Origins: Rose-Briar Motif

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 08 May 13 - 08:02 PM

Undistorted Summary of Foucault 

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 08 May 13 - 10:32 AM

Since Foucault tells me that "constructed knowledge" is meaningless except as a method of control, I'd better get back to my day job of using my understanding of Foucault to resist those trying to crush me while I try to crush all the others I can.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 07 May 13 - 10:24 PM

"Your analysis of Foucault is skewed and totally off the mark but I think you know that," she said on her way out.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 07 May 13 - 10:05 PM

Lighter, in regard to your second post on Foucault which I just read over. It's obvious to me that you haven't read Foucault.

"No innocent readers" means that your understanding of anything you read (or see or hear) is based on your own unconscious power-driven agenda or else own your unconscious Freudian desires, which - perhaps unbeknownst to you - also constantly evaluate everyone your eyes fall upon as a potential sex partner. Because sex, like knowledge, is Power! Baby!"

Really? Hmmm, that's why I must now leave this conversation. How can I hang around people who are basically just mocking me. I can't. It's a waste of time.

See ya mean boys! Playground's all yours!

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 07 May 13 - 08:54 PM

For every example of that kind, one of the opposite kind could be produced.

You'll believe, says Foucault, what your unconscious wants you to believe - and that unconscious has been created by the elite-controlled society around you. (Apparently his argument didn't apply to what he himself wrote, because he claimed that what he wrote really *was* true. Which, I suppose, would be possible, but only by accident.)

So if you accept Foucault's argument, you have to believe that all you believe is irrational. Foucault says your beliefs either serve your own unacknowledged will to power, or else they're determined (against your will, if you have one) by the controllers of knowledge, Foucaultian or non-Foucaultian.

Or, of course, both.

Argue with that.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 07 May 13 - 07:01 PM

"The directors having for these purposes stakes, irons, prisons, and dungeons in the said Hôpital Général and the places therto appertaining so much as they deem necessary, no appeal will be accepted from the regulations they establish within the said hospital; and as for such regulations as intervene from without, they will be executed according to their form and tenor, notwithstanding opposition or whatever appeal made or to be made, and without prejudice to these, and for which, notwithstanding all defense or suits for justice, no distinction will be made"

Argue with that.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 07 May 13 - 06:13 PM

Relativism is the bad faith of the conqueror, who has become secure enough to become a tourist.

                                                 Stanley Diamond

And if I were to tell the story of someone- or a people- whose point of view should I tell it from? Should I tell it from the point of view of those who have already had their say? Or will I try to find out what life was like for the voiceless and then apply my own human empathy? Of couse I should do the latter.

I have never come across a scholar who was as extensive and as thorough as Foucault, as adept at invoking cold hard facts and documentation to illustrate what reality was like for the poor and disenfranchised, or for madmen and the condemned who were particulary at risk in this category. Voiceless entities.

"An edict of the King, dated June 16, 1676, prescribed the establishment of an "hôpital général in each city of his kingdom."

Directors, appointed for life, exercised power throughout Paris: (1967 p.40)]"They have all power of authority, of direction, of administration, of commerce, of police, of jurisdiction, of correction and punishment over all the poor of Paris, both within and without the Hôpital Général"

Argue with that. What do you suppose it was like for those people? It just might be that I care and you don't. To each their own. I know Jim does. It's what his whole life has really been about. Although I don't think he ever expected an internet stranger to happen along and sum it up just like that :-)

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 07 May 13 - 04:47 PM

In regard to your first post, Lighter, I declare the following "inadmissable," or, perhaps a better word, "unworthy":

"caters to his own paranoid leanings and encourages the same in others"

"Ingenious enough to open up a new but largely sterile field for doctoral candidates and played-out junior faculty members in need of tenure"

"impenitently obfuscatory" 

I was not raised to insult brilliant professors :-)

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 May 13 - 04:31 PM

Looks reasonable to me, especially the sex bit!

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 07 May 13 - 04:20 PM

Foucault's main constructive contribution to knowledge (uh-oh!) is the emphasis he puts on the subtle and unconscious influence of social norms on what we believe.

I don't believe that was a new idea. But if it was, kudos!

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 07 May 13 - 03:48 PM

Rather a challenge, Steve. We're talking about a major philosopher and psychoanalytical and cultural theorist, beloved by millions. (Well, by many thousands at least.)

In a nutshell, and SJL may wish to correct me, Foucault held that the search for "scientific" knowledge is little more than a search for power. (Remember the old saying, "Knowledge is power"? That's Fookie all over!) The Big-Brother elites who "know" - or, in F's interpretation - *claim* to know, develop the power to subjugate everyone else. They determine what's "true" or "false," "right" or "wrong," "normal" or "sick." If you resist, especially by being gay, or a so-called "schizophrenic" or "criminal," they overt and subtle vays of making you conform, like putting you in prison or the looney bin. "Objectivity" is the self-interested subjectivity of the wielders of knowledge and power. And Big Brother (the imaginary God or his cynical or unwitting human stand-ins) will, one way or another,be keeping an eye on you. (Ever notice those surveillance cameras? They're meant to catch Winston Smith-type resisters - oops! I mean - heh-heh - criminals.)

According to Foucault, the science-and-reason-driven Enlightenment, and the liberal humanist philosophies and political systems it inspired, are no truer or freer or fairer or better than Pharaoh or the Spanish Inquisition. It's all about the survival of the fittest, whether you know it or not, and fittest means strongest or most ruthless - subtly or overtly.

Everybody has a power-driven agenda. "No innocent texts" means that books and movies are sending you hidden messages (from the conscious or unconscious of their creators, or the unconscious of your sick society as a whole) that Foucault's followers will happily decode for you.

(Foucaultians either have no power-driven agenda - so you can trust them; or else they openly proclaim that they do - which makes them equally trustworthy! Of course, a real Foucaultian ultimately trusts no one: see "The X-Files.")

"No innocent readers" means that your understanding of anything you read (or see or hear) is based on your own unconscious power-driven agenda or else own your unconscious Freudian desires, which - perhaps unbeknownst to you - also constantly evaluate everyone your eyes fall upon as a potential sex partner. Because sex, like knowledge, is Power! Baby!

To give Foucault his due, he'd read a lot and had facts at his fingertips (of course, he had no reason to trust them, since they came from other people's books - but that's another story).

And what an imagination, eh?

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 May 13 - 01:37 PM

Wow, Jon!
Can you translate all that into layman's terms? Very impressive!

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 07 May 13 - 01:27 PM

It's been so many years since grad school that I can't give you a detailed rundown.

Phrases that come to mind, however, include:

"endless deductions from baseless or questionable premisses, each increment more likely to get farther from the truth rather than closer"

"tendentious arguments against a straw-man Enlightenment Project"

"unhelpful, unwarranted reductionist view of post-Hobbesian human life and society as a cynical power struggle"

"caters to his own paranoid leanings and encourages the same in others"

"ingenious enough to open up a new but largely sterile field for doctoral candidates and played-out junior faculty members in need of tenure"

"impenitently obfuscatory"

"attacks the very liberal humanism which, even if epistemologically illusory, has freed a billion people from absolutist, pre-Englightment-style rule"

"If he's correct, should we prefer political and linguistic anarchy?"

Etc.

Of course I realize that by claiming the emperor has no clothes (or, in Foucault's case, no more than a tattered Nehru jacket) I prove myself to be one more zombie brainwashed by the manipulating gatekeepers of knowledge - and the more shadowy powers behind them.

Unlike Foucault's own, more trusting brainwashees.

(I won't argue with his idea that semantic categories constantly shift but he didn't come up with that one himself, and we have proof it's true.)

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 07 May 13 - 07:44 AM

And what might that be?

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 07 May 13 - 07:25 AM

Odd, I had just the opposite reaction.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 07 May 13 - 06:17 AM

Madness and Civilization and Discipline and Punish. Both highly recommended.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 06 May 13 - 02:21 PM

Glad to hear it! That's a relief!

Foucault, however,....

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 06 May 13 - 01:51 PM

You know Steve, I was just thinking...

How funny would it be if someone such as yourself were to sing "The Old Woman from Yorkshire" at a Renn Faire -and at the end, some bedraggled beggar woman with mudcaked hair pipes up from somewhere in the crowd to sing that extra verse? OMG, that would be sooo funny :)

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 06 May 13 - 01:15 PM

Lighter, perhaps I should have made myself more clear. When I say deconstruct I mean Foucault, not Derrida. I am a critic and an historian, not a nihilist. You can't just derive any meaning you please. Subtext must be grounded in factual history and one must temper speculation to that end. Don't be such a relativist. One cannot even arrive at one's own point of view by being an extreme relativist.

Steve, I will certainly take your suggestion, but I respectfully disagree it was not the end. It was just the beginning...

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 May 13 - 11:03 AM

Susan,
Have you got any of Norman Iles' books on the 'Cock Robin' theme? You'd really enjoy them.

Henry VII and Richie 3's going at it was the END of a great divide, not the beginning. There are plenty of ballads with a distinct political theme in oral tradition, but they are overt enough. There are also many many political ballads that were double entendres but very few of these survived their own period, at least not in oral tradition. I've just spent a full day in the BL leafing through some and not one item is still remembered today.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 06 May 13 - 10:40 AM

"All subtext" means you can make it mean whatever you want to, though I suppose there are some limits.

But as a supposedly meaningful method, "deconstruction" by its very nature yields no meaning that anyone should accept or care about.

It's all just "the play of signs." Including what the deconstructionist says.

And deconstructionists are not "disinterested readers" either.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 06 May 13 - 09:56 AM

Eating eggs and marrowbone,won't make your old man blind;
So if you want to do him in,you must sneak up from behind.
Ti me fal-the-doo-ra-lido, fal-the-doo-ra-lay.

It was a little too quiet so I thought I'd sing to myself. That's really catchy Steve. Are you sure it's not Irish?

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 05 May 13 - 10:17 PM

As I was saying, Lord Lovel, the Jacobite ballad (75E) was nothing spectacular. It was just an insignificant little love ballad, written for a lady with similar sentiments, until the other side got hold of it. It was always more popular as parody or burlesque than ballad therefore running in unofficial circles in a manner that quite trumps Jacobite secrecy.

Sung in open arrogant drunkeness. How did Horace Walpole, rabid anti-Jacobite get his hands on it? Don't you think that Lady Hounsibelle and Lord Lovel (Percy's title) is Horace Walpole's perfected masterpiece sent deliberately to Percy for possible publication? Of course it was. But alas, people like Percy and Childs transmogrified comic tradition into new "ballad" tradition. Ugh!

Rather unfortunately, Percy was ahead of Horace Walpole and used Reverend Parsons as a ballad laundering service. Hey, they were all playing James Bond back then- politically, socially, even religiously. Far as I know they still are. God bless the Brits- and their American cousins. Eh?

But if it's all the same to you, if I have to deal with any gay little parlor songs, I'll take the green bourgeoisie. Thank ye kindly.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 05 May 13 - 09:15 PM

Steve, can't you see that the great divide that began when Henry VI and Richard III went at it and continued on until well after the Jacobites were officially defeated is real? You're really missing something in your analysis if you don't think these people weren't expressing their viewpoints. It is all subtext and not face value. In order to deconstruct the text, well, nevermind... Just remember this: There are no disinterested writers, nor readers- only readers and writers who put on such airs. Cultural history is the key to interpreting any text. For Christsake! Even working class Jim knows that.

Jim, ugh, reading again? Hey, get in that garden and pull some weeds! And when you're done with that, sweep the chimney! Workhouse!

Has either if you ever heard of Mikhail Bakhtin?

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 May 13 - 01:53 PM

Whilst we're confessing, I think the 1720 date for the earliest broadside of FMM is right. The 1685 date comes from a general comment by Chappell in Roxburghe Vol 1. The general concensus (Mudcat earlier thread, online book on printers and Bodleian)is that Sarah was Charles Bates' widow and he was still printing in 1714. Pepys has lots of sheets printed by Charles B and none by Sarah. This and the fact that it isn't in Black Letter would point to the 1720 date.

Basically we have insufficient early evidence on LL. My own opinion that the earliest extant versions look like burlesque to me could point to an even earlier ballad. The fact that even these versions were burlesqued and parodied in the 19th century is only relevant in that several artistes of the 19th century thought it worthy of further burlesque and parody. However it is possible that whoever came up with the earliest version was not burlesquing a particular ballad but the whole genre. We must remember that what we see as charming and wonderful in these ballads was seen by sophisticated literary people as crude and laughable, hence one reason why Percy and later editors felt it necessary to tamper heavily with them.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 04 May 13 - 06:30 PM

You're absolutely right Steve. 1720 comes before 1765. What was I thinking? I plead battle fatigue. But I do believe the motif first appeared on Fair Margaret's Misfortune c.1720. It is not on the 1711 held at the British museum or the version or the one attributed to Mallet.

As far as I'm concerned, the earliest copy of Lord Lovel is actually Walpole's parody of 2/1765. And the way it links directly to Percy, I think tells the tale. By the way, what was clever Horace making fun of if not 75E? Walpole was rabidly anti-Jacobite, writes gleefully of Jacobite executions in his letters. Then we have Bishop Percy & Reverend Parson's half-assed do-over. Tell me what poor lass spinning at her wheel would come up with a text like 75A?

Kinloch's 1827 version 75D has no motif and that's to be expected. Roxburghshire is Black Douglas territory. And who is this lady from Roxburghshire? Why doesn't she have a name? The other 1827 Kinloch version, from Lesmahagow, 80 miles away, has the birk and brier.

So why when Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor was made over by the Irish did they change it to rose and briar- even though there are no English or Scottish versions that have it? It's because the motif itself is Irish- not the idea of plants growing from graves and behaving in an extraordinary manner per se, which occurs in many places, but these particular plants and the true lover's knot? Irish.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 May 13 - 04:35 PM

Had another look at the clear copy of Douce 1.72 on the Bodl site and I'd say this writing was most likely 18thc but I'm no expert on handwriting. Incidentally there is another copy in Douce printed in the early 18thc which corrects 'channel' to 'chancel'. I also got the 'Black Letter' wrong. It's printed in italic, but the cuts are definitely 17thc. I spent a day in the BL this week looking at the Roxburghe and Luttrel sheets and some were printed by Bates. I'll check my notes and see if I can verify Sarah Bates' dates.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 May 13 - 04:14 PM

Jon,
My copy of the Douce sheet is not a very good print off, but the writing looks early 19th century to me, so probably written on by one of the collectors. You can see the copy at the Bodl. Douce 1.72. The writer's source for this information might be around somewhere. These 17thc Black-letter sheets have long commanded a high price even since the 18thc so I would say a collector like Douce wouldn't have written on one in ink and defaced it, but that's just an opinion.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 02 May 13 - 07:20 PM

Steve, from the Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories:

"Ye...was still commonly used by writers in the nineteenth century. Jane Austen, for example, in a letter of 8 February 1807 wrote '...& means to be here on ye 24th.'"

If my experience is any guide, "used by writers" means "used in handwriting rather than in print." I'm not so sure about that "commonly," but M-W is essentially the last word on these matters (aside from OED, of course, with which it is almost always in agreement).

In any case, if Jane Austen was writing "ye" in 1807, the argument that the ballad annotation must have been written around 1690 unfortunately goes out the window.

Perhaps there's another clue in the shape of the handwritten letters?

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 May 13 - 06:54 PM

You're right, Jon.
Caught me on the hop there. I'd forgotten it was written on.

The only obvious clue as to when it was written on would be 'to YE tune of ....'. Presuming it was genuine, I don't think they were still using 'ye' in writing in the 18th century but I may be wrong on that.

Susan,
The motif was used on a broadside ballad in 1685.

I have some original correspondence on 'William and Margaret' between Chappell and Ebsworth. I'll check it out when I have time to see if it throws any light on the matter, also Chappell's and Ebsworth's notes in Roxburghe.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 02 May 13 - 04:00 PM

Since the printed sheet says "To an Excellent New Tune" and the ref. to "Lord Thomas" was handwritten later, there's really no telling whether "Lord Thomas" came first.

Is there some reason for ruling out the possibility that the annotation may have been made years later?

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 May 13 - 02:50 PM

Susan,
I'm back!

I'd say your first question is probably so. That is, in all the cases I know of where ballad B designates ballad A's tune then ballad A has precedent.

Your last statement has confused me, however. How can 1765 predate 1720?

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 28 Apr 13 - 09:38 AM

Ok Steve, I have a question for you:

If on the 1720 broadside of Fair Margaret and Sweet William it says it should be sung to the tune of Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor (1677), doesn't this mean that the latter preceded and was fairly well known already? Fair Margaret is very much the same story as it's predecessor- except purged of murder, more suitable to the changing tastes of the British in the area of romance.

Btw, doesn't matter is not an answer :-)

There is a copy of the "William and Margaret, an Old Ballad" dated 1711 in the British Museum which has been used to prove Mallet plagiarized when he took credit for the ballad. No motif on this "old" (what's old?) ballad.

The motif was added on to the "fairy" ancient ballad of William and Margaret (typo in my opening post, I meant fairly :-). The motif probably first debuted on this ballad in a broadside, perhaps even the 1720 Douce ballad- but somewhere around then.

Yet we know the motif was already in use in Horace Walpole's parody of "Lady Hounsibelle and Lord Lovel" in 1765.

Motif belongs on Lord Lovel as in Lord Levett and Lord Levett alone :)

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 27 Apr 13 - 02:55 PM

No not at all. You have my email address. You should send me a picture or two of your garden later on when it's looking it's best. Pompeii exhibition huh? I looked it up. My son Tom the anthropologist who flips over everything having to do with the ancient world would love to trade places with you.

Have you ever heard Steve's singing? I ended up listening twice through and it has put me off arguing for the whole day :-)

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Apr 13 - 12:53 PM

"And how are you this fine day Jim Carroll?"
Bloody exhausted, longing for the bad weather - damned garden - but very much looking forward to our forthcoming trip to the Pompeii exhibition in London
Sorry you asked?
How are you?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Apr 13 - 12:31 PM

And Steve. I downloaded all your stuff this morning and synced it my little Sony. I'm not going to tell you how good you are. I'm just going to say I love it. Most definitely a keeper.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 27 Apr 13 - 11:01 AM

And how are you this fine day Jim Carroll?

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Apr 13 - 07:49 AM

Sorry about the grammar slips in that one.
Just to try to put an end to this long-running farce.
These type of songs were largely based on perception rather than experienced reality.

The perception of chimney sweeping would have been based on the articles and illustrations published and widely distributed in The Illustrated London News, which also immortalised the images of The Irish Famine - still in constant use.
Probably the most widespread impression of boy chimney sweeps was that given by Charles Kingsley's 'Water Babies', popular right up to the present day and even used as a cartoon feature film.
This is from the first chapter of his book:
Jim Carroll

"He cried when he had to climb the dark flues, rubbing his poor knees and elbows raw; and when the soot got into his eyes, which it did every day in the week; and when his master beat him, which he did every day in
He never had heard of God, or of Christ, except in words which you never have heard, and which it would have been well if he had never heard. He cried half his time, and laughed the other half and when he had not enough to eat, which happened every day in the week; and when he had not enough to eat, which happened every day in the week likewise....
How many chimneys he swept I cannot say: but he swept so many that he got quite tired, and puzzled too, for they were not like the town flues to which he was accustomed, but such as you would find—if you would only get up them and look, which perhaps you would not like to do—in old country-houses, large and crooked chimneys, which had been altered again and again, till they ran into one another, anastomosing (as Professor Owen would say) considerably. So Tom fairly lost his way in them ; not that he cared much for that, though he was in pitchy darkness, for he was as much at home in a chimney as a mole is under-ground ; but at last, coming down as he thought
the right chimney, he came down the wrong one...."

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Apr 13 - 04:54 AM

Whoops.
"Large chimneys and stacks were easily climbed."
Can we put this in context
The chimneys referred to in the quote are those of the rich and are in the city "Knightsbridge" - places where farmworkers would would have no access and no familiarity whatever - nor would broadside hacks for that matter.
The song is obviously dealing with the home of a big farmer of the type to be found all over East Anglia - Walter Pardon always compared it to the home of the farmer John Blanchford for whom his family worked for, where the harvest suppers were held where the singing was done.
Whoever made these songs, they were rural - songs of the countryside.
I have no argument with the idea that such luxuries might have existed in Knightsbridge, Chelsea or Belgravia, but these are not the environments described in any 19th century folksong, and the idea of farmworkers ploutering around such a house would never occur to me in a million years - nor the singers.
The same would go for rural Northern Ireland, where this song was also found.
The known conditions the sweepers worked in would have generally been the ones described in the links above, the ones that were publicised by Lord Salisbury in his campaign to improve the working conditions for children, certainly not the ones pertaining in the seven houses owned by the Duke of Westminster in the Greater London area.
You have been given the information on the general conditions existing and widely known to be the reality, along with the drawings that the boys worked in. The fact that you have gone to such lengths to score a minor point in order to prove that English rural workers were incapable of making their own songs says volumes and the two points are, as far as I'm concerned, are complementary to one another and dismissive of the people we are discussing - as 'Guest' says - "Please. Children actually died doing that job"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Apr 13 - 04:25 AM

"Large chimneys and stacks were easily climbed"
Ca

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 13 - 10:52 PM

Hey, look yonder, tell me what's that you see
Marching to the fields of Concord?
It looks like Handsome Johnny with a musket in his hand,
Marching to the Concord war,
Hey marching to the Concord war.

Hey, look yonder, tell me what you see
Marching to the fields of Gettysburg?
It looks like Handsome Johnny with a flintlock in his hand,
Marching to the Gettysburg war
Hey marching to the Gettysburg war.

Hey, look yonder, tell me what's that you see
Marching to the fields of Dunkirk?
It looks like Handsome Johnny with a carbine in his hand,
Marching to the Dunkirk war
Hey marching to the Dunkirk war

Hey, look yonder, tell me what you see
Marching to the fields of Korea?
It looks like Handsome Johnny with an M1 in his hand
Marching to the Korean war,
Hey marching to the Korean war.

Hey, look yonder, tell me what you see
Marching to the fields of Vietnam?
It looks like Handsome Johnny with an M15,
Marching to the Vietnam war,
Hey marching to the Vietnam war.

Hey, look yonder, tell me what you see
Marching to the fields of Birmingham?
It looks like Handsome Johnny with his hand rolled in a fist,
Marching to the Birmingham war,
Hey marching to the Birmingham war.

Hey, it's a long hard road,
It's a long hard road
It's a long hard road,
Before we'll be free.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 13 - 09:18 PM

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

No, not the Wikipedia that glosses him over. See him for who he is.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 13 - 09:07 PM

Please. Children actually died doing that job. Have some respect. Look up Jeremy Bentham. Or, read a novel by Charles Dickens.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Apr 13 - 04:59 PM

Susan,
I don't put any trust in Percy whatsoever. All it tells us is that the ballad was in circulation in his day.

However I do put lots of trust in his Folio Manuscript, not as any sort of evidence of oral tradition, but I see no reason to doubt the texts were genuine and from the middle of the 17th century. In fact looking at the language and spelling I'd say they were considerably earlier.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Apr 13 - 04:46 PM

Thanks, Jon.
I don't know, you wait half an hour for a bus and 2 come along at once!
(English idiom)

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Apr 13 - 04:22 PM

Okay, tried to cut and paste but it wouldn't allow me to, but it's only a brief para anyway so here it is.

Techniques

Large chimneys and stacks were easily climbed. They were often built with stepped sides, iron rungs, metal pegs or protruding bricks, inserted into the flue to aid the sweeper. Evidence of this could be seen until recently at the Buck's Head, Little Wymondley (Herts). This small 17th-century inn has a central chimney stack with four flues. two Inglenook fireplaces on the ground floor contain iron rungs set at intervals up the interior of the chimney. Basement chimneys in Knightsbridge were fitted with ladders.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 26 Apr 13 - 04:16 PM

Here's what I see:

"Techniques

"Large chimneys and stacks were easily climbed. They were often built with stepped sides, iron rungs, metal pegs or protruding bricks, inserted inside the flue to aid the sweeper. Evidence of this could be seen until recently at The Buck's Head (Little Wymondley), Hertfordshire. This small 17th-century inn has a central chimney stack with four flues. Two inglenook fireplaces on the ground floor contain iron rings set up the interior of the chimney. Basement chimneys in Knightsbridge were fitted with ladders.

"Narrow chimneys, however, required considerable skill. Novice sweeps practiced on straight flues. They climbed with elbows and legs spread out, feet pressing against the side of the flue. An older boy or journeyman hoisted the younger boy up the chimney, remaining below him as he climbed...."

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Apr 13 - 04:08 PM

Could some kind Mudelf please put Jim out of his misery for me. The link works perfectly well for me every time. I think you're pulling my leg, Jim.

Kidson collected 'Mutton Pie' from a T. C. Smith in Scarborough. Last time I looked Scarborough was in Yorkshire! I'm well aware of a few variants in Lincolnshire and the West and North Ridings. A relative of mine , Mo Ogg, from Lincolnshire had a version. It doesn't appear in any of the big collections from the likes of Sharp and such a distribution hardly puts it into the league of such as 'Dark-eyed Sailor', 'Green Bushes','Indian Lass','Seventeen Come Sunday', those well-known components of the national corpus.

Where does your Liverpool info come from?

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 26 Apr 13 - 03:48 PM

You're right Jim. But Steve will never admit it :)

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Apr 13 - 03:33 PM

Nope - no page 74 available, and sorry, as your claim contradicts every other account of 19th century chimney sweeping and there is not a single reference to climbing bricks or ladders, I'm afraid I am not prepared to take your word for it.
As page 74 has been removed with a note stating that fact, it seems a little odd that you were able to make your claim from it - must be losing my touch.
Jim Carroll