Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript

Subject: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: wildlone
Date: 08 Jan 00 - 02:04 PM

I recently found a book edited by Frederick J Furnivall,M.A. Trinity Hall Cambridge.
Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript.
Loose and Humourous songs, printed by the editor in 1868,
Can any one tell me any thing about Bishop Percy as the book leaves this out.

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: Lesley N.
Date: 08 Jan 00 - 02:09 PM

There's a page that leads to lots of stuff on Percy at:

Bishop Percy's Page.

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: wildlone
Date: 08 Jan 00 - 02:23 PM

Many Thanks Lesley N, I was wondering if it was genuine or another attempt by a Victorian professor to look good.
Your link will give me some good reading.

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: Bruce O.
Date: 08 Jan 00 - 03:12 PM

As your book notes, some of the songs in it were also on broadside ballads. I've made identifictions of a few otherrs and tentative identifications of yet others in the book with broadside entries in the Register of the Company of Stationers' and have pointed out other manuscripts that also have copies of some of the songs in the book. Just search for 'Percy' or 'loose' in the broadside ballad index on my website. www.erols.com/olsonw. The tunes for some of the songs are among the broadside ballad tunes on my website. C. M. Simpson didn't discover the original tune for "Last Christmas 'twas my chance", used for "Panders [or Gallants] come way" in the book, but it's on my website. I've only recently discovered the broadside ballad version of "When as I doe record", but I haven't yet acquired the tune for the song, which is in a manuscipt in the British Library with another copy of the song. "Panche" is a broadside reworking of G. Kyttes "The Unlucky Firmentie", c 1585. "Down lay the shepherd swain" is in Scarce Songs 1 on my website, but I can't remember which of 3 versions I gave there. The first song in the book is figuratively King James' lament for the death of Queen Anne, as a manuscript copy in the Bodleian Library shows.

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: wildlone
Date: 08 Jan 00 - 03:34 PM

I should have thought of you first Bruce.I am collecting song books and have some good ones from the 1920s-1930s.
John Hampden, Quiller Couch, Ault, Squire and the like.

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: Bruce O.
Date: 08 Jan 00 - 04:49 PM

Ault is good, both his 16th and 17th century ones (I've only recently been able to acquire my own copy of the latter). Quiller Gouch, I have but have little use for, because with Child it's unnecessary, and when it comes to traditional songs beware of editors who weren't collectors- you'll usually get a conflated text rather than a true traditional one. They are good songs, but if they aren't the way any traditional singer actaully sang it, then they aren't folk songs as far as I'm concerned.
Hampden I don't know. Barclay Squire: I only know of his collaborative one with Lucy Broadwood, and co-editorship of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. I had only a mistaken reference to his index of ballad opera tunes which I coundn't find, so started my own, and am glad I did, because when I finally located his I found mine was much better. {I didn't find out about the good one in 'The National Tune Index', 1980, until much later.)

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: Lesley N.
Date: 08 Jan 00 - 05:24 PM

Bruce, even collectors aren't always authentic. Besides santizing words, collectors sometimes married words with tunes they had no connection with (Chappell and Sharp both did so). Sharp often also completed songs with words from other sources, and I've run across others who felt the words to a tune were so inappropriate they wrote their own completely new versions! I suppose that's part of what helps make it the folk process!!

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: wildlone
Date: 08 Jan 00 - 05:32 PM

I have heard it said that when collectors who also wrote down the music showed the results of the latest trip they were told that "The music that you wrote down cannot be sung by local of ----- as it is in ---- mode and you need a trained voice to sing that mode".

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: Bruce O.
Date: 08 Jan 00 - 06:03 PM

Lesley, I have all issues of JFSS and JEFDSS, and there are lots of songs there that the first verse or more was collected with the tune from a singer, but the song was completed from a broadside or songbook copy of the text. This is not the case in 'The Greig-Duncan Folk song Collection', although Greig in his articles in 'Folk-Song of the North-East' did collate texts in order to jog the memory of potential contributors.

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: Lesley N.
Date: 08 Jan 00 - 06:24 PM

Bruce, you must have the most fantastic library!

Yes, I knew many were completed from broadsides of the same song - the ones that throw me are when they say they aren't related. For instance, when Chappell set Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne to a tune in the Dancing Master named The Chirping of the Lark (because Robin wakes up to the sound of a bird). Of course, you probably know hundreds more examples!

Since the Bodleian came on-line it's been great fun to look up the many broadsides of songs there. They are, by and large, fairly consistent - and the words are usually fairly consistent with the words from the old songbooks I have from collectors. The tunes may be something else entirely. Although I like the arrangements, I've been told the tunes in Broadwood, Barrett and Sharp are "over-arranged," which points to one of the advantages of the ABC format over midi.

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: Bruce O.
Date: 09 Jan 00 - 01:10 PM

Your mention of tunes as 'something else entirely' touches a subject dear to my heart of late. And in JFSS and JEFDSS completing the songs from broadides is betterr that the many instances where they give tune and 1st verse and dismiss anything further by saying 'the words are on broadsides', because many of those broadside are now difficult to find. [Thank God for Steve Roud's indexes and Bodly Ballads website, as we can now find many of them.]

Tune bibliography is bit of a mess at present, and one reason I've been working on tune coding problems recently is to find a good way to code traditional song tunes so we can make a big file of reference data of tunes collected that will give us a basis for comparison of any other tune we might be interested in. We have many bibliographies of folk songs and broadside ballads now, but for tunes practically nothing. There are tune collections like C. M. Simpson's 'The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music', but the tunes there are not yet coded for ready identification. Cazden, et al, have a lot to say about relatives of the tunes in their 'Folk Songs of the Catskills', and Phillips Barry had a lot to say about tunes in the volumes of 'Bulletin of the Folk Song Society of The North East', and there are a few other editors that devote some space to discussion of tunes and relatives, and things go all the way to the other extreeme, where songs, but not tunes were collected, nor were the tunes even mentioned. [Alfred Williams 'Folk Songs of the Upper Thames].

Discussions about tunes that only give titles aren't very informative, since the same name gets used over and over for different tunes, and (what is only slightly different) the same songs was often sung to different tunes, and even when someone points out a tune in a specific work as the model, that's not very helpful if you can't readily find it.

Tune coding uses only the beginning of the tune to compare with the beginning of other tunes, to see if they are the same or nearly so, and can't prove identification of two tunes as the same, but it can screen out vast numbers that are pretty surely not related to a given tune, and greatly simplifies the identification problem.

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: Lesley N.
Date: 09 Jan 00 - 04:03 PM

Good heavens, what a project! I read your messages on the thread you put up on tune coding. My favorite system of finding out if something is related is to look it up on your site! Your Scarce Song pages are incredible. You've done all the hard work and I get all the fun! Seriously, I will most certainly check out the program. And I'll look up Simpson et. al as well!

I used Steve's index all the time. It's amazing. As it's in database form it's incredibly easy to search. The bibliography is a great resource in itself.

I find I'd like to broaden my knowledge of broadside printers though. I'm looking for something about broadside printers that would give me an idea of when they printed - which would be invaluable for the Bodleian too. I suppose for some there is no way of knowing. Is there such a reference? Do you have any recomendations?

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: Bruce O.
Date: 09 Jan 00 - 05:07 PM

For 17th century broadside printers I have a listing of most of whats known about their dates near the beginning of the broadside ballad index on my website. I've also compiled a chronological index by printer of all the Stationers' Register entries of broadside ballads to 1700. For 18th and 19th century printers the best source I know of is books by Leslie Shephard, 'The History of Street Literature' and 'John Pitts, Ballad Printer'.

Subject: RE: Help: Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript
From: Lesley N.
Date: 09 Jan 00 - 07:53 PM

How on earth did I miss that? I suppose I'm so busy searching for information that it's been a while since I just "stopped and smelled the roses," so to speak and browsed. I'll look for the other books too.

As always, thanks.