There's a lovely article about Margaret MacArthur in the Smithsonian Magazine for January (p99) I subscribe to it, of course, but the article is temporarily available at Margaret MacM

Margaret is one of the finest humans and superbest ballad singers I've ever come across. All my years I concentrated on the Scottish muckle ballad, bemoaning that there was so little great balladry in the US. Then she produced an impressive (& growing) repertoire of fine-sung, singable ballads from New England. They were there all along. I just didn't know about them until a couple of years ago.

Thank goodness, too. Last week I got to sing her great Vermont version of "King John and the Bishop" (Child #45) to celebrate bad King John's birthday (b12/24/1167). The story represented in the song seems to trace back to Coptic literature of maybe 650 ce. In the song John's a good guy, not Bad King as most elsewhere. (CD _Ballads Twisted_ - available from Camsco & also available is a bunch of tapes directly from her.)

Now that's a whole bunch of superlatives for me. But I mean it just the mostest.

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I moved this message here from another thread on the same topic.
-Joe Offer-