Origins: Two Child Ballads from North America

Subject: RE: Origins: Two Child Ballads from North America
From: Richie
Date: 05 Jul 15 - 05:58 PM

Here's the second ballad.

There are also only two North American versions of 87. Prince Robert
and both are from what I believe are unreliable sources. If you run into ballads collected by them, caveat emptor! They are Carey Woofter and Patrick Gainer, both were student collectors at West Virginia University around 1924.

From Folk-Songs of the Southern United States, by Josiah Combs, 1925; edited Wilgus 1967. According to Wilgus, "Harry Saunders" was contributed by F. C. Gainer; Tanner, Gilmer county, West Virginia. Wilgus adds probably contributed by Carey Woofter in 1924. This "source" was certainly supplied by Patrick Gainer, his grandson.

Fifty years later in Patrick Gainer's book Folk Songs from the West Virginia Hills, pp. 61-62 the ballad is from the singing of a Mrs. Nan Wilson of Nicholas County, West Virginia. The only previously reported version, in Combs, was from the singing of F. C. Gainer (p. 204), who was Francis C. Gainer, the grandfather of Patrick Gainer. Patrick certainly knew of the other version and changed his only slightly. Not only did Gainer never say his grandfather knew the ballad, he attributed his version Nan Wilson, who, as far as I can tell, is a fictitious person.

What do you think? Is this an obvious forgery?

Richie

Subject: Origins: Two Child Ballads from North America
From: Richie
Date: 05 Jul 15 - 05:34 PM

Hi,

I wanted to bring up some of my findings here on North American versions of two Child Ballads, Child 87: Prince Robert and Child 88: Young Johnstone.

I'd appreciate any comments. Both involve forgeries and I'd like to get your assessment.

I'll start with Child 88: Young Johnstone which is found with music in the DT. Only two versions have been collected in North America both by Mackenzie in the early 1900s. I have had my doubts about Mackenzie in the past but I suspected that the was just supplying printed version to his informants to "jog their memories." This was something Barry also did at the time. Giving printed texts and receiving back hand-written versions is suspicious in itself.

Here's what happened: Before 1919 (Quest of the Ballad) Mackenzie tries to get a version of Young Johnson from a man named, John Thomas Matheson. Mackenzie couldn't get it from him- instead he got a school girl to copy it down. Then, in 1928, he prints the same exact version from John Henderson!!! Henderson is apparently 100 years old and can barely give him one verse of another ballad!!!

What?!

There is no mention of the previous informant, John Thomas Matheson, in Mackenzie's 1928 Ballads and songs from Nova Scotia.

To read for yourself google book search "Young Johnson, Mackenzie, Ballad". Here's the text from Quest, 1919 before the ballad:

The Quest of the Ballad by William Roy Mackenzie:

"My discussion of the Nova Scotian versions of the old English and Scottish ballads is beginning to exhibit signs of plethora, but it must be still further expanded to include a very interesting version of "Young Johnson." This is not, so far as I can discover, one of the ballads that were widely current in the good old singing days, but it used to be sung by a favored few, and one of these few was John Thomas Matheson. John Thomas himself made this incautious admission to me one afternoon, and for many a day after he most bitterly regretted his indiscretion. He had, to be sure, sung ballads in the early days of his thoughtless youth, but even then he had been interested in his function of entertainer rather than in the intrinsic merit of his songs, and the intervening years which knew not the ballads had pretty thoroughly crowded out the recollection of them from his mind.

Furthermore, John Thomas was a procrastinator, not of the domestic garden variety, but of a rare and splendid orchid-like species hard to find even in this world of delays. He was, to speak allegorically, procrastination itself personified and incarnate. When I called on him I executed the final steps of my journey over a narrow, swaying board that had been placed to connect the framework for the floor of a porch which he had begun six years before, and which he was still daily planning to complete. And I have known him, after a week of comparative leisure, to light his lantern at eleven o'clock on Saturday night and proceed to the urgent business of shingling his barn, rejoicing in the inward assurance that the stroke of twelve would usher in the holy Sabbath, when we must neither work nor play.

Thus it may be seen that I had made no appreciable progress towards the capture of "Young Johnson" when I extorted from John Thomas the admission that he might be able to think up a few verses if he were given his time. With most singers this is the formal prelude to an almost immediate rendition of the ballad in question, but, coming from John Thomas, it had no more significance than a tale told by an idiot. The sight of a palpable and business-like pad of writing-paper filled him with a vague but unendurable alarm, and I might have had to resign the ballad definitely if I had not chanced by luck to hit upon the only device that would, in all probability, ever have proved successful.

A little distance up the road from John Thomas's unfinished home and imperfectly shingled barn lived a school girl who had found special favor in the sight of the old man, and she cheerfully and confidently guaranteed to procure the ballad for me if I would leave the whole matter of negotiations to her. Consequently, when John Thomas looked hopefully across the road one morning for his usual greeting from his young friend he was met with a request for a song named "Young Johnson," and the following morning, when he was reassuring himself that he had cunningly disposed of the whole matter, he was asked to name the hour after school at which he could most conveniently repeat the song. Day in and day out my accomplice reminded him of the song as Desdemona reminded Othello of the suit of Michael Cassio, and partly through despair at the prospect of an endless persecution and partly through a kindly desire to win approbation from the child whom he delighted to honor, he finally repeated the following version, which was triumphantly copied out and delivered to me by my ally: [ ballad text follows]

So what do you think? Two informants? Later (p. 60) in Ballads and Songs Mackenzie says this about the informant: The first of these was given to me by John Henderson of Tatamagouch, Colchester County, a veteran who had sung this song and many others in his youth, but who when he tried to go beyond the first verse of "Andrew Lammie" for me, was estopped by the weariness and the mere oblivion of a hundred years.

Is Henderson 100 years old? What?

Richie