The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #131826   Message #2983264
Posted By: Jim Carroll
09-Sep-10 - 01:41 PM
Thread Name: Child Ballads survived in oral trad.
Subject: RE: Child Ballads survived in oral trad.
"Living tradition?....."
Not unless you change the definition with which these ballads and songs have been documented and generally understood for over a century .
"a status which perhaps they don't warrant?"
The fact that they have served for centuries and have ingrained themselves deep into our culture, even to the extent of stirring childrens' imaginations to the extent of re-making them, gives them some sort of status, surely? The popularity you have described here only underlines that status.
There is a mystique surrounding the ballads, most visible when the academic attempts to separate them from their common origins and elevate it to a 'higher'level.

"Popular tradition, however, does not mean popular origin. In the case of our ballad, the underlying folklore is Irish de facto, but not dejure: the ballad is of Oriental and literary origin, and has sunk to the level of the folk which has the keeping of folklore. To put it in a single phrase, memory not invention is the function of the folk."
Phillips Barry's note to 'The Lake of Col Finn' in 'The New Green Mountain Songster.'
He goes on to attempt to turn one of our finest ballads of domestic tragedy into a fairy tale with magical islands raising from the depths and mermaids.

I've even heard the suggestion on occasion that the folk didn't make the folks songs but left it to the professionals!
Jim Carroll