Music of the people..Don't make me laugh

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 03:02 PM

You are right about the proportion of songs issued on broadsides over all the centuries not making it into the oral tradition. BUT of the general corpus of songs referred to above I personally have copies on broadsides of about 95% of them, excluding obvious sub-genres, sea shanties, children's playground songs and rugby songs. Try me with say 20 titles, of well-known ones, not obscure LOCAL songs. This is before I start in on the sheet music.

Here are a few authors to be going on with:-

17thc
The Keeper..Joseph Martin

The Leather Bottle..John Wade

My true love I've lost; Famous Flower of Serving Men; The London Heiress....Laurence Price

Serving Man and Husbandman; The Baffled Knight (rewrite); The Gosport Tragedy; No, Sir, No; The Bold Grenadier...Richard Climsell

Die an Old Maid; John Appleby; Stormy winds do blow; O Dear O; Robin Hood (Child 154)...Martin Parker

The Spanish Lady's Love...Thomas Deloney

Big Rock Candy Mountain...Richard Pocock

Boys of Kilkenny...Thomas Lanfiere

Robin Hood and the Beggar; Johnny Armstrong; Robin Hood's Chase; Robin Hood and the Butcher..... Thomas Robins

18thc
Down in the Meadows...Thomas Wise

The Three Butchers....Paul Burgess

19thc
Caroline and her Young sailor Bold; The Rambling Soldier; The Gallant Female Sailor....John Morgan, wrote mainly for Catnach

Pretty Caroline; The Constant Farmer's Son; Flora the Lily of the West; Bonny Bunch of Roses....George Brown

Of course I can't prove any of this. These people were credited on the actual broadsides, and apart from John Morgan we know very little about any of them. I respect your opinion expressed above but I also have the right to disagree with it, based on many years' research. It is also the opinion of others who have spent many years researching the relationship between print and the oral tradition.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 03:58 PM

Just to muddy the water a little, and I tend to agree with Jim on this. Incidentally, 'scotch' in Pepys day did not actually mean from Scotland it was simply a generic term for a given 'style' of song or indeed, dance. The question that puzzles me is this; What proportion of songs currently thought to be traditional 'variants' on broadside themes are actually deliberate inventions of the singer in order to generate repertoire in a society where song possession was seen as status?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 04:07 PM

thanks Steve.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Brian Peters
Date: 13 Nov 09 - 01:27 PM

Steve wrote:
>> My true love I've lost; Famous Flower of Serving Men; The London Heiress....Laurence Price <<

Steve, I'm very interested in your thesis that many of our traditional songs - particularly the later ones - may have originated with broadsides or staged productions. It seems to tie in with the repertoire of an 1800s Derbyshire musician I've been looking at lately, many of whose tunes were originally song melodies written for comic operas and the like. I was sorry I couldn't attend the recent meeting on broadsides in London.

Regarding Laurence Price, I understand he was also the author of 'A Warning for Married Women', which is Child's A text for #243 James Harris / The Demon Lover, but Child's idea that this 1657 broadside was the *original* text has been strongly disputed. It reads more like a hack's bowdlerization of an existing ballad. I seem to remember that 'Famous Flower' is referred to in a work predating Price as well. The point being that finding an author's name doesn't necessarily confirm a given text as the original. And I tend to agree with Jim that the texts collected from tradition generally sing a lot better than some of the wordy and cumbersome broadsides.

One other question: if you take a song with a number of known variants that differ significantly in terms of text - 'Sailor Cut Down' is an obvious one, or maybe Newry Town / Adieu Adieu / Rambling Blade etc. - do you find a similar number of broadsides carrying variant texts that correspond with those alternatives? And if so, would you guess that it was the result of broadside writers plagiarising variants from tradition, or inventing their own variants?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Nov 09 - 03:09 PM

Hi Brian,
Thanks for reminding me about LP's original of Demon Lover. I'll have another good look at it. I only started making my list of broadside ballad writers fairly recently and it didn't make it onto my list of 17 ballads by him but it's there now. It'll be interesting to see what Ebsworth made of it in The Roxburghe Ballads. Ebsworth knew a damn sight more than Child about broadside ballads and their origins.

If you come across references to any of these songs that predate these printings I'd be obliged for the references to check out.

Regarding rehashes, the same has been said for 20 The Duke's Daughter's Cruelty (Cruel Mother) but I'm happy that it's the original and as far as I know there are no refs to predate the broadside.

I agree that an author's name on a broadside isn't concrete proof that he wrote it. The same goes for sheet music in fact. Some of them are undoubtedly remakes of earlier pieces and some partly from tradition. However I think there must be a strong chance that at least most of them were written by these authors.

I don't think there are any scholars who would dispute the fact that oral tradition generally improves what was printed on the broadsides. Facts may get muddied, names might get changed, but the singability and aesthetics are usually vastly improved.

My studied opinion on widely differing versions in oral tradition is that this is indeed reflected on broadsides. I go further and would state generally that where widely differing versions are found this is not down to oral tradition, but down to rewriting by broadside hacks. Another cause of course is the passing backwards and forwards over a long period of time between print and oral tradition. A really interesting example is Geordie/Georgie and the interaction with the 2 main originators, 2 quite different broadside ballads on 2 different Georges.

Paul, I'm sorry I don't understand your question.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 03:51 AM

Steve, the notion of song possession as status is found in a variety of places, most notably, Ginette Dunn's research, "Fellowship of Song'. Thus singers like Bob Scarce and Bob Hart were seen, within their communities, as high status because of their repertoires and by implication, their knowledge. Now it strikes me that it wouldn't be too difficult for a singer to generate repertoire by deliberate invention. This gives entirely new 'variants' which have been processed entirely by a single singer and not by a so-called 'folk process'. Say, for example, I want a version of 'Adeiu, adeiu' and I only have the one that I have heard sung by another singer. I might, simply create my own version, add a tune from another song and bingo! No folk process involved, just art.
I collected a version of the 'Sheepstealer' from Arthur Laycock in the 1970s. It is recognisable as the same song type as that commonly sung (I am a brisk lad and my fortune is bad) but it is localised and lacks the sense of desperation found in the other version. Arthur said he got it from his grandfather. I reckon its a deliberate invention based on something else. It hasn't, as far as I know been collected elsewhere.
My question is simply, What proportion of so called 'folk' songs are of this type, artful inventions by a single individual?
Paul

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 05:05 AM

Whilst respecting Jim Carroll as a historian of the folk tradition, and his years of analysing the roots... I can't see the problem with sweeping statements.

Statements have to be sweeping because the folk tradition is, as I alluded to earlier, a broad church.

The thread asks, "Music of the people... Don't make me laugh." So, to answer this, we have to ask if folk is the music of the people? Sounds reasonable to me.

Which people?

Every indigenous group will have a tradition of skills, and over the last couple of thousand years, an art based culture. Art meets usefulness in the oral tradition to ensure we learn from each other. The oral tradition has its roots there, and music has influence too, as a tune can express feelings far more than words. T'was ever thus.

So... music of people throughout history versus music of people today...

I reckon the millions of people who tune in to watch Simon Cowell pontificate on talent are listening to the music of the people, because what else to they hear throughout their day?

Folk as today's music of the people could be seen to be songs that reflect life today. Gangster rap if you live in any Western world city. Bruce Springsteen if you are of an age...

Whatever it is, I doubt it is much to do with baby boomers getting their sandals on and complaining that the beer is too cold and fizzy.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 05:35 AM

Some 'folk' aka 'people' music: Click

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 07:09 AM

What proportion of so called 'folk' songs are of this type, artful inventions by a single individual?

All of them I shouldn't wonder, Paul - certainly in respect of their essential empiricism which I believe to be the mechanism of what is all too sweepingly called the folk process. The undisputed fluidity in which such songs once existed is the consequence of a cultural genius which only becomes collective if we ignore the fact that any such cultural phenomenon is determined by individuals - in this case, highly specialised individuals as well versed in the intricacies of their craft as any cooper, carpenter or wheelwright. The denial of the individual is standard thinking in the study of so-called Folklore in which those who innocently participate in traditions must be entirely passive to a process they themselves will never understand or yet even be aware of - indeed, if ever they did become aware of such things, this would contaminate the purity of the folklore. Thus, such processes might only be understood by the educated classes who have defined them, studied them, collected them, categorised them, and, latterly, underwritten the orthodoxy that is the so-called Folk Song Revival. Such an approach is the musical equivalent of the Lynn Truss school of grammatical correctness - a noxious pedantry which is not so much a living music as the residue of the bourgeois hobbyism which gave us the whole idea of Folk Music in the first place.

*

Apology: It is 11.45am after a late night session singing traditional songs, drinking too much beer and passive smoking; I am hungover and (still) flu-ridden, despite this I feel oddly empowered with respect of my ongoing indignation that is perfectly explained by the title of this thread. I am, alas, working-class ill-educated scum whose approach to such matters over the years has been entirely intuitive; I have a passion for the old songs and the singers thereof (whom I regard as masters of their art) who stand in stark contrast to the so-called Folk Singers of the revival who have, with but few exceptions (Peter Bellamy, Seamus Ennis & Jim Eldon) little to do with the earthy virtuosity of the aforementioned masters. Thus I seek sanctuary in singarounds and sessions where something of that potency might be experienced by way of a collective seance of other such individuals, though I am the first to admit it is by no means flawless.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 07:11 AM

good points Paul,most revival singers make alterations to songs deliberately.so why is it not feasible that traditional singers did so.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 11:05 AM

The thing is, take Ray Driscoll's 'Wild Berry' it has to be a conscious creation based on 'Lord Randall' but, in my opinion, it's bloody brilliant!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 11:44 AM

Traditional singers. like anyone else, had different, and not always even self-consistent, attitudes to their songs snd their repertoires. I remember Harry Cox, on my first of several visits to him with Bob Thomson in 1970-71 [see Topic's Bonnie Labouring Boy collection] relating with indignation that he had heard singers introduce the sympathetic plants {'Church top ... twined in true lover's knot'} motif in 'Barbara Allen':— "They get mixed up," he exclaimed, "That shouldn't come in 'Barbara Ellen'. That don't belong in that. They belong in 'Lord Lovely!'" {See my transcription on p8 of 'Folk Review', February 1973}.

But he was nevertheless well aware of the existence of variants and different versions, though he didn't always recognise resemblances between tunes. When he sang us 'The Ship Called "Onward"', his version of 'Rounding The Horn', he asked me if I knew a song like that and what was my tune? So I sang him a verse of the Penguin Book Of English Folk Songs 'Amphitrite' version [the "Set up all new rigging, boys, And bent on all new sails" verse], pointing out that it was like his tune for "Henry Abbot the Poacher", and, as Bob chimed in, "The Painful Plough"; but he didn't, as Bob said in the car going home, appear to register the resemblance of the tunes, or even that his tunes for 'Abbot' & 'Painful Plough' were identical.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 01:07 PM

It was Harry Cox, among others, of whom I was thinking. Note, 'he asked me if I knew a song like that and what was my tune?' That is a very telling statement. He understood variants and he understood the setting of tunes to existing texts. Harry's repertoire was very extensive, how? He certainly didn't hide the fact that he was a collector. He was perhaps a little more reticent when it came to the actual creation of songs. But, and here Sean has got it dead right, Harry made up songs, invented verses and variants. The fact is, he was both qualified to do so by immersion in, and I hesitate to use the term, 'the tradition', and he was equipped to do so by a complex knowledge of what 'works' and what does not. And he was not alone in this.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 02:54 PM

Paul, I suspect others have answered your question. All of my collecting was recorded in an area where the singing of these songs was already long dead, apart from for self amusement, so, whereas I have read Dunn enviously, I have no personal experience of song ownership, in oral tradition. I have seen it on many occasions on the folk scene, however. There are threads on the etiquette of this if you wish to pursue it.

Regarding percentages of deliberate song alteration in oral tradition, this would take a lifetime of research to come anywhere near. However I'm pretty certain that it happened much more than most people perceive.

Regarding Harry, I remember reading that he actually had the broadsides of many of the songs he sang.

Regarding the sympathetic plants motive, it would make a very interesting study to try to work out how, where and when it migrated from one ballad to another. Difficult but not totally impossible.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 03:19 PM

I thought the sympathetic plants motif was a 'floater'? There are any number of places where it might be inserted appropriately. You could, for instance, insert it into 'Little Musgrave' to give a final ironic two fingers to the vengeful husband?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Johnny R.
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 03:29 PM

The middle classes are also people, many of whom emerged from working class roots. I'm probably seen as 'middle class' by people who choose to look at the world in that rather limited way, but I'm descended from artisans on both sides of my family, so when I hear a traditional folk song I hear my own history echoed there.

You can't neatly divide people up into classes anymore, the world has moved on. If a university lecturer wants to organise a folk club, great. Someone's got to do it - does it matter what they do for a living?

There will be folk songs as long as there are people walking the Earth.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 03:34 PM

Oh, yes, indeed: whole point of that BarbaraAllen/LordLovell confusion of Harry's is that he didn't seem to recognise the concept of 'floaters', but assumed 'his' version to be the true one - which we found a bit surprising. We all know that many [perhaps most] B Allen versions contain the plants. He did indeed own a lot of broadsides, notebooks with words in &c — last time we went we divided the labour whereby I talked to him sociably while Bob & my wife went thru all these papers, broadsides &c spread out over the table. BUT the important point is that he didn't learn from them, but mainly orally - if you go back to e.g. Moeran's early collecting in that area, you will find that many of the versions of what we now think of as 'Harry's' songs were first collected from other men of the previous generation in the same area; & he inherited them as they died so that, by convention among the men at the inn, they became 'his', as the best singer so rightful heir, as it were. The broadsides & notebooks he regarded far more as a failsafe in case his memory needed jogging. So tho he owned many broadsides OF his songs, they were not the MAIN SOURCE of his song texts. I hope I have explicated all this clearly — I am pretty sure it is an accurate statement of his case.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 03:34 PM

It's risky to generalise on whether or not traditional singers deliberately altered songs
Some did - Yorkshire singer Arthur Wood did a brilliant remake of The Tailor's Britches (or his father did - can't find my note to it).
On the other hand, many singers we met insisted on both the 'correct' words of a song and 'the right way to sing it.'
"However I think there must be a strong chance that at least most of them were written by these authors."
On what grounds do you come to this conclusion Steve?
Sorry to persist with this but, as I have asked on several occasions and received no reply - if you concede that Aberdeenshire farmworkers were the main creators of their repertoire - why not sailors, mill workers English rural labourers et al?
American folklorist, Duncan Emrich once wrote "memory not invention is the function of the folk."
Your earlier arguments regarding the broadside origins of our traditional repertoire, coupled with your latest bombshell: "I go further and would state generally that where widely differing versions are found this is not down to oral tradition, but down to rewriting by broadside hacks", seems to indicate that you not only agree with Emrich, but go further to deny the existance of a folk process altogether. Why cannot widely differing versions simply be the outcome of time/distance/differing values, vernacular, customs... etc from differing communities?
It is our experience that along with a healthy song tradition, the communities we worked with also created songs. There is no reason why what we recognise as our national repertoire is not made up of locally-created songs brought out of the home communities and being absorbed into the larger repertoire - can give you plenty of examples of same if you wish.
One of the great Ulster singers was once asked by a relative going to work at the tattie-howkin' in Scotland would she like something brought back. Her reply - bring me back a song. The relative obliged and the song became part of her Northern Irish repertoire.
You haven't begun to address the question of literacy (or lack of same) - the fact that the communities that provided us with some of the greatest and rarest ballads were totally non-literate (the Travellers) and that even in the communities that had access to education, the acceptance of songs in print was not at all straightforward. The misgivings toward written song texts displayed by James Hoggs mother in her conversation with Walter Scott persisted among source singers right into the mid-twentieth century, certainly in rural Ireland.
For the life of me I can see no reason why an author's name attached to a broadside could not be the same as seeing a traditional song headed "Trad. arr. Fred Bloggs" - as you said yourself, they were doing it to earn a living.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 03:35 PM

Paul,
Yes the 2/3 stanzas are regarded as a commonplace but it would still make an interesting study trying to guess which ballad had it first and so on. Harry may well have been right about it migrating from Lord Lovel to Barbara Allen, but I'm pretty certain equally it didn't start life with Lord Lovel.

Just as a matter of interest, does anyone nowadays sing Lord Lovel as anything but a joke? Many of the Child ballads were burlesqued/parodied in the 18th 19th centuries and in some cases only the burlesques seem to have survived into the 20th.

I was going to state 'thread drift' at this point, but then it's all about making me laugh! Or is it?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 03:44 PM

Steve (crossed posting).
Lord Lovel was not only one of Walter Pardon's favourite ballads, but was one of the most collected in West Clare. I think we have at least half-a-dozen different versions. Up to its closing, it was sung virtually every week, and in all seriousness, in Gleesons, our local song/music/dance venue, by several elderly singers (depending on who got it in first).
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 04:06 PM

Jim,
No risk attached to the generalising at all. Some did , some didn't, simple as that.
I am very interested in your comment about Arthur Wood's magnificent version of The Tailor's Britches. Obviously it is a localised version of perhaps a broadside dare I venture. Considering the only other versions are 2 quite different fragments from the south coast and his version was recorded several years before Frank Purslow's collation/rewrite was published in Marrow Bones any background history would be very useful. I would be very grateful for any info on this regarding sources.
The conditions where the 'folk' actually involve themselves in invention regarding song only happens in special cases, with particular groups or individuals. Apart from the areas you mention which are well documented, the forces during the World Wars is another well documented area. BUT by and large the vast majority of the people are quite happy to take what is passed down to them from on high or perhaps up to them from down below (in the case of many broadsides). I do not question for one moment the enormous influence of oral tradition, but I stand by what I have stated above, which comes from 40 years studying both the oral tradition and the broadside tradition, and their interdependence. And it's good to be in line with such a great folklorist as Duncan Emrich. How this makes me deny the influence of the folk process altogether I fail to see.
I have already concurred with you over the situation in parts of rural Ireland and amongst the travelling community in Ireland. Although looking at MacColl and Seeger's TSES I can see very little evidence of creativity unless you include the hybridising of some songs. I have already stated that I am referring to the shared repertoire found all over the English-speaking world and not LOCAL pieces.

Your penultimate paragraph is irrelevant to the question as I don't contest any of this. In fact I can give you many more examples.

Regarding the putting of names to broadsides, well neither of us can prove or disprove this, so we must leave it to others to decide what they think, simply present the evidence. There is a very strong case made for John Morgan's authorship as he was interviewed and his story was published, and it is convincing enough for me. Sheesh! And I thought I was a skeptic!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 04:11 PM

Jim,
Thanks for the LL info. Can you remember what rhythm they used? Was it in jig time? Or did it vary?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 05:10 PM

'Harry may well have been right about it migrating from Lord Lovel to Barbara Allen, but I'm pretty certain equally it didn't start life with Lord Lovel.'

Don't at all think that is what he meant or implied, Steve. He just meant that HIS version of LdLvl contained those bits & HIS BarbAllen didnt, so he regarded appearance of the truluv-knot motif in the latter as WRONG, misguided, mistaken, due to confusion ["They get mixed up"]! The idea that there could have been renderings of B Allen in which it happened to fit correctly or appropriately didn't occur to him, lay outside his range of the possible or the acceptable.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 05:12 PM

ah, but its PARTLY what makes Barbara Allen such a fine song.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Stringsinger
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 05:14 PM

I would go a step further and say that "misremembering" is a part of trad folk. It creates variants.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 05:31 PM

There is a world of difference between 'literate' and 'functionally literate'. The ability to read a broadside is one thing. The ability to create a broadside style lyric without writing it down is another. The two don't appear to be linked. The function of memory amongst the non-literate is often enhanced by their reliance on it. Where such are also functionally literate, that is, in full and complete understanding of the power of rhetoric and its extended vocabulary there is very little chance of 'misremembering' acting as a tool for variance. The most likely reason, is that of deliberate creation for reasons known best o the singer and the community.
Incidentally, MtheGM makes an important point regarding the possession of songs. Many families/communities consider that a particular song belongs to its singer. They simply do not sing other peoples stuff. Where there is a shortage of sources of songs in a community what is more natural than to create one's own?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 05:38 PM

'ah, but its PARTLY what makes Barbara Allen such a fine song. '

But Harry Cox didn't think so, Dick, he didn't like it there; & he is unfortunately not accessible to dispute the point with.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 06:10 PM

I have yet to see a hypothesis of why Barbara Allen is the most popular ballad in the English speaking world, but it is. Twould make an interesting study would it not?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 07:12 PM

Brian,
Which copy of 'A Warning to Married Women' ascribes the ballad to Laurence Price please? I have most of the 6 copies but I can't find it.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 05:21 AM

Steve
LL - varied. Quite often it was sung freely.
It is (I think - not to hand at the moment) to be found on the album we put together of Clare singer Tom Lenihan, 'Paddy's Panacea'.

Duncan Emrich was not a great folklorist - his writings were idiosyncratic and contradictory (and recognised as such among other 'great folklorists'), even within the covers of one book (see New Green Mountain Songster). He was one of the leading exponents of the nonsensical theory that 'The Lakes of Coolfinn' (Col Fin) concerned magic islands and water nymphs rather than the beautiful drowning tragedy that it obviously is. I take it that you do concur with his view concerning "repetition and creation'.
If you want to put the authorship of the songs and ballads (particularly the latter) into context, I suggest you take a look at traditional storytelling, which was in no way influenced by print. Listen to Alec Stewart, Jeannie Robertson, (or any of the big Irish storytellers we recorded) and it is obvious that their material comes out of the same stable. The Stewarts' classic tales are set in the same speech patterns and disciplines as the ballads - incremental repetition, commonplaces, runs..... they are all there. In other words, they take the form of prose ballads.
One of the things that disturbs me about all this has a somewhat personal side to it.
I grew up in a working class background (and remained a manual worker all my working life). One of the last things I remember being told by my Secondary Modern teacher a few months before I left school was that people like me didn't create, and if I wanted art and creativity I had to go to my betters, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Mozart..... He told me that all I needed to know when I left school was to tot up my wage packet at the end of the week - I fell for that for a time, until I discovered what I believe to be 'peoples' music'.
I was apprenticed on the Liverpool docks and became fascinated with how the people I worked with used language, the humour, the quickness of wit, the dexterity and creativity, the ability to paint pictures with words. That hovered in the background of my mind until I heard MacColl's, Seeger's and Parker's Radio Ballads which were based on workers' language - at its best.
I posted a section of an interview with Traveller Mikeen McCarthy earlier on. We worked with Mikeen for thirty years and have something like 130 tapes of him, singing, telling stories, imparting folklore.... but most of the time simply describing Travelling life and work in rural Ireland in the first half of the 20th century and urban life in England in the latter. One of the main features of our recordings is that Mikeen spoke poetry, not formally or self conciously, but naturally. His use of language was that of the ballads and songs, so much so that when a radio producer came along to make a programme on our work last year she devoted a whole programme (out of three) to him alone.
We found this to a greater or lesser degree wherever we worked, Rural Ireland, other Travellers such as 'Pop's' Johnny Connors, in Norfolk with the fishermen and with Walter, with Duncan Williamson - even to the first recording we ever made of an old docker describing his experiences in the trenches in WW1.
It is inconceivable (to me, at least) that such abilities did not people with such a natural grasp of language shouldn't use that ability to create.
I've given you an example with the bothie songs, which you continue to ignore and instead concentrate on our work in Ireland as if it was another planet. Why Ireland should be any different than England is beyond me - it has a very strong Anglo/Irish song tradition and if you wanted to hear the Child Ballads from source singers in the last 40 years you'd be far more likely to find them here than anywhere else in these islands.
I've spent nearly half a century involved in folk music, and a considerable amount of that time has been in arguing that folk song is the creation and expression of 'the people' and not the 'crumbs that drop from the table of the literate'.
It seems that this is a continuation of that argument.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 05:32 AM

MGM , we could have a seance,we might even get Bert Lloyd,that would be fun.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 05:36 AM

Jim, Just a little insert here (I can't find your e-mail), I came across an on-line photo-archive that has lovely pictures of (among many other things) the Puck Fairs between 1955 and the early seventies, you need to take a look at :
Kennelly Archive

Especially the traveller musician with the box fiddle at the 1955 Puck Fair is an interesting shot but many more there

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 05:50 AM

I am still unsure why a song sung by a lawyer/teacher/IT consultant drops out of the genre 'Music for the people'. Are lawyers/teachers/IT consultants not as much people as are farm hands, sailors and sagger makers bottom knockers?

DeG

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 06:37 AM

'MGM , we could have a seance,we might even get Bert Lloyd,that would be fun.'

Great idea, Cap'n GSS. & if we got Harry Cox, we could try for Tommy Makem too — & then we should have Tom, Dick & Harry ... How about that?!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 06:47 AM

Jim - As I think you know I am a retired Head of Upper School in a comprehensive as well as a freelance critic & journo [ran the jobs in parallel for years - out of school at 4, into a phone box, say Shazzam & out comes Supercritic!]. But what I am posting to express is my horror at that Sec Mod teacher of yours who tried so disgracefully to undermine you & rob you of your confidence. Wonder what had rocked his pathetic boat? I would never have said such a thing to an ambitious pupil [or indeed to any pupil] in any circumstances whatsoever — he was a shit and a wanker and a disgrace to the teaching profession & I am glad you so brilliantly and with such distinction overcame his baleful influence.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 07:47 AM

Peter,
Thanks a million - you've made my day
I think it is Mikeen's uncle catching the goat.
Will e-mail you with my address.

Michael,
It was a fairly comon attitude in Speke Secondary Modern - don't think Mr Cobban (funny how some names stick in your memory) was very different from most of his colleagues - though probably not as outspoken.
Nor do I believe that things have basically changed on the sink estates I grew up on like Speke and Kirkby - bit slicker perhaps, and comprehensive education did seem to make a difference for the better but..... I don't think we were ever regarded as anything other than factory-fodder
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 08:23 AM

Oh Jim, that does distress me. I taught 30 years, from 50s-80s, and not only in 'nice' districts' by any means — Peckham, a working-class bit of S London my first post, then Stevenage New Town, obviously very mixed intake, then a Cambridge Sec Mod drawing largely from Arbury & Barnwell which the working-class districts of the city, which is quite industrialised and not just an Ancient University, of course; and I never had a colleague who would have said such things, or a head or senior colleague [as I became myself eventually as I said] who would have tolerated any of their staff doing so. {I remember an exasperated colleague at Peckham once saying to a W Indian boy who was playing him up, "Get back to your jungle, black boy", and the Headmaster heard of it and the master was out of the school with no redress the very next morning]. I wonder why it was regarded as OK in the north of the country. I am, as I say, profoundly shocked that such remarks were still being made to pupils during the time of my own career (& perhaps, as you suggest, still go on). Such things just aren't right.

I hope this isn't 'drift' - but all related to concept of "the people", I would suggest.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 11:36 AM

Jim,
I echo completely Michael's remarks. As a secondary school teacher for 40 years myself from a poor working-class background I can't myself conceive anyone making such disparaging remarks.

I am categorically not denying the ability of anyone to be creative.

HOWEVER I still stand by remarks. Ballads and songs of the English-speaking world of the canon we have been discussing have very little overlap with the tales. Yes they have many characteristics in common and I can think of one or two examples where crossover has occurred (Duncan's Hind Horn for instance, the transference of Isabella into Bruton Town) but these are very few and far between.

I am not avoiding your remarks on bothy ballads. As you well know I'm sure this is a very special case, and I know a lot about it because in my own ancestral home similar conditiones occurred in a smaller area. (My ancestors were ploughmen on a remotish chalk upland. The main reason why bothy ballads occurred and are almost exclusive to the NE is because young men were thrown together in the bothy with little money and little opportunity for other forms of amusement, under quite oppressive conditions. This threw up the bothy ballads which are songs which tell of the conditions and poke fun at the landowners and farmers. We have one bothy ballad on the Wolds where my ancestors ploughed 'Mutton Pie' and we have recorded many variants of it. Jim Eldon, mentioned above somewhere, sings a version and there is a version on the Yorkshire Garland website.

Okay we are coming to a point where we cannot agree, therefore I am offering this challenge. You select say half a dozen songs from the general English-speaking cannon, i.e., songs found in England, Scotland, Ireland, North America, or any 3 of these, and I will do my best to convince you where these songs very likely originated.

Someone also expressed the point why lawyers etc can't be part of the 'people'. Also broadside hacks, Music Hall artistes, why not? Fair arguments. Where do we draw a line? If we go down this road we eventually get back to the old chestnut about horses singing. My original point was simply that the vast majority of what we call folk music was ORIGINALLY produced for commercial reasons.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 12:01 PM

Hmmm I was in school from 1964 and we had songs with pickaniny's in them.
I was given detention for daring to suggest a labour government might be a better option for working people.
We were beaten and had things thrown at us in class.(by the teachers)
In around 1969 the offspring of the shop keeps ,bankers etc who started in the same intake year as I were suddenly moved to a different class group for a year,then we had to do an exam to determine which school we would all be going too.
A lot of us found out about that the week before.
The extra "posh kids" class was there for a reason eh?
Seems it was a prep class for that exam.
I can therefore believe that bad things happen in schools.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 12:05 PM

Steve, I still don't get where you have evidence that supports so dogmatic a stance. Why can't existing songs have been fixed in print for commercial reasons? If such material was orally generated then there would be no previous printed version. I know you want to believe but there's still too much of a leap of faith required.

In support of Jim's comment by the way. I have had similar experiences at school during the 60s. As a secondary school teacher myself I find it unacceptable but it was a fact of life for many in earlier times. But…I had a brilliant English teacher appeared in 1967 who taught us in the 6th form about Marvell, Owen, and poetry in general. At a technical school this was heady stuff and his influence alone offset much of the other type of comment. It was this guy who's called Roger Elkin by the way who got me into writing poetry and subsequently songs. One positive overturns any number of negatives in my experience.
Paul

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 12:12 PM

well I had a Geography teacher,this would be 1966,who used to adress the class,this is Asia,pointing to a map,this is where the wogs live,wogs are wily oriental gentleman.
one day when I was getting a bit bored with his diatribes,I absentmindedly set fire to my atlas in the class,result suspension from the school,meanwhile he continued with his xenphobic imperialist rantings unchecked.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 12:44 PM

Steve,
I am not referring to the plots of the tales and ballads coinciding - I am talking about the use of their language and form.
"The main reason why bothy ballads occurred and are almost exclusive to the NE is because young men were thrown together in the bothy with little money and little opportunity for other forms of amusement, under quite oppressive conditions."
This is EXACTLY a description of life at sea, particularly on the whaling ships whose trips could be anything up to a six month duration, yet our disagreements started on this thread with a direct reference to forbitters - which you dismissed out of hand as products of broadside hacks - on what grounds? Again, I ask, do you believe a Seven Dials broadside hack could and did compose Harry Cox's Van Diemans' Land, or Rounding The Horn?
The Irish farms produced similar songs to those from the bothies because of the similarity of conditions, there are a number of navvies songs from similar situations.
Working people have always felt the need to record their experiences in verse and prose. Walter Pardon's family had a small repertoire of union songs around the re-establishment of Joseph Arch's Agricultural Workers Union by George Edwards in the 1900s.
I believe, based on our own experience, that we would have had far more such songs, providing us with a solid link between the local and national repertoires, had the early collectors not dismissed them out of hand. As it is, what little we do have is more than enough for me.
I see little point in my submitting a list of songs for you to produce composers for, unless you can show that the composers originated the songs - which you have agreed you can't.
I do not dispute that many/even most of our folksongs have appeared on broadsides at one time or another; the pioneering work of Bob Thomson did much to bring that to light back in the sixties, and my friend John Moulden has done a similar job on Irish broadsides. My dispute is that I don't believe they originated there (for all the reasons I have given here and elsewhere) - unless you can provide us with something more than a list of names.
I believe the bulk of our songs came directly from the experiences and the encapsulated the language of the people represented in them.
Of course the folk absorbed written pieces, 'Black Eyed Susan', and 'Caroline and Her Young Sailor', to name a couple (isn't the 'drawing room window in the latter a dead giveaway for that one').
For me, the broadside hacks will never be more than an interesting side-line to the main body of our traditional repertoire, until shown otherwise.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 12:46 PM

Oh yes, bad things can happen at school [as anywhere]. It depends anyhow what you think bad: — boys did get beaten in schools, it was not abnormal at one time. I won't say none of mine ever did - as I have said, I was Head of Upper School, & any boy under my jurisdiction who told a young lady teacher to fuck off, as was not unknown, was liable to have a painful time of it afterwards, & it was the way things were then & I make no apology for being a man of my time. The pupils, in any event, accepted the system in which things operated, & generally knew justice when they saw [& felt] it, and accepted it with good grace; and frankly I think life was better for young lady teachers then that it is now. & yes there were racist teachers who would talk of wogs & pickaninnies - tho, again, not in any school where I ever taught; as with the other phenomenon, it just would not have been tolerated by the Senior Staff; see my story above about the man who was rude to the black boy [the teacher's name was Gardner, btw, and the W.Indian pupil's name was Fitzroy - as Jim remarked some names just stay with you for some reason; this was 50 years ago!]

BUT - & this is really my point - the idea that any teacher should ever deliberately set out, for reasons & agenda of his own, to attempt to restrict the ambitions and aspirations and achievements of his own pupils, when the whole purpose of teaching is surely to broaden one's pupils' horizons and enable them to make the most of what talents and opportunities they might have — well, such destructive negativity, & the motivation for it, are just right outside my comprehension. As I said above, teachers who will do any such thing are shits & wankers, & I do not intend to modify these terms.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 12:52 PM

Sorry, missed a bit
"This is EXACTLY a description of life at sea, particularly on the whaling ships......"
- should continue, and could also cover any remote or not so remote village or hamlet anywhere in England or Scotland before the introduction of the motor car and mass communication.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 01:02 PM

Jim,was not The Bonny Bunch Of Roses, from the pen of a so called broadside hack?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 01:10 PM

"Jim,was not The Bonny Bunch Of Roses, from the pen of a so called broadside hack? "
Was it it may well have been - or was it taken from something already in circulation in the tradition. The fact is that we don't know, and it is extremely misleading to suggest that we do.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 01:28 PM

Talking of 'hack broadside writers', I drove through Pocklington last week. I was gobsmacked to see the printer W & C. Forth were not only still in existence but still printers.Has anyone (Steve?) been in and spoken to them about any possible archives they might possess?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 01:45 PM

Paul,
Yes and there is, but this was a long while ago when members of the family were still connected with the firm. They aren't any more. Some of the family live in Hull. They still have copies of some of the printers' blocks and somewhere I have copies of their apprenticeship indentures.

W&C were William and Charles, the sons of the famous John. John's younger brother, William, was the Hull printer. Their father, William, started out in Bridlington having I think been apprenticed in York c1790. John was apprenticed to his father along with the celebrated engraver Benjamin Fawcett.

Okay, Jim, neither of us can irrefutably prove one way or the other. I know what I know and you know what you know. Pax!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 06:35 PM

Young lady teachers better off in the dark ages of child beating?
I wonder if there are any young lady teachers who contribute to the cat who would care to support that idea.
Our parents didn't bring us up to tell young lady teachers to f off mate
maybe that's just a middle class slur on the under classes to blur the fact that the teachers of the time, were the system of the time.
Good that hind sight allows you to justify hows things were by saying that's how things were.
Good for you that child abuse was accepted by the kids who you had charge of teaching.
Excellent that in those days we all knew our place.
Maybe our society would be a less violent one if so many generations hadn't been brought up by teachers that thought might was right.
Ooops mustn't question sir, might get a beating.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Ernest W.
Date: 15 Nov 09 - 08:28 PM

I've continued to follow the exchanges in this thread with interest, leaning more towards Steve's line of argument. (Incidentally, it's quite amusing to note the number of former school teachers coming out of the woodwork, given the accusation of the original post.)

One thing I would add is that there's no reason why broadside hacks shouldn't be considered part of 'the people': they would have lived a fairly precarious existence themselves, at a distance from the 'serious' literary world. What Jim seems to share with Cecil Sharp's ideology is a desire to dissociate folk music from interaction with the publishing industry of towns/cities, lest it be somehow contaminated. Ironically, this position is similar to traditional 'aristocratic' attitudes to literature, i.e. the thought that a song is cheapened if it is suggested that it may have been written with commercial sale in mind.

While conceding that songs with printed origins were doubtlessly modified by oral transmission (this is particularly conspicuous in the transatlantic mutations of Appalachian songs), it seems equally insulting to rural singers to suggest that they were not aware of/did not pick up material emanating from the towns, given the trading traffic throughout Britain from the 17th C. onwards.