The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #895   Message #2568123
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
16-Feb-09 - 07:14 AM
Thread Name: Cecil Sharp Collection
Subject: RE: Cecil Sharp Collection
From time to time, people wander into the Forum and revive very old threads more-or-less at random and for no obvious reason. This is one such. It was nearly 11 years since it had last seen the light of day when somebody calling themself 'GUEST,ceza' remarked 'ghh' a few short hours ago.

I thought I'd better mention that; sometimes people don't notice the date and pick up the conversation as if it were current, which can confuse others later on.

Occasionally, though, this sort of random grave-robbing can give us the opportunity of updating old information, correcting misinformation or even adding something new. Jim and John have done a bit (though be honest, you two: did you both see the date on the original question?) and I'll add some too, starting with earlier comments. Sharp died in 1924, so much of his work is now out of copyright. Some of it has been appearing recently at The Internet Archive. At the time of writing, there are books about morris and sword dance and country dance, together with song resources such as One Hundred English Folk Songs; English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (the original 1917 edition, co-edited with Olive Dame Campbell; the later and much larger edition was edited by Maud Karpeles after Sharp's death and is still in copyright); the influential but nowadays very old-fashioned English Folk-Songs for Schools (a collaboration with the Rev Sabine Baring-Gould), and English Folk Song, Some Conclusions: this last being Sharp's study of the subject based on his work collecting in Somerset. Written in a hurry and very early in his collecting career, it was a preliminary study only and wasn't intended to be definitive even in 1907. A follow-up written from his later experience would have been rather different and today it is very dated indeed, but still essential reading provided people take it in the context of its day and in the light of subsequent scholarship.

C J Sharp at the Internet Archive  -available in facsimile: pdf and other formats.

Google Books has some material too, but such as there is is mostly witheld from users outside the USA. There are plenty of other Sharp song resources scattered about the web these days, of course, some good and some less so; but this lot should be enough to be going on with.