The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #81105 Message #1482915
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
11-May-05 - 09:44 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: The Deeds of Napoleon
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: The Deeds of Napoleon
Not all the sum of human knowledge has been put, quite yet, onto websites by altruistic, unpaid volunteers so that people can find it via a simple google search at no cost or effort to themselves. Sometimes real-world libraries still have to be used, and instant gratification isn't always possible.
That sounds rather harsh, I expect, but it isn't meant to be. The point is, though, that somebody does actually have to do the work in the first place so that others can benefit from it. The Journal of the Folk-Song Society is a cause particularly close to me, as I currently run the website for its successor, The Folk Music Journal. One of EFDSS's many ongoing projects involves digitisation of materials from the Journals so that they will be more readily available to people with a genuine interest. It will cost money, though, which a small charitable organisation, however venerable, doesn't have easy access to. It will take time.
Having said all that (and it does need saying from time to time, though it isn't your fault that so many people take things for granted) you don't need to go to the Journal for the full text that Martin Carthy mentions. Ralph Vaughan Williams noted Henry Burstow's tune and the first verse as he sang it; but, as was his habit, RVW supplied the rest of the text from a broadside copy that he knew of. The whole was published in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society, vol II, issue 8 (1906), 186-187.
The broadside text was taken from an edition by R Barr of Leeds (1840-ish). Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads, (which was only made possible by very serious funding!) has copies of that and a good few other issues from other printers of the day. See