|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: robinia Date: 18 Feb 06 - 09:40 PM Peggy Seeger sings an unforgettable version of Hind Horn on vol. 3 of the Blood and Roses series (although maybe "unforgettable" is the wrong word for a subtle melody that I took great pleasure in hearing -- and great difficulty in remembering, even after listening to it over and over at the Cecil Sharp House). I liked the colloquial (Appalachian?) cast to the next to the last verse too: Gold rings from her fingers she did let fall Gold bobs from her hair she throwed agin the wall. I'll follow you forevermore, Though I'm begging from door to door Great story and no more a "sea song" than Lord Bateman is! Both, to be sure, have sea journeys. . . |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: GUEST Date: 18 Feb 06 - 04:44 AM Have always considered that Hind Horn to be based on the story of the return of Oddysseus from the Trojan Wars (mid 700s BC). |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: GUEST,ninafannery@cox.net Date: 18 Feb 06 - 03:03 AM |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Nerd Date: 17 Jul 03 - 12:30 PM I see we're more or less on the same page about such issues as when the ballad form began (I think). But I can't altogether subscribe to the simpler definition of ballad you propose because (1) it does not exclude such genres as the epic and (2) it says that the poem is INTENDED to be sung, not that it WAS sung. This is a classic form of what scholars call the "intentional fallacy," defining a work by what we imagine to be the author's intention. It is a fallacy partly because we do not know the author's full intention, so scholars falling for this fallacy generally make it up for themselves and then claim it is the meaning of the work. Thus, although there is no evidence that Auchinleck's HH is "intended to be sung" we can say "well, I think it was intended to be sung, so it is by definition a ballad." Most metrical romances are in verse forms simple enough that one COULD sing them, which is the only evidence we have for the Auchinleck HH. Few of us would say that all metrical romances in verse forms simple enough to have been sung are ballads, however. So there are disadvantages to the dictionary definition, and your own application of it to the Auchinleck HH, just as there are disadvantages to Child's. I don't deify him by any means but I do recognize he had a hard job, and even a hundred years later it's not easy to just come along and simply define the ballad. As for the "if Child had lived" argument, the way i read it is that his definition or at least his idea of the ballad was pretty stable. In his earlier collection he had put in more material that was not ballad proper but the background to ballads. In TESPB, as he noted in the passage you quote above, he pared down his material to include less background and a greater proportion of ballads. So all I'm saying is that if it had been boiled down any further he might have pared out more of the supporting materials. I don't think this is any great intellectual accomplishment, though! Anyway, I have to go off for the weekend (granddad's funeral, actually), so i won't be able to check that Child thread til later. But I look forward to it. |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: IanC Date: 17 Jul 03 - 11:44 AM Nerd I tried to get a serious discussion of Child going on this thread though I was largely shouted down by people who were worried I might be criticising their "god". This is what I said on that thread. Though it wasn't only Child, he was the main instigator of the C19th movement to define what a ballad is, basically in the terms "A ballad is what I say it is". Hardly surprising that he didn't miss out too many "ballads" ... he was deciding which were and which were not. He even dropped certain "short romances which formerly stood in the first book ... in order to give the collection a homogeneous character". I'd prefer to use a more general and, should I say, proper definition of the word ballad than Child. Can we use the following dictionary definition of a ballad? bal·lad (bld) n. A narrative poem, often of folk origin and intended to be sung, consisting of simple stanzas and usually having a refrain. The music for such a poem. A popular song especially of a romantic or sentimental nature. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Middle English balade, poem or song in stanza form, from Old French ballade, from Old Provençal balada, song sung while dancing, from balar, to dance, from Late Latin ballre, to dance.] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As regards when the ballad form started historically, the argument is, in fact, circular. To rehearse it ... I say it started in the C15th. This is C14th thus it's too early to be a ballad form. I'll admit that the Auchinleck version is not short, and not about a single event (which often characterises ballads) but then neither is "Hind Horn" either. This problem is sorted in the modern broadside versions by missing out the giving of the ring, so I'd rather see both the early Hind Horn and this version as stages in the formation of the eventual "ballad" form which is the "Broken Token" broadsides. Apart from probable transcription errors, the rhythmic structure is 6-line tail-rhyme stanzas of the form aabccb. This is quite simple and characteristic of 14th and 15th Century verse intended to be sung (though also of much drama intended to be spoken too). It's not unfamiliar in modern songs either. BTW since Child used Grundtvig for most of the reasoning behind his classification system, I wouldn't like to speculate too much on what he might have achieved had he lived. The correspondence between him and G certainly seem to suggest that he didn't have a great deal of a clue and that Grundtvig was getting fed up with feeding him ideas. :-) |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Nerd Date: 17 Jul 03 - 11:04 AM Ian, I'm not sure what you say of Child is fair. I believe that Child made a distinction in his mind between true ballads (which he knew had been sung, although he did not collect the tunes much) and forms that approximated or anticipated the ballad. Indeed, if you look at the difference between his earlier ballad books and TESPB, you'll find that he eliminated many romances and other metrical tales that he had previously included in the "ballad" category, tightening up his definition as he went along. He could have gone further had he lived longer. As it stands, he included texts in TESPB even though he knew they were not, strictly speaking, popular ballads, and he says so in the notes: "this piece of doggerel may preserve a scrap of a true ballad, so I included it"; "this is obviously too long to be a ballad, but may have been put together out of pre-existing ballads," etc. So he had an idea of what the core elements of ballad style were, and he did indeed think a text had to have been sung to be a ballad. This may have been your point above, but the verse form of the Auchinleck Hind Horn does not support the contention that it is a ballad. It has, for example, a six-line stanza with an AABCCBCDDB rhyme scheme, which is unusual. The Auchinleck version is also 190 six-line stanzas long (1135 lines), and incomplete at that, probably too long for a ballad. The ballad variants of Hind Horn in Child have typical "rhyming couplet with interspersed refrain" structure, and are predictably much shorter. This is why most scholars would call the Auchinleck text a metrical romance which influenced a later ballad. The reason this admittely niggling dstinction is important is that many have the impression that the English/Scottish ballad is essentially a medieval genre, when it is really much more a post-medieval one; it does not seem to have emerged until the late middle ages, and then really picked up steam in the C16 and C17. Many keep alive the romantic notion of English ballads going back to the murky middle ages, which distorts our understanding of the genre. |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: IanC Date: 17 Jul 03 - 07:51 AM Nerd Say what you like. Child was still treating ballads as non-musical verse forms in the C19th. Have you looked at the verse form of this one? ;-) |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Nerd Date: 16 Jul 03 - 10:38 AM Very interesting Ian C! I think it would be better to say that Hind Horn is one of the ballads that have their roots in metrical romance, rather than that the ballad exists in a medieval copy. It's a dodgy process to claim that anything written in English in 1330 "is" a ballad, as most authorities would say that ballads in English were just emerging at that time. But several romances of the Middle Ages became the sources of the storylines of later ballads, as did apocryphal gospels and other tales stretching into the past. Even the plot of "The Sea Crab" existed as a jest in Italian in the 1300s (and one can imagine Chaucer reading that, too!) though the ballad itself is later. I would agree with Sandy et al that a printed source making the rounds in Nova Scotia is a likely explanation of the ballad's vigor in oral tradition there. |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: IanC Date: 15 Jul 03 - 11:58 AM In response to Peter T's original (6th April 2000) question - i.e., yes. Hind Horn (or King Horn, or Horn Childe & Maiden Rimnild) is one of the few ballads which can be traced back to medieval copies. This Version (from the Auchinleck Manuscript in the Scottish Library) is from a manuscript written about 1330-1340 and it is suggested that it was read by Chaucer as a boy. It's in Northumbrian English and includes all the usual elements of the ballad (along with a bit more also by way of background). Here's the bit where she gives him the ring To Rimneld he com, wiþouten lesing, Hope this is interesting. :-) |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: raredance Date: 09 Apr 00 - 10:35 PM Sandy, your analysis applies some good common sense reasoning and seems quite plausible. I agree the song is not in Creighton's Songs & Ballads of Nova Scotia. It's not in Fowke's "Traditional Singers & Songs of Ontario" either. Too far from the maritimes, I guess. I didn't find any trace of it going south to the Brown North Carolina collection either. rich r |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Sandy Paton Date: 09 Apr 00 - 12:39 PM Right, Malcolm. Joe Estey's tune resembles "Farewell to Nova Scotia." I'm not competent to compare any of the tunes from printed sources, alas. Sandy |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Malcolm Douglas Date: 09 Apr 00 - 10:38 AM Indeed, but I don't think that's what Sandy was talking about. Hind Horn has a number of completely different tunes, one of which may be the source for the "Bury Me Not..." melody; it would be quite another one that bears a resemblance to Farewell to Nova Scotia. Malcolm |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Amos Date: 09 Apr 00 - 10:28 AM I've never heard tunes to "Farewell Nova Scotia" that could be considered similar to "Bury Me Not...", either. I don't think the two are cousins. |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Sandy Paton Date: 09 Apr 00 - 12:03 AM Okay, I'll go out on a limb and hazard a guess. I'll wager Ed Cray counted North American versions in Bronson and came up with six, including the Creighton "Sanford" version, one of the five in her Traditional Songs from Nova Scotia (Toronto, 1950), which is fragmentary, having only two and a half verses. That led him to assume that Joe Estey's version was the seventh. What the heck, Rich, he was writing a brief review for the internet, not a scholarly article. The others in Bronson, by the way, are mostly from Scotland. Apparently Creighton did not have a version of this ballad for her 1932 Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia, at least I don't find one there. I'm suspicious of Gainer's report, too, As the ballad does seem to have survived almost exclusively in the Maritimes. Sandy Ives always thought Maine should be included in that geographic region, folkloristically (is that a word?)speaking. I was surprised to note that Sandy didn't include Stanley MacDonald's quite complete version in his Folksongs of New Brunswick (Fredericton, NB, 1989), although he did include several of Stanley's other songs. Nor did he include Estey's, although he was with us when it was recorded. I think we have to look for a printed source that must have circulated throughout Nova Scotia a number of years ago. The complete texts printed by Creighton are remarkably close to the one sung by Joe Estey, with only a few minor variations ("gold in her ears" as compared to Joe's "jewelry in her hair," for instance; trivial stuff). The tune Estey sings, I should point out, has a noticeable resemblance to the widely known "Farewell to Nova Scotia," which could be considered a "sea song," to return briefly to the subject of this thread. I don't associate that melody with any of the tunes I've heard to the "Bury Me Not" (ocean or lone prairie) songs being discussed in another Mudcat thread at this time. But I don't really read music, so I can't judge similarities from the various printed sources. Sandy |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: raredance Date: 08 Apr 00 - 09:58 PM Since the majority of these collected and sung versions seem to come out of eastern Canada, perhaps Ed Cray was referring only to versions collected in the USA or perhaps only to "complete" versions whatever the definition is. Gainer's West Virginia book includes the statement by Gainer that the song: "had never been recorded in West Virginia until it was sung to me by Maggie Hammans Parker, of Marlinton, Pochantas County, on August 6, 1970. Indeed, no complete version of the ballad has ever been recorded in the United States except in Maine in 1939." By Gainer's apparent use of the word "complete" the version collected by Helen H Flanders in 1942 does not count presumably because it is only 4 verses long. My own opinion of Gainer's 1970 acquisition of the ballad is that it deserves caution because that source could have learned the song from a recording. rich r |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Sandy Paton Date: 08 Apr 00 - 09:17 PM Significant omission: the version to which Ed Cray referred in his review -- namely, Joe Estey's, the one included on Folk-Legacy's Ballads and Songs of Tradition (CD-125). That's fifteen! Sandy |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Sandy Paton Date: 08 Apr 00 - 12:44 PM Looks as though we can add a couple more surfacings to the excellent list provided by Rich, above. Stanley MacDonald always sang the ballad at the Miramichi Festival in the early 60s, which meant that Joe Estey did NOT sing it there, because it was considered by the community to be "Stanley's song." That makes 13. Sandy Ives (Dr. Edward Ives) has included a fine version from Edmund Doucette of PEI in his new and splendid book, Drive Dull Care Away -- which comes, by the way, with an included compact disc! Doucette's version makes the count 14. The ballad seems very well-established in the Maritime and northeast US singing tradition, but Gainer's report from West Virginia seems to be an isolated anomaly. Sandy |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Peter T. Date: 07 Apr 00 - 08:31 AM Whew, thanks, thanks, thanks. yours, Peter T. |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Sandy Paton Date: 06 Apr 00 - 11:21 PM Actually, I confess that I never checked to verify Ed's statement. Been preoccupied with other things since he wrote his review and published it in the BALLAD-L listserv. I stand corrected. Sandy |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: raredance Date: 06 Apr 00 - 09:03 PM 1. Well there is the Hind Horn version in the DT that is from the collection of Helen Hartness Flanders. The same words and tune are found in both "Ballads Migrant in New England" by flanders and Olney and also in "Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England" by Flanders. Collected from the singing of Mrs. Harriet Gott Murphy of Maine in 1942. 2. There is a version printed in "Folk Songs From The West Virginia Hill" by Patrick Gainer )1975 Seneca Books) who says he obtained it from Maggie Hammans Parker in 1970. 3-4. "Folk Songs From Newfoundland" by Maud Karpeles contains two versions one from Mr. Joseph Quann in 1930 and another from Mr Jacob Courage also in 1930. 5. "Ballads and Seas Songs of Newfoundland" by Elisabeth Greenleaf has a version sung by Daneil Endacott in 1921. 6. Helen Creighton in her "Maritime Folk Songs" has one she obtained from Mr Leander Macumber in 1953. In the notes to this song Creighton cites another of her books that I have not seen "Traditonal Songs of Nova Scotia" pp 11-17 which she says contains additional versions from: 7. Mrs. Vincent Walsh, 8. Mr John Bray, 9. Mr. Lloyd Sanford, 10. Mr. Ben Henneberry, 11. Mr. Ralph Huskins, and 12. Mr. Delton Brown. Now Ed Cray is a legitimate scholar of folk songs and Sandy' broad and deep personal knowledge and his reputed library far exceeds mine, but there seems to be a discrepency here. Maybe Canada is not part of North America? Sandy, help? rich r |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Peter T. Date: 06 Apr 00 - 04:51 PM Continuing thanks for ears and leads.... yours, Peter T. |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Sandy Paton Date: 06 Apr 00 - 11:33 AM There's a fine version of "Hind Horn" on Folk-Legacy's Ballads and Songs of Tradition (CD-125) sung by Joe Estey, an elderly traditional singer from New Brunswick, Canada. The melody of this version does not strike me as a variant of "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie." In a review, Ed Cray recently observed that only seven examples of "Hind Horn" have been collected in North America. There you go! Sandy |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: MMario Date: 06 Apr 00 - 10:01 AM Malcoml, I agree, that it sounds, vaguely, like. |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Malcolm Douglas Date: 06 Apr 00 - 09:54 AM The tune given with Hind Horn #3 on the DT does sound a bit like O Bury Me Not On the Lone Prairie to me, but that could be my imagination; Bronson gives several tunes for the former. Never heard it called a sea song before, though! Malcolm |
|
Subject: RE: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Peter T. Date: 06 Apr 00 - 09:10 AM Why don't you check the Digital Tradition first, you idiot? yours, Peter T. P.S. Starting again, now that I have the lyrics, does anyone who knows the song or the tradition know if it sounds like "O Bury Me Not On the Lone Prairie? |
|
Subject: Hind Horn - A Sea Song? From: Peter T. Date: 06 Apr 00 - 09:06 AM In the "O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" thread I mentioned that the original music is said to be from a sea song called "Hind Horn". I thought a separate thread might catch the attention of the sea shanty people. Anyone know anything about this song, or maybe just tune? yours, Peter T. |
| Share Thread: |
