Lighter--

I think it quite reasonable to imagine that MacColl and/or Lloyd got some material aurally from Hugill. Actually, I think there was a song that came up, in one of my discussions on the thread(s) about their albums, that made me feel certain that MacColl did get at least one song personally from Hugill.

My feeling is that that instance or this correspondence doesn't make *me* feel it is any more likely that "Blood Red Roses" came from Hugill. One reason is that, although I admit the great possibility of MacColl interacting with and borrowing from Hugill, I also *know* (from analysis internal evidence) that Hugill borrowed from other sources plenty of times. Hugill "corrected" the versions of songs he knew with available information.

Lighter, the first of your recent posts on this doesn't make much of an argument to me. I don't see why the similarity between versions would mean that MacColl got it from Hugill and not the other way around. I guess this might be assuming that MacColl could not have gotten it from elsewhere. (?) I do understand that part of it is that Hugill names an informant (Jones of Liverpool), and that makes it as though Hugill's must be authentic and MacColl's could only be so similar through copying Hugill.

This is where my interpretation differs, and I understand if other's don't easily buy it. The vague citation of [non-seaman?] "Jones" does not mean to me that what Hugill presents as VDL is just as a Jones sang it. It seems like sometimes, like several earlier writers on shanties, Hugill had heard a song but needed a *lot* of help to remember it or to make it coherent, in which case other assumed-to-be-authentic sources were used. There was no question of plagiarizing because one would expect any version to be more or less "the song" as it was "traditionally."

This in itself is not enough to make me wonder if Hugill got it from MacColl. But then I think he shows his hand when he mentions the Singing Sailor album. Why does H feel the need to quote that? Doesn't he himself, a sailor and man of Liverpool, have enough authority to make a statement without quoting folk-singers? It is not that he is just saying "Hey, if anyone is curious what this song sounds like, you can go check out this album. It may not be entirely the real deal, but they do a pretty good job!" No, he is using it as a source to backup a point.

So while, Lighter, I think your second point about VDL appearing on a sea songs album is intriguing, Hugill's mention of "Singing Sailor" doesn't suggest to me that he influenced the songs on that album, but rather the opposite. (MacColl and Lloyd were also doing sets of "Australian" and 'convict" songs around the same time. The interest in the song may have come from the Australian interest.)

In both the case of VDL and BBR, Hugill cites "Singing Sailor" as a way of adding something by way of independent corroborating evidence to back up his experience. It doesn't sound to me like he would have given MacColl/Lloyd those songs and then disingenuously praised his students (in a way).

The reason why Hugill brings in Van Diemen's Land is to show where Banks of Newfoundland came from, in his opinion. He does this with several chanties in the book, in which case the "origin" song is something he doesn't source as rigorously (it is merely for example). He claims VDL was a forebitter, so I don't see any necessary incongruity with MacColl having it on a sea song album.

There is an important relationship between VDL and Banks of Newfoundland in how this all works out, I think. Supposedly, BON was a parody of VDL. Does this mean they were often sung to the same tune? Just what *was* the tune of BON? It varies in almost every source I have seen. And that again is different from tunes for VDL or "The Gallant Poachers." I am wondering if VDL and BON were really consistently sung to the same tune. (For example, VDL in MacKenzie's "Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia" -- again putting VDL in a context of "sea songs", and this is a text we know MacColl/Lloyd read -- has a totally different tune.)

I think it is quite plausible that MacColl saw the similarity between texts of VDL and BON and used data from BON to shape his VDL. And it may have been this *heightened* similarity that made it occur to Hugill that he should compare VDL when introducing BON. (One way to counter this point in my argument would be to find an earlier VDL example with the tune of the familiar BON.)

The matter of tunes might provide other clues. If MacColl got it from Hugill, I suppose he would have heard it sung. I think MacColl would have faithfully replicated what Hugill sang. (This, incidentally, is in contrast to some of the MacColl/Lloyd material worked up from Hugill's *book* and other print sources, where they seem to have not had the patience to read the notation accurately!) If Hugill got it from the record, he would have probably heard it pretty accurately, too, but what went down on paper would be anyone's guess. Or would it?

The fact is that MacColl's tune varies from Hugill's (book) tune. (I actually don't have the Singing Sailor rendition; I am going off an assumption from MacColl's performance HERE.) It is basically the familiar BON tune. Yet Hugill's VDL tune actually has some differences from his BON. This is where it gets really confusing.

While the gist of Hugill's VDL and BON tunes is the same, they are not identical. Now why didn't Hugill just say that VDL was sung to the same tune? Are we meant to understand that there was a bit of difference? And if they were the same (conceptually), but for some reason Hugill felt the need to notate a tune for both sets of words, why then are these tunes actually different? Was the writer too incompetent to just write the same tune out? Hmm, well, he was incompetent to a degree. (I said this is where it gets confusing!) The tune for VDL is completely screwed up in that somewhere it changes to another key in the middle of the song. This leaves me wondering if other, seemingly important differences (reading through the lines of the key-change screw-up) from the BON tune were real or just a notational screw-up.

All I can say for sure is that:
1) Hugill's *written* tunes for VDL and BON are not the same.
2) MacColl on VDL is not singing Hugill's written tune for VDL; MacColl is singing BON.
3) Incidentally, Richard (above) is not singing Hugill's VDL tune, either.

Possible scenarios include:
1) Hugill sang VDL with book tune to MacColl and MacColl then changed it to be more like BON;
2) Hugill sang VDL with BON tune to MacColl, MacColl followed that tune (BON), but Hugill went on to screw up the notation of VDL (even though he had BON right next to it);
3) Hugill got VDL from MacColl's record. His BON was obtained separately, and the processing of noting it was different (I have also suspected that the notator, Hugill's brother, sometime's got "help" on notations from prior published works, since Hugill's singing was no doubt sometimes variable or shaky.) But in the attempt to write down VDL, mistakes were made.

There are too many questions. Blood Red Roses presents its own questions. yet in that case I believe the influence of Doerflinger's book and the likelihood of Lloyd's creative hand were strong enough to make that a case to be considered independently.

In all, if Hugill gave VDL to MacColl, that makes me feel it is more likely that they had an interaction (confirming prior suspicions), but not necessarily more likely that the case of BBR was Hugill > Lloyd.