Mudcatters --

It is with deep relief and mild trepidation that I announce the release of Ballad Index 7.0. :-)

https://balladindex.org/

As usual, I'll put the full Release Notes below, with all the oddball statistics, but I want to mention two things. One is that we finally have a new, quirky, but 100% accurate search engine: If you type in some text into this search engine, it will find all songs with that EXACT text. It's on the ballad search page:

https://balladindex.org/BalladSearch.html

It's the THIRD search box -- not the Google or DuckDuckGo search but the search box below the heading that says "Search the Traditional Ballad Index using Our Custom Search Engine." Note that, unlike (say) the Google Search, it's not smart; if you type "Bonny Jean" and the song's name is "Bonnie Jean," it won't find it for you. But it really and truly will find all instances of "Bonny Jean"! No more instances of Google incompetence.

The other is the new research articles. There are eight of them, listed in the ReadMe, and a lot of them are depressing in the amount of injustice they show (e.g. "Sarah Maria Cornell" is the tale of a woman raped and murdered by a member of the clergy who got off scot free because his church hired the biggest, fanciest lawyer in the state and they assassinated her character). But I thought I'd highlight one sort-of-happy note, and that's the story of Flora MacDonald. Most ballads based on real characters make the heroines seem much better than they actually were. Flora's story is the reverse. She did NOT spend her life mooning around after Bonnie Prince Charlie; she merely saved his life. Flora (or "Flory," as she signed her name) was educated, intelligent -- and, in the American Revolutionary War, a loyalist rather than a rebel! Her life was tragic; her husband's financial stupidity forced her from her home twice. But she was a rare ballad heroine I would actually have liked to meet.

All right, I'll stop talking now and post the release notes:

What's New in the Ballad Index

Version 7.0

Structural or Functional Changes

With this version, we are adding a new search engine (written in JavaScript). Unlike Google and DuckDuckGo searches, it finds everything, although it is slow and searches only for exact matches.

The Roud Index

This edition coordinates with Roud Index release 128.

Materials Added in this Edition

The following books were fully indexed in Version 7.0:

• Stuart M. Frank, Jolly Sailors Bold: Ballads and Songs of the American Sailor> (Almost fully indexed by Ben Schwartz.)
  
• John Howson, Songs Sung in Suffolk
  
• Simon Snyder Rathvon, "English Folksong Tradition," article in The Pennsylvania Dutchman (indexed by Ben Schwartz)
  

The following items were partially indexed in Version 7.0:

• Web Site: John Baxter's Folk Song and Music Hall
  
• George Stuyvesant Jackson, Early Songs of Uncle Sam
  
• And a whole pile of mid-nineteenth-century songsters (for these, I generally indexed the songs which have a Roud Number):
          
  • The Camp Fire Songster
            
  • The Frisky Irish Songster
            
  • Lanigan's Ball Comic Songster
            
  • Negro Melodies No. 5: Old Zip Coon
            
  • The Shilling Song Book No. 3
            
  • Sweet Genevieve Songster
            
  • The Teddy Regan Songster;
            
  • (Bishop Buckley), Bishop Buckley's Comic Songs;
            
  • John M. Burke, John M. Burke's Dublin Dan Songster;
            
  • E. P. Christy, Christy's Plantation Melodies [#1];
            
  • J. H. Collins, editor (and James Unsworth), Unsworth's Burnt Cork Lyrics;
            
  • Frank B. Converse, Frank Converse's "Old Cremona" Songster;
            
  • Kittie Coleman, Dan McCarthy, and Thomas F. Kerrigan, Coleman and McCarthy's Champion Song and Dance Book;
            
  • Charley Fox?, Charley Fox's Ethiopian Songster;
            
  • Catherine Hayes?, Catherine Hayes, Swan of Erin Songster;
            
  • Billy Holmes, Billy Holmes's Comic Local Lyrics;
            
  • (Richard M. Hooley), Hooley's Black Star Songster;
            
  • (Richard M. Hooley), Hooley's "High Daddy" Songster;
            
  • Samuel Lover (also Charles Lever), Lover's Irish Songs / Samuel Lover's Book of Irish Songs;
            
  • Rodey Maguire, Rodey Maguire's Comic Variety Songster;
    (Billy Morris), Billy Morris' Songs;
            
  • Gus Williams, Gus Williams' Leedle German Band Songster
    
  
  

This brings the total number of books indexed fully or partially to 514 (378 of them indexed in their entirety), plus three journals (two of them fully indexed) and four electronic resources, with hundreds of other books cited in ADDITIONAL entries or the SAME TUNE field.

We now have 17,941 different songs (228 more than in the last edition, which had 17,713), under 32,600 titles. At least 1063 songs were added or had their entries updated in version 7.0.

The Supplemental Tradition now contains full or partial texts for 1141 songs.

There are 901 songs for which the NOTES exceed 500 words;
395 with at least 1000 words of notes;
64 with at least 5000 words of notes.

869 songs have enough data in the notes to call for a bibliography of at least three items.

Fun statistics:

The five most popular songs:

1. Bonny Barbara Allan (187 references)

2. The Golden Vanity (145 references)

3. The Gypsy Laddie (140 references)

4. The Daemon Lover/The House Carpenter (122 references)

5. Lord Thomas and Fair Annet (121 references)

The most popular non-Child Ballad is Frog Went A-Courting, with 120 references; it's #6. Next below it are John Henry [Laws I1], with 93, and Pretty Fair Maid (The Maiden in the Garden; The Broken Token) [Laws N42], also with 93 references; they're #15/#16. It's interesting to note that all those songsters contained none of the most popular songs.

We currently have 33 keywords that have been used on at least 500 songs; 13 of them have been used on at least 1000 songs. The 13, with the number of times they are used: nonballad (5211), love (2427), death (2390), courting (2306), religious (1739), humorous (1678), separation (1314), drink (1249), work (1140), marriage (1069), food (1061), travel (1056), ship (1035).

8398 songs -- somewhat less than half the song in the database -- have only one reference (or, in a few cases, none), meaning that 9543 have at least two.

13903 songs are listed as having unknown authors, meaning that 4038 songs have an author listed (not always with certainty). I note that this is only three more songs with unknown authors than were in the last edition; we're now identifying authors at almost the same rate as we are adding songs.

17075 songs have at least one book reference

4040 songs have at least one recording reference

1522 songs have at least one reference to a broadside in a major collection (Bodleian, etc.)

188 songs have at least one manuscript reference

7543 songs have been found somewhere in the United States

4425 songs have been found in Britain (2042 in England, 2601 in Scotland; in other cases, it's not clear where in Britain)

2316 have been found in Ireland (including Northern Ireland)

2071 have been found in Canada

430 have been found in Australia

402 have been found somewhere in the West Indies

265 have been found in New Zealand

New substantial articles in this edition include:

• The Baby's Name: How to memorialize the Boer War and ruin a child's life, all at one go.
  
• The Ballad of William Rufus. William Rufus was hit by an arrow. But who was hitting on whom?
  
• The Battle at Charleston Harbor. You can lead a fleet of monitors to Charleston, but you can't make them hit a brick wall.
  
• The Death of Colonel Crafford: If you needed proof that two evils don't make a good, the 1782 Sandusky Campaign is it.
  
• The Florida's Cruise: What happens when a long raiding voyage meets a long-winded poet.
  
• The Somers: What happens when a sadistic captain hears that his men are considering mutiny.
  
• Flora MacDonald's Lament: Flora MacDonald lived a tragic life -- but it certainly wasn't because of Bonnie Prince Charlie!
  
• Sarah Maria Cornell: Being a Methodist Clergyman means never having to say you're sorry... even for rape and murder
  

I don't know what it says, but I seemed to be doing a lot of songs about injustices this time. The Somers is about a captain who engaged in judicial murder; Sarah Maria Cornell is about a woman (I think a neurodivergent woman) who was raped and murdered and her murderer got away with it; The Death of Colonel Crafford is about a man who, although absolutely despicable, was tortured to death for someone else's crime.

On the other hand, most real women who became ballad heroines were rather problematic -- e.g. Laura Foster pretty clearly slept around and had a hard time marrying because she was "frail," and similarly Naomi Wise. But Flora MacDonald... actually impressed me a lot. Decently educated (she spoke Gaelic, English, and very possibly French), highly intelligent, and determined, she was never in love with Bonnie Prince Charlie -- but it was her bad luck to end up in an (arranged?) marriage with a husband who didn't understand money, and it led to her being exiled twice. But her husband's fate would likely have been a lot worse if Flora hadn't been there to straighten him out....