Lyr Req: Altered folk songs

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Ged Fox
Date: 23 Jan 11 - 08:11 AM

Nothing to do with bowdlerising, but fitting the OP in some respects:
the change from the C16th patriotic song "In eighty-eight ere I was born" to the C17th anti-heroic "Sir John Suckling's campaign."

The latter is consistent with the mid-C17th debunking of the high-flown Elizabethan sentiment, cf Suckling's "Why so pale and wan fond lover."

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Ged Fox
Date: 23 Jan 11 - 08:14 AM

Duh - "In eighty eight.." was, presumably early C17, unless it was written by a child - but the argument still holds.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 23 Jan 11 - 11:24 AM

'Marge:
"suppose the wisest thing is to regard the printed broadsides as a snapshot of a song, showing how it was sung at a particular time,"
Ballad scholar David Buchan went as far as to suggest that, within the ballad singing tradition there were no set texts but just plots and a number of commonplaces and conventions.
He proposed that a ballad singer took these and re-composed the song each time he or she sang it.
I don't believe he made his case completely, but it's an inriguing thought.
Jim Carroll'

Well I think it is the case. The New Deserter folksong was altered from Prince Rupert to Prince Albert, and presumably fell out of use when we stopped the practice of flogging deserters. If you wanted to grab an audiences attention - surely you would be writing about stuff that was happening nowadays. History relegates or demands the re-arranging of the form.

If you did a murder ballad - say about the fred West case or the recent Joanna Yeates case - while the relatives still mourn, while the world is still reeling from the shock - then perhaps you would not recreate what an earlier generation did, but take it to another place. A more modern place. who knows?

Ewan MaCcoll tried to do something with his songs about Derek Bentley. maybe even dylan with his Hatties carrol song. Ewan got a good kicking from the newspapers - who accused him of bad taste at the time, but perhaps that indicates he was on the right track. Hanging an innocent man is not in good taste, it leaves a bad taste.

I suppose in Ireland, in the recent troubles they tried to reinvigorate the old finger pointing style of the great rebel ballads. And I think they have had some success.

In conclusion, if you see a young man or woman trying to rewrite the old Vietnam songs to take in Afghanistan and Iraq, I would ask older folksingers to be patient and not accuse them of navel gazing. they may be getting it wrong, but they are wrestling with the form, and i think that puts them on the side of the angels.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Ian Fyvie
Date: 23 Jan 11 - 11:35 AM

There's a book called something like "Bawdy Ballads" which I have 'somewhere' (just looked - can't find it!).
.
Being compiled by Roy Bailey (or someone of equal standing) it is well researched and will probably cover the sorts of variations sought.

Ian Fyvie

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Stringsinger
Date: 23 Jan 11 - 01:35 PM

Natasha, all of them are altered. That's what makes them folk songs.

First printed edition of a song does not mean that's the first way it was sung.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 23 Jan 11 - 06:01 PM

Stringsinger,
Please read the OP before commenting.

Of course the first printed edition of a song does not mean that's the first way it was sung, but when you have studied the relationship between popular song, street literature and oral tradition in minute detail for 40+ years you are allowed to hold the opinion that the vast majority of these first printings were the first manifestations of them. Of course many of them had their first appearance on a stage somewhere. Try and prove otherwise.

Jim,
Apologies for posting as GUEST a few days ago. I'm sure you knew it was me. I did try to own up but my message vanished, like many others.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 06:58 AM

Natasha, you may need to open Mudcat in two or three windows simultaneously to cross-check some of these refererences.

Here's a splendid example of a song evolving into lots of different forms, discussed on Mudcat with a good many useful references: Origins: Shepherd Lad.
The thread includes the sanitised version printed in Baring Gould & Sharp's Folk Songs for Schools and notes that it's 'an insipid departure from Child ballad 112'.

Some related threads are referenced at the top of the Shepherd Lad thread. They don't include a further variation of the song, which uses the same tune and a similar chorus, but is now about whaling: The Eclipse. This gave rise in its turn to an American version which I can't recall - I will try to find it.

Valmai (Lewes)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 07:08 AM

Here's another thread discussing the mutation of the English sea-song Spanish Ladies into the whaling song Talcahuano Girls. The thread mentions about ten versions from Nelson's day and a Newfoundland version as well, but doesn't quote it in full.

Valmai

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 07:12 AM

I know from personal experience that a Hamish Imlac (not ancient, but tomorrow's folk) song, The Orange Juice Song*, was widely adapted to fit into a Norn' Ireland context back in the 60/70s.

It was written by Carl Macdougall. Imlach's contribution was to make it into a drunken macho anthem complete with ape grunts, in line with what a lot of male revival singers and groups of the time were doing (most famously the Clancy Brothers). There wasn't much change in the text (I think he left a verse or two out) but a substantial change in meaning.

"The Wild Rover" got an even more drastic transformation with even less textual change. Moralistic temperance song to drinking anthem.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 07:15 AM

Here the Child ballad The Cruel Mother becomes the playground song Weela Waila.

As I learned it in my primary school days the cruel mother was 'Old Mother Lee'. If she was an 'old mother' she might have been a baby farmer
rather than the actual mother of the child.

Valmai

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 07:45 AM

I don't like to picture hamish Imlach as a grunting ape. i never knew the guy, but i thought he was one of the neatest guitar pickers i ever saw. Somewhere in the chubby guy with a devil may care demeanour lurked someone who cared deeply about his guitar playing. You don't get that good by not caring.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 07:45 AM

This is a smashing example of the oral tradition improving a rather stuffy and clumsy original: Shepherd of the Downs, now sung by the Copper Family of Sussex, can be traced back to 'The Tea-Table Miscellany' published in Edinburgh in 1723, and a broadside version from between 1741 and 1762.

Valmai

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 07:53 AM

The Copper family of Sussex also sing a song called Christmas Song or The Trees Are All Bare.
The discussion in that thread brings up the original, 'Winter', by Thomas Brerewood, published 1783, and again the version which has been weathered by the tradition is better, to modern ears at least. 'Peasant inactive' sounds like a grammatical term.

The Sussex source singer George Townsend also had a version of this song. It is on the CD 'Come Hand To Me The Glass'. I can lend you a copy, Natasha.

Valmai

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: GUEST, Tom Bliss
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 07:56 AM

Natasha, perhaps I can add a thought which might be useful in terms of setting some context for the concept of alterations to traditional songs (something I've done and do a lot - I'm currently writing a whole musical made entirely of trad songs re-written, in fact).

There is a theory which views the tradition as an essentially destructive system, albeit one heavily influenced by periodic acts of reconstruction.

We use the analogy of a river, and of course they do more than flow - they also erode.

People mishear and forget words, flatten out tunes, muddle one song up with another - and generally degrade the original writer's intention - and you can see this clearly when you listen to source recordings, or in fact visit a club and listen to people singing songs you know.

I think most people who ferret about in the archives looking for forgotten songs to present to new audiences today will find (as I'm doing right now as it happens) that a certain amount of editing, restoration, reconstruction, reinvention etc is necessary if the song going to stand up against the rest of the repertoire - and I personally think that there have always been people who did this rebuilding work (it may be one of the main causes of variants in fact).

Some people were and are happy to present a song exactly as found/heard - either because its condition (even if parlous) is part of the story, or because they're just not comfortable with changing things - but most of us will 'correct' any obvious 'errors' that seem to have crept in.

I know you're interested in deliberate alteration for political (small 'p') reasons, but it's worth bearing in mind that the requirement for alteration often comes first - just as one would need to replace the missing leg on an old table and give it a polish before you could sell it as an antique.

And of course when making repairs to a song, one effectively takes on at least the mantle of a songwriter - and in so doing are liable to introduce your own personal value system into the work, possible unconsciously.

Tom (in Leeds, as it happens)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Brian Peters
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 08:13 AM

All very true, but I think we might be losing sight of the things the OP was looking for in the first place, namely:

• Change of subject
• Change of meaning
• Removal of sexual content/double entendre
• Removal of bawdy language
• Removal of political content

'The Wild Rover' has changed from a temperance song to a drinking song without substantial change in the lyric (the song remains consistent in that the subject is going to "play the wild rover no more" in the modern popular version); it's more the manner in which it's usually sung that's given it a different slant.

'Weela Weila' is a vulgarized, 'street' version of the older ballad, but I'm not sure if the changes (e.g. from 'after-life' to 'here-and-now' punishment) really fit with the above criteria, either.

The continuing debate about the precise origins of particular folk songs ('commercial' versus 'bucolic') is less relevant to this discussion than the changes that occurred in those songs during their evolution through various broadside and oral versions, and whether these involved simply 'folk process' or deliberate rewriting.

I must mention again one of my favourite alterations, in the version of Child 68 ('Young Hunting') sung by Frank Proffitt of North Carolina, in which the change of sex from maidservant to manservant allows a sexual element to emerge which is absent in all other known versions. There was also a back story involving necrophilia - but no-one seems to know where these shocking details were added - somewhere in FP's family?

I've already mentioned Child 2 as an example of the loss of sexual and supernatural content over time; similarly, the oldest version (17th C broadside) of Child 1 (Riddles...) includes the lyric "she went to bed to this young knight", whereas by the time the ballad appeared in Gilbert's Christmas Carols 150 years later the formulation had changed to the innocent: "she was resolved to wed with this young knight".

Of course there were many poetic interventions in ballads going right back to Percy - as Steve said - but I'm not sure how many of those involved a change of meaning or removal of sexual content, as opposed to what the culprits believed to be 'improvements'.

Most of A. L. Lloyd's alterations (Guest Natasha, you really should look at the Bertsongs? thread!) seem to have been 'improvements' as well, although he did introduce the supernatural into 'Reynardine', and a subtle but politically expedient change of social status to 'The Handweaver and the Factory Maid'.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Brian Peters
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 08:14 AM

Sorry Tom, cross-posted. You clearly haven't lost sight of the OP's question.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: GUEST, Tom Bliss
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 08:34 AM

Hi Brian - yes, I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes quite major changes are made just to make the song 'good' rather than necessarily to make it 'safe' - but of course the changer's own views can often mean that 'good' is in fact 'safe.' T

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Steve Lane
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 02:47 PM

One thing comes to mind is to review childrens' song books and see how many contain versions of traditional songs.

A specific example comes to mind when I was singing 'The Shearing's Not for You' (per Stephen Sedley's Seeds of Love) and my mother was disgusted as in her Glaswegian school she had learned it as 'Will ye gang to Kelvin Grove my Bonnie laddio' and firmly believed that folkies were just making up rude words to nice songs.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 11:26 PM

Steve: Did you notice that Stephen Sedley mentions this rewrite by one Thomas Lyle in his note on "The Shearing..." in Seeds Of Love, adding that the tune is generally therefore known as Kelvingrove.

~M~

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Taconicus
Date: 29 Jan 11 - 09:39 AM

A hundred years from now, musicologists and folklorists will probably credit as one of the biggest reasons for folk song lyrics having been changed as, "the failure of the old Mudcat Internet forum to include an edit feature that would have let posters correct their posts of folk song lyrics once they realized they'd made a mistake in the posting."

;-)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 29 Jan 11 - 11:27 AM

How about that fine old song to the tune of the Sailor's Hornpipe, 'Do Your Balls Hang Low' being reduced to 'Do Your Ears Hang Low' in scouting circles? It's certainly an example of a song being cleaned up for polite consumption.

Valmai

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Altered folk songs
From: Barbara
Date: 29 Jan 11 - 01:35 PM

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