumerable songs & ballads in the traditional idiom, using traditional melodies. One thing's for sure, the songs didn't grow on trees but sprang from such individual genius - however so roughly at times - and were shaped according to the genius of others and so it goes on. Names tend not to be attached to oral folklore, any more than I could tell who came up with any of the jokes currently doing the rounds. At least that particular Oral Tradition is alive and well anyway...

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,Ethical
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 07:25 AM

Oh yes, I agree it is ethical and often a very good thing to do. I do a lot of Irish ballads, and have done a lot of research into them. It's very common to come across several words that have changed from the original, usually making no difference to tthe song, and more often improving it, and as somebody else correcting it. As Pete Seeger sas in his book Rise Up Singing, it's an important part of the Folk process to keep the songs alive and add or remove things as long as it improves the song. And if it's good enough for Pete it's good enough for me.

Desi C
The Circle Folk Club
Coseley West Mid's

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 08:27 AM

it's an important part of the Folk process to keep the songs alive

We see this sort of thinking a lot here. Doesn't anyone appreciate that The Tradition and The Revival are two entirely different things and for members of the latter to tamper with the songs of the former is nothing to do with The Folk Process, rather a particular conceit the revival seems to have with respect of improving things - be it the songs themselves or the versions that have come down to us via the recordings of so-called source singers? My question is as rhetorical as it is long-winded, otherwise the Folk Scene would be devoted primarily to Traditional Song and the Singers Thereof, rather than fawning over the revival stars who have removed the songs yet further from the vital context that was their nautural habitat.

*

The condition of traditional song is perilous enough without subjecting them to any further interference. Treat them as listed buildings, the interiors and exteriors of which amount to irreplaceable national treasures all too vulnerable to the ravages of time and ill-advised DIY make-overs. What else is Liege and Leif but a sequence of tasteless, bland modernisations of some nice old characterful properties; the wattle & daub of the originals ripped out and replaced with mass produced breeze block and plaster board; sash windows replaced with UPVC and the open fires with flame-effect gas fires?

The problem is that there is a very definite cut off point between the cultural and social conditions in which the traditional songs arose, and that which exists now. We have lost the continuity in which these songs came into being and as such the only thing we should do with them is observe, and source, and delight in their myriad wonders.

In a nutshell, they are not ours to mess with in the first place - not in any way, shape or form - and God knows there is enough work still to be done in simply learning and singing them with resorting to such underhand methods as addition, alteration and interpretation.

We lovers of traditional song are not so much the keepers of a tradition, rather the volunteer curators of a museum, entrusted with the preservation of a few precious, priceless and irreplaceable artefacts: hand-crafted tools we no longer know the names of (let alone what they were actually used for) ; hideous masks of woven cornstalks (which are invariably assumed to be pagan) ; and hoary cases of singular taxidermy wherein beasts long extinct are depicted in a natural habitat long since vanished.

Not only is such a museum a beacon for the naturally curious, it's a treasure in and of itself, an anachronism in age of instant (and invariable soulless) gratification, and as such under constant threat by those who want to see it revamped; cleaned up with computerised displays and interactive exhibits and brought into line with the rest of commodified cultural presently on offer.

But not only is this museum is our collective Pit-Rivers, it is a museum which, in itself, is just as much an artefact of a long-vanished era as the objects it contains. It is delicate, and crumbling, but those who truly love it wouldn't have it any other way - and quite rightly so.

(Polemic episodes extracted from the old Harvest Home forum and collected into my blog The Liege, The Lief & The Traditional Folk Song, May 2008.)

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 08:41 AM

"Jim - and as I said last time, the process you describe exactly accounts for what I mean by creative masters - "
But they don't - not in our experience anyway.
Tommy Armstrong's song are not a bad example of songs that didn't go into the tradition but stayed within the pages of books unaltered until they were ressurected by the revival.
One of the features of songs written by identifiable authors is that 'the folk' tend to treat them with a deference that leaves them as they were first composed - the act of writing them down and in particular, publishing them, sets them is stone.
There are several examples around here of poems written by local poet, Thomas Hayes around the beginning of the 20th century, which are fairly widely sung throughout the county, all in exactly the same form as they were written (1 version of one of these includes a verse that other local singers considered superfluous and left out, but that is all).
This is what makes James Hogg's mother's statement to Scott so correct "They were made for singin' and no for prentin', and noo they'll never be sung mair."
If there were a body of skilled songmakers turning out enough songs to supply either the British or Irish repertoires, we never came across any evidence whatever, neither did you from the sound of it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 08:50 AM

PS

(even the singer who gave us the above song, made within his lifetime, couldn't give us the name of one of the makers).

A controversial point here I know but to what extent might your sources have been feeding you what you wanted to hear? It was well known that cannier sources knew what was expected of them when faced with song-collectors & folklorists whose primary agenda was determined by pre-conceptions of the sort of a beast an Authentic Folk Song was - essential anonymous, collectively determined by the community viewed across the gulf of class condscension etc. etc. I often ponder how many well known songs were passed off as trad / anon. simply because the collectiors wouldn't have been interested in them otherwise. One is reminded of the anecdote in which singers in America warned each other to put their banjos away and sing unaccompanied otherwise Cecil Sharp wouldn't be interested!

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 09:01 AM

"A controversial point here I know but to what extent might your sources have been feeding you what you wanted to hear? "
You mean we asked for the name of an author and they didn't give it to us because they knew we really didn't want one - oh, come on, keep this discussion on ground level!
Do you have any evidence whatever that this is the case with our work, or anybody's working in the same field - just a little hint will do?
If we hadn't wanted to know we wouldn't have asked and just gone ahead and made unsubstatiated claims - in pretty well the same way as youi are at present
Even the anecdote you cited concerning Sharp is little more than a myth.
Your falling back on throwing stones from your armchair again.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 10:17 AM

I'm not throwing stones, Jim - just pointing the disparity between the Source and the Collector which has long been known & accounted for, something which, as long ago as 1941, Flann O'Brien was using to hilarious effect as part of An Béal Bocht.

Otherwise...

I'd argue that Tommy Armstrong was part of the tradition he was writing within; his songs are therefore traditional in every sense and well known in his lifetime. George Bruce Thomson likewise, whose masterpiece M'Ginty's Meal an Ale was written for Grieg's column in the Buchan Observer in 1910. The notion of change in the 1954 Definition is a singular caveat which can't be a deciding factor in whether song can be considered traditional or not simply because, as we've seen, the tradition gave rise to written songs by known authors whose work remained essentially unchanged thereafter. The notion of literature in vernacular usage comes through in various songs considered to be otherwise Traditional - The Kerry Wedding is one, The Limerich Rake is another. I'm currently working up a version (with fiddle) of Paddy Tunney's translation of An Bunnan Bui which no one seems to know a fat lot about (see thread Lyr Add: An Bunnan Bui / The Yellow Bittern), least of all myself, though wading through the various versions and translations I reckon none is in quite the same league as Paddy's which is a work of singularly sublime perfection which features very much as part of the tradition.

If there were a body of skilled songmakers turning out enough songs to supply either the British or Irish repertoires, we never came across any evidence whatever, neither did you from the sound of it.

I come across it whenever I look at a traditional song - songs made and sung by true masters of their vernacular craft; the ordinary working class people, uniquely gifted, as ordinary working class people can be, much to surprise of Middle-class Folklorists, who insist on emphasing collective random process instead of considering the evidence in hand. I'm not talking about some elite school, any more than the kids I see churning out virtuouso heavy-metal licks in Manchester music shops of a Saturday belong to an elite school, or the teenage London rappers once in evidence on Channel U (when I had access to such a thing) who were upping the anti on anything coming in from America at the time. No doubt they still are, whilst holding down regular jobs too. There is great Vernacular Music everywhere I look - of all genres - the creative genius of popular culture is alive and well. Even in the Folk Scene where songwriters such as Ron Baxter, Wendy Arrowsmith, Scowie and Ted Edwards (to name but four) have created some pretty impressive stuff within an idiomatic revival tradition; Peter Bellamy likewise, who recognised that Rudyard Kipling was deriving much of his inspiration from the same vernacular sources he celebrated in many of his poems.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 10:29 AM

Jim: Take most of your points here, but don't entirely agree re Mrs Hogg being 'correct' ~~ at risk of vanity, let me nevertheless quote from what I wrote about Mrs Hogg in my article on Folklore in The Continuum Encyclopedia Of British Literature [NY 2003]:

'"They were made for singin' and no for readin', but ye hae broken the charm now, and they'll never be sung mair." [Mrs Hogg's] words have been called 'prophetic', but the resultant decline in living folklore was probably a factor of the same influences that led to the folkloric researches of Scott and others in the first place — awareness that urbanization and the spread of easily accessible forms of popular entertainment (pleasure gardens, music-hall; later, radio, cinema, television, recording) were undermining those popular roots on which the uninhibited spread of living folklore depends, and a consequent desire to preserve what could be saved before it vanished entirely. Although the folk forms have turned out tougher than this pessimistic view suggested, it is true that, from the invention of printing onward, every technological and popular artistic development had tended to fix the form. Mrs Hogg, alas, was too late.'

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Don Day
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 10:33 AM

There is nothing wrong with changing the words to a song, what matters is if anyone takes a blind bit of notice of the change. I don't think anyone on this forum has the influence.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: TheSnail
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 10:41 AM

GUEST,Suibhne Astray

The problem is that there is a very definite cut off point between the cultural and social conditions in which the traditional songs arose, and that which exists now. We have lost the continuity in which these songs came into being and as such the only thing we should do with them is observe, and source, and delight in their myriad wonders.

Sedayne aka Suibhne Astray

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 11:08 AM

"There is nothing wrong with changing the words to a song, what matters is if anyone takes a blind bit of notice of the change. I don't think anyone on this forum has the influence."

Good point. I've no idea about who does - or who doesn't - on this forum, might happen to have 'the influence', but it's certainly true that many 60's revival artists *have* indeed had that influence, and it remains an enduring one.

Not only on words (check any lyrics site for this traditional song by Sandy Denny, or that traditional song by June Tabor) but on stylistic presentation and so-on. I count myself among the many who have in fact absorbed the revival plus all the trimmings as a consequence of resorting to revival recordings in order to traditional songs.

But then I'd wager that few enough regular folkies own a leather bound set of Bronson and I'd guess few regular folkies on modest incomes own the twenty volume VOP set either. One can but wonder WHY?

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: kendall
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 11:26 AM

I have to admit that the Band played...is not a folk song, but it stands at the top in whatever category it does belong in.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: NormanD
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 11:51 AM

I've been listening to Joseph Spence today. Did he change a word here and there in old songs? No, he changed the whole song here and there.....

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 11:53 AM

Crow Sister-
if the regular folkies can't afford a "leather bound set of Bronson", might I suggest that they might consider investing in the hard (but not leather)bound four volumes ($50 per) or the soft-bound 4 volumes ($40 per). Or possibly in Bronson's single-volume condensation ($50/$40 for hard/soft cover versions.) Or even the single CD-R version of the entire 4 volumes in a searchable PDF format ($40).

All available from CAMSCO Music, of course.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 11:55 AM

Sedayne aka Suibhne Astray

The quote comes a polemical blog on the same page, TheSnail. Like most polemical writing this sets out a series of ideals rather than a practical code for living, other than to delight in their myriad wonders of course, which is what any revival singer of traditional material is doing anyway - myself included - not by way preserving the tradition, or being part of the folk process, but by simply doing what they want to do. After all, who's going to stop them?

Of the traditional material on that site you'll hear The Collier's Rant sung in a traditional manner with fiddle; two sets of Gently Me Johnny, one trad.,the other Bowderised by C#; Child #19 : King Orfeo sung to the traditional melody using a Tibetan singing Bowl as a drone; Seeds of Love sung traditionally with feral hurdy-gurdy in an otherwise freely-improvised context; and Child #49: The Rolling of the Stones sung with freely improvising viola, pocket cornet & frame drum accompaniment. Maybe this gets back to an earlier post of Jim's (which I've just read) but in all of these examples the inspiration comes from the Traditional Source rather than a Revival reading of same. In my adolescence I was faced with a choice of two roads - one way said FOLK MUSIC, the other said EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC. After a momentary deliberation I decided to go off into the uncharted wilderness between the two, which certainly accounts for the songs on my myspace page, which is just revival folk, just my non-traditional accompaniments might not be what you're used to. Whatever the case, I would never purposefully change a traditional song to suit my own needs. The closest I come to this is with those ballads that don't have traditional tunes - The Wee Wee Man and The Twa Corbies - or those I've first come across without tunes, such as The Wife of Usher's Well, for which I've composed my own in the traditional idiom, but not in the tradition.

As I said in my second post to this thread: Seriously, do what you want, but to do so in the name of The Tradition or the Folk Process is, to borrow one of Richard's words, asinine.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,Goose Gander
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 12:04 PM

"My argument is simple enough - the Traditional Songs aren't ours to mess with"

"The most important thing any Revival Singer of Traditional Songs can do, therefore, is by way of research & sourcing, not changing the songs to suit their purposes."

Everyone who sings traditional songs changes them, to some degree or another. They aren't museum pieces, and if they were there would be no need to sing them at all - we could just go back to the recordings. You yourself take considerable liberties with melody and phrasing (if your youtube postings are representative), so why are you up there on that hobby horse telling the rest of us what to do?

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 12:05 PM

Suibhne keeps on asserting that "The Tradition and The Revival are two entirely different things" - with the implication that that means two wholly separate things. I'd say there's always been an overlap and a degree of continuity. It's useful enough to keep the distinction between those two terms, as a way of navigating these waters - but as the saying goes, the map isn't the territory.

The assumption that its possible to draw a line in the sand and proclaim that "the Tradition" is ended and completed is a bit like that young historian who decided that the end of the USSR marked "the end of history". But history wasn't listening...

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 12:32 PM

You yourself take considerable liberties with melody and phrasing (if your youtube postings are representative), so why are you up there on that hobby horse telling the rest of us what to do?

Messing with the words is what we're on about, and doing so in the name of the tradition, the folk process, or because source singers did it etc. etc. Do I really take liberties? Phrasing maybe (largely determined by chronic asthma) but saving the odd thing I've supplied myself, I'm a bit of a stickler for tunes. Accompaniments are a different matter - in the words of The Great Beast, do what thou wilt.

with the implication that that means two wholly separate things.

There is a point where Traditional Singers have intersected with The Revival, but not to the extent where it wasn't clear what was going on. The Revival pretty much invents & determines Folk as a cultural concept, even The Tradition to a certain extent, which owes both it's taxonomy & taxidermy to The Revival. To be honest though, I don't lose sleep over any of this.

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: MikeL2
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 12:56 PM

hi

Here we go again.....

I belong to the view of the members who say that any singer that sang any songs regularly changed them either conciously or sub-conciously...and the World still goes on !!

Do you know that if you google Folk music and folk music you get the same thing !!!

cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 01:02 PM

Is it permissible? No, certainly not - the tradition forbids it.

Can you do it? Yes, of course - who's going to stop you?

Two very different questions.

Personally I regularly change lines to make them more singable or patch a song together from two different versions; if I can't find the right patch, in Child or on a broadside, I have been known to interpolate a line of my own. I don't preserve songs unchanged in the belief that preserving songs unchanged is What A Folk Singer Does. On the other hand, I don't glory in changing songs in the belief that changing songs is What A Folk Singer Does; I change them when I need to in order to make them work, and don't shout about it (although I don't deny doing it either).

A bit boring, but I'll take Thou Mayst If Thou Hast To (But Don't Go Mad About It) over Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not any day.