Origins: Pretty Saro

Subject: RE: Info on Pretty Saro?
From: John Minear
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 06:20 AM

Jean, thanks so much for your reflections and answers. I guess we can assume that in fact it was you who introduced the "Ritchie version" of "Pretty Saro" into the folk revival. It certainly is a beautiful tune. I tried again last night to see if I could sound out the tune that Sharp collected from Lizzie Gibson from Crozet, VA, which is just a few miles from where I live. It is a beautiful tune as well and quite complicated, at least for me, and it is not the same as yours, in my judgement. I wonder if it was this tune that Elizabeth and Hally sang? Thanks again for your help, Jean.

Does anybody else know about Gladys Jamison, or Berea in the 1920s, and where she might have found this particular version. I've not come across it in any of the other early collections from Kentucky that I know about.

Also, did Guy Carawan pick up his version from Jean and add a few verses from Sharp's collection, or did he learn it somewhere else?
Thanks. T.O.M.

Subject: RE: Info on Pretty Saro?
From: GUEST,here's hoping
Date: 21 Feb 09 - 03:51 PM

Does anyone know where "Pretty Saro" first came from, and what year it was orginally made?

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 02:49 AM

Mike Lydiat

Lesley - I noticed your comment about ownership of the Contemplator Carolan site and bemoaning the fact that you cannot find good arrangements with harmonies etc. I spent 2 years on my Carolan Project doing just that work - many / most of the single top line melodies I got (with thanks) from your site. I now have full arrangements of all 213 Carolan tunes for guitar in various open tunings on my own web site:
http://www.docsworkshop.co.uk

Take a look and see if they fill the gap.

Mike

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: GUEST,Tannywheeler
Date: 17 May 10 - 10:40 PM

Sorry, T.O.M. Been gone a while. You've been given good info about Elizabeth (& Anne) formerly-Lomax. Elizabeth has always been warm & kind & very smart. Had quite a writing career, I think. This song goes back to before my 4th b'day, so I don't know where my mother(Hally) got her version, but the one I remember I've always associated with Jean Ritchie. Another warm, sweet lady. Never doubt what she says. Even IF she considered making stuff up(lying) George, the great & good, wouldn't let her. Tw

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 06:32 PM

On the off chance anyone responds, why do you think that the year 1849 is inaccurate? it was a peak year of Irish immigration, and the only evidence that it was 1749 is from song collector's anecdotes and theorizing. Those song collectors, English and American, held the anti-catholic sentiment of the time and so making it 1749 would imply that the song is English or "scots" (protestant) Irish. They would also have liked for their song to be "old" by their standards. Also, you can find the word "freeholder" on contemporary legal documents in Ireland. I think it's a famine-era ballad related to the older "Bunclody" from County Wicklow. Here is a link to an article about County Wicklow during the famine:

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/braypeople/news/wicklows-suffering-during-famine-times-37953727.html

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: Noreen
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 07:09 AM

Why County Wicklow, GUEST? Bunclody is in County Wexford.

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: Noreen
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 07:10 AM

Strangely, I was thinking of singing Bunclody at the Mudcat Zoom Sing on Monday. Maybe I'll sing it next week.

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 01:46 PM

What about the tune? It's modally very unusual - dorian/mixolydian/ionian pentatonic ("sol-pentatonic" in Kodaly's terminology), with both the third and seventh missing - maybe the only Anglo-American song like that.

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 04:36 PM

Sorry, I saw an earlier post about it being from County Wicklow and mixed the two up. Nonetheless, I don't think Pretty Saro is all that old (comparatively), and I can't find evidence of a version collected in England or even Ireland that is clearly the same song.

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: GUEST,Ocarina Owl
Date: 20 Aug 20 - 08:26 AM

Hey everyone,

I loved reading up on the history of Pretty Saro. It's such a beautiful tune. Really brings comfort in my life right now. Here is a cover I made on voice, ocarina and piano. I hope you enjoy!

Pretty Saro

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: leeneia
Date: 20 Aug 20 - 11:10 AM

Thanks, Ocarina Owl. I listened to your video, and I like it. My favorite part is the ocarina. I didn't know it could be so lyrical.
==============
abcnotation.com has four tunes for Pretty Saro, and of them all I like the third one best. It is what Ocarina Owl is playing. For whatever reason, it is in the key of B-flat, with the highest note being the G above the staff. Too high for the average singer, I think.

I believe I'll add it to my soprano recorder book.

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: leeneia
Date: 21 Aug 20 - 10:11 AM

I was waiting for someone else to post, but nobody has, so here I am again. I have two points to make about this song.

1. If you don't watch out, the narrator begins to sound creepy. I'm not going to write a whole essay on this, but when the verses go on and on, and he starts singing about how she wanted a man with land instead of him, it gets neurotic. It begins to change from a song about a man in love to a song about a man with an obsession. Don't let it.

2. The third tune that I just described is that rare thing, a purely modal tune. It is Mixolydian, using the fifth, rather than the tonic as its home tone. It's in the key of B-flat, but it begins on F, ends on F and has a prominent (both high and long) F in the middle. There's a G which is higher, but it's only an eighth note in a pick-up, so it doesn't count.

When I encounter a "modal" tune nowadays, it tends to start modal and then end on the tonic, to make a hybrid.

I don't know why abcnotation gives a version that is so high, but it's nice for recorder and flute - and perhaps for Vienna choirboy.
If you transpose it to a new key, it will still be Mixolydian modal.

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Aug 20 - 10:38 AM

Meanwhile, any relation to Saro Jane, about whom there's nothing to do but to sit down and sing?

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: Jack Campin
Date: 21 Aug 20 - 11:49 AM

The tune is very much stranger than leeneia says. It isn't mixolydian - the third and seventh are both gapped out. Major/mixolydian/dorian pentatonic, which is fantastically rare in tunes from western Europe.

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Aug 20 - 02:00 PM

Sounds like a rabbit disease crossed with a harecordion.

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: leeneia
Date: 21 Aug 20 - 08:17 PM

I do wonder if there was a place in the ancient world called Mixolydia.

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Aug 20 - 05:27 AM

"Mixo-" in ancient Greek means English "mixed".

I don't think anybody knows why the Greek theorists labelled their highest mode as "half Lydian". The mediaeval meaning was different anyway.

As I used it, the word was in the scheme for representing gapped modes I got from Campbell and Collinson (though they didn't invent it). The implication for the tune leeneia referred to is that despite being notated with tonal centre F and a key signature of two flats, there's no major third (the A might as well be flat) and no mixolydian seventh (the E might as well be natural), which together makes it unharmonizable in any conventional triadic chord pattern - I and V are both incomplete. There is an English morris dance tune with the same structure, but other than that the nearest parallel song I could find was from Mongolia. Kodaly seems to imply there are other examples from the Uralic-speaking peoples of the Volga but doesn't actually quote one in anything I've read.

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: GUEST,AFSC (Gail Needleman)
Date: 28 Apr 21 - 07:10 PM

Just wanted to follow up regarding the so/sol pentatonic tone set: it is not that rare in American folk song. We have 21 songs using that scale on our American Folk Song Collection website (http://kodaly.hnu.edu) and more in the pipeline.
Pentatonic tunes in general don't necessarily lend themselves to standard tonic/dominant harmonizations, but like modal tunes, they have their own underlying structures that make harmonization possible, though these may well be more intuitive for a group of singers (as Jean notes) than on chord-based instruments.
Sol-based tunes (mixolydian family) often imply what might be called the "subdominant as dominant," that is, a basic I - IV pattern, going all the way back to Mode 8 of the medieval system ("Hypomixolydian") which has the fourth scale degree as the "dominant" or reciting tone.

Subject: RE: Origins: Pretty Saro
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Apr 21 - 02:29 AM

GUEST AFC , that is the reason the 5 string banjo using double c or dgcd tuning where melody and drones are used is appropriate, the same idea as dadgad guitar o orkney guitar tuning dgdgcd