New Book: Folk Song in England

Subject: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 19 Aug 17 - 05:02 AM

On Thursday I attended the British Library launch for the new book 'Folk Song in England', by Steve Roud and Julia Bishop, which has just been published by Faber. It runs to 764 pages, and is the nearest thing we're ever likely to get to a definitive study. I must confess I've nowhere near finished it yet, but I dipped in to several sections on the train back to Stockport, and it's certainly fascinating and well-researched, and should be of interest to a lot of people on here. In the light of some fairly familiar arguments that have just resurfaced on the current 'EFDSS' thread, I should mention that the introductory chapter, 'Is there such a thing as folk song, anyway?' includes a pretty firm endorsement of our old friend, the 1954 definition. And that comes from a scholar who has looked at all the evidence, not just taken Cecil Sharp's word for it.

I don't think the choice of title is an accident. What we have here is solid research that supersedes the romantic fantasies of Bert Lloyd - although to be fair, Bert's book does get a fair hearing. I also have to say that the 'Fakesong' school gets pretty short shrift. You should read this!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Aug 17 - 10:35 AM

A must-read and a great companion to "The New Penguin Book of English Folksongs." Or any other!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: JHW
Date: 19 Aug 17 - 04:40 PM

Must have one. Faber shop

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Aug 17 - 07:02 PM

Oh, gee. Another book I can't do without. Good thing I just got a huge bookcase for my birthday this week. I got my copy at amazon.mudcat.org for $29.95 U.S. U.S. release date isn't until Sept 5, but they gave me a Kindle advance copy of the first chapter or so.
Thanks for the tip, Brian.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 04:28 AM

Introductions read. Very accessible from the man who knows most what it's all about. More anon. Brilliant so far!!!!!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 07:57 AM

Just ordered min from The Book Depository at a pretty good discount price - and post free (important for books of this size)
Thought I'd pass that on
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 08:25 AM

That should be "mine" not "min" - who was, of course, a character in The Goon Show!
Have I missed something - are there any of the Hammond Gardner collections available yet?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 08:38 AM

Jim, all of Purslow's selections from Hammond & Gardiner are now available. 'Marrow Bones' and 'The Wanton Seed' came out some time ago, and the final two volumes have just been republished as
Southern Harvest, with a lot of additional information thanks to Steve Gardham.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 08:57 AM

Thanks Brian
Damn - just too late for my birthday
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Elmore
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 03:39 PM

Was going to order it on Kindle, but changed my mind. I may want it for reference and Kindle wouldn't be useful in that case. Thanks to Brian for making us aware of this book which sounds both interesting and useful.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Anglo
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 12:04 AM

Patiently waiting for the US release (pre-ordered). Maybe you'll have your copy with you at TradMad, Brian. In any event, I look forward to seeing you there - there wouldn't be time to read it, anyway !

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 01:57 AM

Okay ! Spill the beans!

Bert Lloyd proved wrong! Shock horror!

Do you ever feel like your part of the Tooting Popular Front?

Composite 4 Subsection 3a! I move!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 09:41 AM

Hi Anglo: I would have brought my copy to the US for reading material on the plane, but it was too big to fit in my hand luggage. Seriously.

Al, you'll just have to read it to find out. But I can safely say that the notion folk songs were composed by disconsolate ploughboys who sang their newly-minted laments for lost love to their mates in the pub, who then proceeded to spread them through the countryside, is one casualty of Steve Roud's evidence-based approach. Perhaps when I've read it all I'll attempt a precis on here.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 10:19 AM

Have just started reading the book. It certainly looks impressive. One thing that I note, though, is that there is no discography. Some readers, I suspect, who read names such as Harry Cox, Sam Larner or Walter Pardon and don't know that these great artists can be heard on CDs, would have been helped with some listings. But , at 764 fact-filled pages, I suppose that there just wasn't room!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 04:20 PM

folksingers needed - only well adjusted ploughboys need apply

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 05:29 PM

Only just saw this thread, though I was at the launch and am now about a third of the way through the book. I wish Brian luck in trying to precis it: there's so much information of all kinds and I'm not yet perceiving a clear overview.

One point that Steve made at the launch is that the essential difference between his book and Bert's is that his is based on firm evidence. The chapters that I have read so far mostly set out the evidence rather than draw conclusions, but maybe those come later.

One point that Steve doesn't make explicitly in what I've read so far, though perhaps later, is that the songs that were being sung at any given time were of various ages but a lot of them fairly recent, at least in their current forms. Of all the songs that are being sung at date X, by a later date Y some will have fallen by the wayside and a some new ones will have entered circulation. Some have lasted for several centuries, but not really very many.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 04:19 AM

Oh wow, can I wait till Christmas? My daughters never know what to get me ....

Thanks for the heads-up, Brian.

Marje

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 08:23 AM

I wish they wouldn't keep repeating false info in books on English folk music.
For example, William Bolton was never a shantyman ( he was in the Royal Navy not the merchant navy ).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 09:05 AM

Mike, re discography
I can't imagine anyone buying FSE who hasn't already got a copy of New Penguin which has a perfectly good discography.

Despite the length of this weighty tome in almost every chapter Steve goes to great pains to stress that evidence is very thin for previous centuries as you would expect with a subject that deals with the history of the common people. However he has obviously searched diligently for what evidence does exist and personally I can't see this amount of evidence ever being greatly added to or contradicted.

The evidence is clearly stated and leaves us largely to draw our own conclusions.

Re Bert Lloyd, I'm absolutely certain Steve wasn't motivated to write his book by Bert's fairy tales. There can't be many people left on the scene who don't take anything Bert wrote with a pinch of salt. This is not Bert bashing time. He was wonderfully gifted and left us a wealth of well-crafted material.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Harry
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 03:19 AM

I'm about a third of the way through and, although I don't agree with everything here, you can't fault the research and scholarship.

What can be faulted is Faber giving us this paperback masquerading as a hardback. No wonder it's so cheap to buy; every corner has been cut in its production.

This is a serious contribution to knowledge and should be published as a proper hardback book: sewn sections; acid-free paper; and properly bound.

I fear it will fall apart if used frequently.

Harry

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,CJ
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 04:07 AM

My copy was £25 and certainly feels like a hard back.

I can't imagine criticising a publisher for putting out such a well presented book on a niche subject. How many of these will actually be sold? Into four figures, perhaps, if they are lucky.

Tell you what, Harry, you should contact Faber and tell them you'd like to do a "proper hardback" edition. See how many thousands upon thousands you'll lose.

I'm Too early in the reading to comment on the writing other than to say, all good so far.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 04:18 AM

"This is not Bert bashing time."
Then why do it Steve - whatever Bert's motives for working the way he did, I'm sure he didn't set out to write "fairy tales"
I only got 'Folk Song in England' when we returned home on Monday, so I haven't had time to start it yet, but I did look up some of the subjects I am familiar with - I was rather disturbed to read the inaccurate speculation on MacColl's name change and the tiresome revival gossip about his Scots 'reinvention'.
I was also disappointed to see no reference to 'The Song Carriers' surely the first and best intelligent attempt to discuss the British singing tradition intelligently - 14 half-hour programmes made in 1965 attempting to examine the singing styles of these islands seems a bit of an oversight to me - but that's me!
It seems to me that, while the serious side of the revival made a number of mistakes in how they presented the music they thought important enough to devote their lives to, their work is often severely misjudged because of the back-biting and petty rivalries that were part of the early revival.
This may be prejudging a book I have not yet read - we'll see!
Our own failure to get Walter Pardon's interviews out to a larger audience was underlined when I saw the only reference to him being his name on a list of other source singers that caught the wider attention of the folk scene.
One of the greatest holes in our knowledge of folk song is a total failure to ask our informants (in depth) what they thought about their songs
Walter had a great deal to say about what was and was not a folk song - and why - often in detail.
It's often struck me that discussing folk song without taking the view of our source singers into consideration is somewhat like putting a patient onto the operating table without asking them what's wrong with him/her
It's when I see people like Sharp and MacColl and Lloyd being pilloried for not getting it right first time around that I realise that folk song scholarship is still in its infancy as a serious art form study - pioneers make mistakes and their work needs to be regarded,font color=red>dispassionately and in full in context of their time and what they were setting out to achieve.
As it is, it is a virtual minefield to attempt to discuss MacColl (beyond the "Jimmy Miller - 'finger-in-ear stage), and as for "what is a folk song?".... !!!!
Unbelievable on a forum purporting to be devoted to folk song!
Can't wait to see how the authors have dealt with 'the broadside origin of folk song'
Jim Carroll
I wonder if anybody can throw any light on the reference to MacColl's name change to 'James Henry' as stated in F S in England?
I know his mother's name was 'Hendry' but I've never come across it and writings.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 06:51 AM

This may be prejudging a book I have not yet read - we'll see.
Do you think it possible that your prejudiced comments might carry more weight if you had waited until after you had read it before making them?
Would you consider that people reading this might be of the opinion that you come to come to the subject of English Folk Song with pre-formed, blinkered views rather than approaching it with an open mind?
Those of us who have had the opportunity of working extensively with Steve Roud are in awe of his extensive knowledge of the English tradition which he seems to have at his finger tips. He is also open minded and fair in his discussions and willing to give credence to the experience and opinions of others. He avoids speculation and bases his claiams only when he has well-researched backing for his statements.

I can think of no better qualified person to write a book on this subject. However, I will not venture an opinion on something that I have not read.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 07:14 AM

"Do you think it possible that your prejudiced comments might carry more weight if you had waited until after you had read it before making them?"
No - I most certainly hope not
I read in full all the subjects I mentioned and found some of them inaccurate
My doing so was prompted by a comment earlier which I responded to
Yes - Of course I do come to English Folk Song with preformed views - fifty years worth of research and collecting and involvement as a singer.
I have no argument with Steve - I am grateful for his work in numbering many of our own collection - his numbering system has simplified our own work enormously.
I have far too much respect for him to sychophantically accepting everything he has to say withoutt comment when I disagree with it - I believe him to be a far better individual than to expect that of anybody
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 09:15 AM

i suppose Jim's bound to look up the bits that interest him. its a human thing , we all do that.

and i guess if we find stuff that doesn't gel with our knowledge...we're bound to state our misgivings.

the important thing is that we maintain respect for each other, and not call each other predjudiced.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 11:48 AM

quite a lot of my friends call themselves shantymen and they have never been aboard any ship - royal navy, merchant navy, isle of wight ferry, nothing....

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Wm
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 11:54 AM

I really look forward to reading this. Going to go order my copy . . .

Our own failure to get Walter Pardon's interviews out to a larger audience was underlined when I saw the only reference to him being his name on a list of other source singers that caught the wider attention of the folk scene.

Walter had a great deal to say about what was and was not a folk song - and why - often in detail.

Jim, are these available anywhere?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 12:51 PM

The cheapest that I found it on offer was via Amazon UK £13.20
+ £2.80 UK delivery from BOOKS etc https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/0571309712/ref=tmm_hrd_new_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=new&qid=&sr=

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Elmore
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 02:45 PM

Planned to buy this book, but Jim threw cold water on my enthusiasm. I may buy it anyway.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 03:23 PM

"Jim, are these available anywhere?"
Some of it is deposited in The British Library and has been since the 1980s, but they've never got around to putting it up on line
We live in hope!
If we can find a home for our Singers Workshop archive (a lot of it) our own collection will go with it
I've quoted some of it oftwn enough on Muccat
We contributed an article on Walter entitled 'A Simple Countryman!" (note the exclamation) to a Festschrift in honour of our friend, the late Tom Munnelly
If anybody would like a copy e-mail me - I'm sure Joe Offer will pass on our address to non-members
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Harry
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 04:07 PM

GuestCJ,

Take hold of your copy of "Folksong in England" in two hands and open the book - BUT, not too far. You should find the spine opens up and you have a hollow. Look down the hollow and you will see a thin layer of white glue. This is all that is holding the pages of your book together.

You might want to get a paperback and compare the two. There is more to a hardback book than the stiffness of the boards.

Has anyone ever bought a Victorian gutta percha- or caoutchouc-bound book?

Now, modern glues are very good and much better than their Victorian equivalents, but, before long, if you fully open your new book more than a few times, and certainly if you open it flat on a desk, the spine will break and the pages will start to fall out. This will not happen with a properly bound book.

How do I know this? I've been selling out-of-print books for 35 years and bookbinding for almost 30.

It could be argued (although I wouldn't) that this kind of cheap book production is fine for popular, ephemeral fiction when most books are read once or twice then consigned to the shelf before being donated to the local charity shop.

But a real book, a proper book, is a way of preserving knowledge not a disposable commodity. They should be made to last.

Well done to Steve Roud for getting it published; I know it isn't easy! I just wish one of the university presses had recognised its importance to the corpus.

Best wishes CJ,

Harry

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 06:08 PM

you can get it for ten quid on kindle, no delivery cost and no worries about it falling to bits.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 06:09 PM

I want one.

What would be VERY valuable however would be yes - a DISCOGRAPHY.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Harry
Date: 31 Aug 17 - 02:32 AM

Big Al,

A few worries about being able to read it though when you wake to find Bezos has deleted it from your machine while you weren't looking; or your battery is flat.

A real book can be yours forever, until you lend it to your best friend.

Harry

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 31 Aug 17 - 05:14 AM

if you hold the on/off switch for a minute, the kindle automatically reloads with all your stuff.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Harry
Date: 31 Aug 17 - 06:11 AM

Not if Amazon choose to delete your books, as they did with two of George Orwell's in 2009(?).

Amazon will always have control of your library stored on Kindle and can, essentially, delete anything they choose without notice.

At least they'd have to get a warrant to enter my library and take my books.

Anyway, thread drift . . . . my final words: the 'hardback' produced by Faber is crap; the book written by Roud is bloody marvellous. My opinion and I'm keeping it.

Harry

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 31 Aug 17 - 06:41 AM

" a DISCOGRAPHY."
One of the most useful books I have for our researches is the fairly rare ' Irish Emigration Ballads and Songs' by Robert L Wight; absolutely indispensable if you are interested in the subject, but with probably the worst index of any serious book I have ever encountered
When I inherited my copy from the late Tom Munnelly, in desperation, I set about indexing it for my own use.
It should not be beyond the realms of possibility to share the task with friends and create a usable discography.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 31 Aug 17 - 06:47 AM

also you can make the writing very big so you don't need reading glasses.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 31 Aug 17 - 07:28 AM

"Re Bert Lloyd, I'm absolutely certain Steve wasn't motivated to write his book by Bert's fairy tales. There can't be many people left on the scene who don't take anything Bert wrote with a pinch of salt. This is not Bert bashing time. He was wonderfully gifted and left us a wealth of well-crafted material."

On that note, I do think it's a shame that it has the identical title as Bert Lloyd's book. I've no doubt that Steve wasn't motivated to write his book by Bert's book – to write a big book like that, your prime motivation will be overwhelming love for your subject – but giving it the same title will inevitably make it seem like it is 'Bert bashing'.

It's been many years since I read Bert's Folk Song in England, but I don't remember it being as naive as some as the adumbrations/caricatures described in this thread. I remember a strain of romanticism, sometimes a quite unpalatable one (when it came to dealings with women and sex, in particular). But for the most part I remember it being an inspirational, magical, poetical book. I enjoyed Bert's book for very similar reasons that I enjoyed Ciaron Carson's 'Last Night Fun'.

More importantly, I don't remember the speculative parts of it being presented as anything other than speculation. Perhaps this is a false memory: perhaps if I were to re-read it now I would indeed find that Bert Lloyd presents it all as unequivocal FACT and incontrovertible scholarship. But I doubt it; it wasn't that sort of book. I think criticisms of Bert Lloyd's writing are often unfair, because they seem to be criticising it for what is is NOT, rather than what it IS.

I'm looking forward to reading the Roud book - I've read about 20 pages – but I'm expecting it to be satisfying in a very different way.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 31 Aug 17 - 07:33 AM

A part of me wants to submit a book proposal to Faber for a new book called 'Folk Song in England'

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 31 Aug 17 - 09:04 PM

Faber have been publishing books with wonderful content, terrific design, typesetting and printing, first-rate paper, and shitty glue holding it all together since the 1960s. The second-hand market is littered with Fabers falling apart.

The only publisher I know of who beat them at that combination was Allen and Unwin - theirs were usually splitting apart within a year, try to find a copy of Arthur Waley's "170 Chinese Poems" in one piece.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 01 Sep 17 - 04:28 PM

"On that note, I do think it's a shame that it has the identical title as Bert Lloyd's book. I've no doubt that Steve wasn't motivated to write his book by Bert's book – to write a big book like that, your prime motivation will be overwhelming love for your subject – but giving it the same title will inevitably make it seem like it is 'Bert bashing'."

I certainly wasn't suggesting in my previous comments that Steve Roud's prime motive was to discredit Bert Lloyd, but neither do I believe that the choice of title was an accident. Other potential titles are available.

Lloyd's book is indeed inspirational, and it inspired me for many years until I began to look a bit more closely at some of the details. It was, however, a general interest book so, although folk song specialists may have known exactly how big a pinch of salt to take with it, much of its readership would not have done. What we have now is something much more evidence-based - although I suspect it still won't put an end to the arguments.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 01 Sep 17 - 04:52 PM

Not into Bert or Ewan bashing. Bert's book is eminently readable and his rolling prose has influenced me no end. Take a look at my intro to Southern Harvest and you'll see what I mean. I have issues with Mcoll but the song carriers turned me into a much better singer. Mcoll was an exemplary teacher. I believe the Song Carriers are available on CD
Is the new Folk song in England as readable and well written as Bert's? It's on my to buy list.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Sep 17 - 06:28 PM

Readable and well written, yes, but some readers might want to skip chapters that don't fall within their interest band. I read all of it but found some of the music stuff by Julia above my head. My loss! It certainly pointed me at some other books I haven't yet read and desire to.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 01 Sep 17 - 07:58 PM

I've got it on order and can hardly wait to read it. (It comes out next week on this side of the pond.) After his New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs I put Roud on my list of interesting persons with whom I'd like to down a beer or two or three.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 03 Sep 17 - 07:43 AM

Message for Tunesmith, 27 August.
William Bolton was in both the Royal Navy and the merchant navy, and he certainly sang shanties to Anne Gilchrist.
Derek

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 03 Sep 17 - 08:10 AM

It's fair to say that "Folk Song in England" was not Steve's choice of title, it was the publisher's decision.
And sorry to disappoint Jerome Clark .... Steve is teetotal!
Derek

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Sep 17 - 11:04 AM

"I believe the Song Carriers are available on CD"
If they still exist, nobody seems to know where the key is - that goes for some of the best programmes on folksong from the Golden Age of Radio
I went to the showing of an un-shown ilm made by Phillip Donnellon earlier this year and was horrified to learn what had happened to his work - even while he was living
" Bert's book is eminently readable "
I agree absolutely - of-its-time as it may be.
I look on such works as introductions to something that still interests and entertains me after half a century of involvement
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 03 Sep 17 - 11:25 AM

If they still exist...

You can download mp3s of 'The Song Carriers' programmes from a link posted in an earlier Mudcat thread:

Ewan MacColl - The Song Carriers

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 03 Sep 17 - 02:44 PM

Bob Blair was selling CDr copies of the MacColl The Song Carriers radio programmes at Whitby Folk Week some years ago and I bought a complete set from him; not for what Ewan had to say but because of the opportunity to hear recordings of many of Britain's finest traditional singers. Generally these were not available at that time.
When I started to tell other people about the purchases, I was questioned about whether Bob was entitled to make and sell these and I didn't (and still don't) have the answer.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 05 Sep 17 - 12:07 PM

I have just seen a reference to the first review of this book that I am aware of and it is printed in, of all places, The Economist! It is a factual account and a precis of the contents rather than any statement about the value of the book or a comparison with anything that has been published in the past.
I thought the first paragraph of the review was arresting -

ENGLAND, the Germans used to jeer, was "the land without music". They were wrong, as Steve Roud robustly demonstrates in "Folk Song in England". Surveying English musical life from the time of Henry VIII—a keen musician and composer—to the mid-20th century, when folk song lost its roots, he shows what an intensely musical land England has been.

You can read the review on-line at by clicking here.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: r.padgett
Date: 06 Sep 17 - 10:30 AM

Yes quite a heavy book all ways round and will take a while to read through ~ unless you use more as a reference book using index of course!

50 years since Bert's book the original Folk song in England and therefore has different perspective and angle ~ lot happened in the intervening years of course

Ray

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Sep 17 - 03:56 PM

As you say, Vic, a fair precis, but no critique. Part of the problem we face is there are not many people about who are truly qualified to criticise what it has to say.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Sep 17 - 05:36 PM

"Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll - PM
Date: 30 Aug 17 - 04:18 AM

"This is not Bert bashing time."
Then why do it Steve - whatever Bert's motives for working the way he did, I'm sure he didn't set out to write "fairy tales"
Well said, Jim.
    I wont waste my time reading this book.
I prefer to spend my time playing, singing and most importantly listening to all kinds of music, but particularly tradtional singers and musicians.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Sep 17 - 06:14 PM

No problem, Dick. Some of us have time to do all of this. Variety.....and all that.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Sep 17 - 03:54 AM

"I was questioned about whether Bob was entitled to make and sell these and I didn't (and still don't) have the answer."
Bob had the copies all of us involved with Ewan and Charles were given way, way back - neither had any objection to their being circulated - they were delighted it was being circulated and, as far as we could make out, the BBC had totally lost interest in them (the programmes didn't even appear to have appealed the entrepreneurial efforts of Peter Kennedy), so we all passed copies on to whoever could use them
Our singers workshop ran ten meetings playing and discussing them - unlike Vic, we did so to examine Ewan's ideas to see if they held water - we could get most of the examples on LPs.
For me personally, it was like lifting the corner of folk -song to see if there was anything underneath - they were basically the reason I am still involved in folk song as actively as I am after half a century and many of the ideas propounded by MacColl stood up well when we started working with traditional singers, particularly with the Travellers who, back then, had a living tradition which was still producing songs that were becoming traditional (until the advent of portable television destroyed it, virtually overnight)
This was also true of the twenty years work we did with Walter Pardon who, in his way, could be described as a researching traditional singer rather than a source for songs (there were a few of those about once)
When they were "sold" it was for less than the cost it took to produce them - a great deal of time and thought went into their production and the work was for free - it was purely a labour of love on the part of the people who passed them on.
I have no idea what happened to the original programmes, nor any of the other wonderful productions by Bert and Deben Battacharia and Charles Parker and John Levy.... and all those other dedicated people - if the films of Phillip Donnellan are anything to go by, they were probably junked (did anybody here 'Folk Music Virtuoso', or 'Voice of the People' - life-changers all, in their way?)
The BBC project of the 1950s heralded a renaissance for British and Irish folk song - the BBC and other attitudes made it a missed bus - 'the one that got away' as far as establishing folk song as a peoples' art form - Ewan, Bert and others tried their best but the Music Industries steamroller did damage during the boom which, I believe, we never really recovered from
Nowadays we can't even discuss what we mean by folk music without shouting at one another - a no-go area strewn with regularly exploding mines.
I know MacColl spent a decade with less experienced singers, examine the songs and singing - I was lucky enough to be a recipient of his generosity for a short time
Mention his name (nearly three decades after his death) and you are treated as if you'd farted in church.
As for the exercises and techniques he devised for singers, and the methods he used for making songs your own.... forget it!
Mind you - we do have the BBC Folk Awards!!!
Sorry folks - a sore point
Back to indexing our collection in the hope that some future generation might be interested in what Walter Pardon and Mary Delaney and Mikeen McCarthy, and Tom Lenihan and Ewan and all the others we interviewed had to say about folk song
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: nickp
Date: 07 Sep 17 - 04:09 AM

My copy started at page 21 so has had to go back for replacement! I shall have to wait a little longer.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 07 Sep 17 - 05:55 AM

I've only just seen this thread - ordering this book now. Thanks so much to Brian for starting it, and to Jim Carroll for the heads-up about The Book Depository. Please note:

Free delivery WORLDWIDE:

https://www.bookdepository.com/Folk-Song-in-England-Steve-Roud/9780571309719?ref

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Sep 17 - 06:50 AM

"Free delivery WORLDWIDE:"
And pretty good discount, considering the publication date
We have managed to get a few rarities from the BD, including the long-sought-after 'Peter Buchan Paprs by William Walker, and Stephen Wade's 'The Beautiful Music All Around Us' - all discounted and post free
It's well worth trying your wants list on their site (even managed to get most of the unread Nigel Tranter at good prices)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Sep 17 - 06:52 AM

Not forgetting David Gregory's work of Victorian collectors and broadsides
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Sep 17 - 09:02 AM

I wrote
"I was questioned about whether Bob was entitled to make and sell these and I didn't (and still don't) have the answer."
Jim replied
Bob had the copies all of us involved with Ewan and Charles were given way, way back - neither had any objection to their being circulated - they were delighted it was being circulated and, as far as we could make out, the BBC had totally lost interest in them (the programmes didn't even appear to have appealed the entrepreneurial efforts of Peter Kennedy), so we all passed copies on to whoever could use them.

*********************
So I still don't have the answer. The key word in my sentence was entitled. The fact that those involved in the production "neither had any objection to their being circulated" doesn't come into it. I have hundreds of hours of recordings of of the weekly programme that I introduced for the BBC for 27 years. That does not mean that I have the right to duplicate from from reel-to-reel tape to CDr and sell them. The question that I intended is "Where does the copyright for BBC programme lie and for that matter, how long does it last?"
I ought to give my reasons for seeking an answer to this; when Jim states that "unlike Vic, we did so to examine Ewan's ideas to see if they held water." it makes me assume (though I maybe wrong) that he thinks I am attacking the central core of his beliefs which we read so often on Mudcat. I am not. The reason that I am asking this, Jim, is because at the moment I am amassing a huge number of recordings for Sussex Traditions and much of the material is recorded off air. At the management committee meetings, we devised a "permission form" and I simply can't get a satisfactory consistent answer about the right for us to put this in our rapidly growing archive (at present over 5,400 items) I could equally have asked, for example, the question about the programmes that Peter Kennedy recorded off-air and then released as FolkTrax cassettes and CDrs. It was the thread drift to the mention of The Song Carriers that brought it to my mind.
********************
Oh! and Steve Gardham writes
As you say, Vic, a fair precis, but no critique. Part of the problem we face is there are not many people about who are truly qualified to criticise what it has to say. 

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 07 Sep 17 - 09:18 AM

Sure wish the MGM Lion was still roaring around. I'd be interested to know Michael's views.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Sep 17 - 11:46 AM

"that he thinks I am attacking the central core of his beliefs"
I don't Vic - I just made my own position clear
I raised the point when you mentioned "selling" to dispel any idea that anybody was profiting from circulating the programmes.
We did/still do so because we feel they are worth it
They were programmes that could be improved, given hindsight, but since nobody has ever really tried, it's academic.
I have little doubt that legally they still belong to the Beeb (if they still exist) - and that goes for anything they ever produced
Morally is a different matter
The singers were paid pittances, if at all, and the minute the material was collected the sharks began to circle - copyright claims, marketed recordings paid for by the licence fee, "arrangements".... and above all, disinterest has led to the most important collection of recorded British traditional song being neglected and made virtually inaccessible until it was too late to assist in helping elevate folk music to the position it deserves.
When the Critics Group broke up a few of us continued to meet (in an already established workshop set up for raw beginners)
We threw in any material we had, including Ewan and Peggy's generously shared collection of field recordings
This also included recordings of some of the albums some of us had
This gradually formed itself into an archive of several thousand tapes
That archive has now been digitised, listed and partly annotated and is up for grabs for any club or organisation that is prepared to treat it with respect and not lock it up in a cupboard somewhere
It also includes our own field recordings - with the same stipulation
So far, it's been an uphill struggle to find a home for it other than academic institutions which will lock it up fro posterity - not what we want.
I have always though EFDSS might be a natural home, but looking at their present output - maybe not!
Our collection (as it was then), was the first to expand the interests of the then British Institute of Recorded Sound (later National Sound Archive and later still The National Sound Archive at the British Library) from an almost solely musicological group to one encompassing British Traditional music - back in the early eighties
Thirty years later Walter Pardon and his companions still stare through the bars of the prison he was locked in, inaccessible to the world at large all those years ago - somewhat disolusioning
Never mind - Ireland might make better use of it while we're still above ground - the signs are promising!
It's always seemed to me that, despite the decline, there are enough people around taking the music seriously enough to get together and make a a serious attempt to put 'The Voice of the People' back on the map without faffing around over whether Elvis was a folk singer because somebody once sang 'Red Suede Shoes'
Our music needs taking seriously if it is to survive, and nobody will do that unless we take it seriously ourselves
Bonny
I sorely miss Mike too, but he really wasn't the last word in folk-song - nobody was or is
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Sep 17 - 01:00 PM

Jim wrote -
I have little doubt that legally they still belong to the Beeb.
.... and this would be my understanding as well. Can anyone give an indication of the length a broadcast's copyright? At the moment Sussex Traditions are following the line suggested by Steve Roud, another management committee member, of an "aggressive take-down policy" for anything on the database that anyone expresses concern about whether it be copyright ownership or anything else. There are also concerns that some material collected in Sussex is "of its time" and would be far from acceptable in these more politically correct times; one of our target audiences is local teachers preparing local studies topics.

Something else that Jim wrote allows me to bring the thread back to its title. He expresses concern about the EFDSS and his field recordings. That organisation's quarterly magazine, the autumn edition of English Dance & Song, dropped through my letterbox this morning. I did a quick scan-read of the 48 pages which suggests that this may be the best edition since the new editor took over. However, there is not one mention of this book Folk Song in England in this edition.
Brian Peters' first sentence (on 19 Aug 17) in this thread reads:-
On Thursday I attended the British Library launch for the new book 'Folk Song in England', by Steve Roud and Julia Bishop,
That there is no coverage in ED&S of this centrally important event or the book, I find very surprising.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 07 Sep 17 - 01:16 PM

Library Lectures Go To Manchester

These popular lectures are now venturing beyond the walls of Cecil Sharp House for the first time, taking place this autumn at the magnificent Chetham's Library in Manchester.

Street Literature and the Folk by Steve Roud
Thursday 28 September, 7–8.30pm

Folk song is often defined as being an aural tradition, with the words and tunes undergoing variation and evolution over time and place. However broadsides, chapbooks, and other ephemeral material with the printed lyrics of many folk songs were incredibly popular between the 16th and 20th centuries at all levels of society. This talk is an introduction to that material – the types, the sellers, the songs, and the singers.

Steve Roud is creator of the Roud Folk Song and Broadside Index, and has written and edited numerous books, including The New Penguin Book of English Folksongs, and the newly released, Folk Song In England.

Barbara Allen: Broadside Ballad, Theatre Song, Traditional Song by Vic Gammon
Friday 27 October, 7–8.30pm

Drink, Song and Politics in Early Modern England by Angela McShane
Thursday 30 November, 7–8.30pm

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Sep 17 - 02:01 PM

Mike had style, to be insulted by him was almost a pleasure, generally, because of his wonderful choice and careful selection of words, I miss him too

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 07 Sep 17 - 02:12 PM

An Introduction to Folk Song in England
Sunday 19 November, 10:30am - 4:30pm
Cecil Sharp House, London

Internationally published folklorist Steve Roud presents with Laura Smyth, EFDSS' Library and Archive Director, this popular introductory level day exploring the history of English folk song.

Topics will include: the many possible definitions of 'folk', the songs themselves, the singers, the places and times for singing, the music, cheap printed broadsides and other sources from which people learned songs, the folksong collectors, the scholars and the beginnings of the post-War revival. The course is aimed at beginners and will not presume any previous experience or knowledge.

Promoted by EFDSS.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 25 Sep 17 - 12:26 PM

Like Elmore, earlier, I dithered between the Kindle and the not-so-hardback versions. Finally plumped for the Kindle and have not regretted it yet! Excellent, lucid writing and eminently readable. The portability of the Kindle version is a real incentive to dip in and out as the opportunity arises.

Regards

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Sep 17 - 07:10 PM

My copy of Folk Song in England arrived last week. Gee, it sure is a BIG book - 764 pages! The binding quality leaves something to be desired, but the contents look like they'll be very interesting. The price is now $23.73 at Amazon.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Sep 17 - 07:21 PM

You can also get it in electronic form from Rakuten Kobo:

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/folk-song-in-england

They aren't such arseholes as Amazon and I think their books are supplied in formats (ePub or PDF) that they can't get back from you.

For such a thick book with such a dodgy binding, and no hard-to-display colour pictures, that has to be the way to go.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: BobL
Date: 26 Sep 17 - 03:42 AM

It occurs to me that Faber may produce a "Library Edition" which isn't advertised through the usual channels, and which won't fall apart in a hurry. If so it will cost a lot more than £25.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 28 Sep 17 - 09:41 AM

I've only got another week until I have to submit a review of the book to a magazine, and I'm only one page 170! I think it's a shame that debates in folk, about folk, and about folk scholarship went the way they did, and were so convoluted, from the Victorian age to the present... because it occurred to me that, normally in a work of non-fiction, you can get through the preliminaries in a 30-page introduction (i.e. in answering questions like: what is folk? who were the collectors? how reliable was their scholarship? etc) In this one, I'm almost 200 pages in and I still feel like I haven't got to the proper start of the book yet!

I don't dispute it's all necessary and it's not Steve Roud's fault that the combined efforts of several previous generations of folksong scholars have left us with so many methodological knots to unpick... but it is a bit exhausting. I think I need to jump ahead, it's slightly feeling like a never-ending introduction thus far.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Sep 17 - 10:15 AM

Tonight! Library Lectures Go To Manchester

These popular lectures are now venturing beyond the walls of Cecil Sharp House for the first time, taking place this autumn at the magnificent Chetham's Library in Manchester.

1/3 Street Literature and the Folk by Steve Roud
Thursday 28 September, 7–8.30pm

Folk song is often defined as being an aural tradition, with the words and tunes undergoing variation and evolution over time and place. However broadsides, chapbooks, and other ephemeral material with the printed lyrics of many folk songs were incredibly popular between the 16th and 20th centuries at all levels of society. This talk is an introduction to that material – the types, the sellers, the songs, and the singers.

Steve Roud is creator of the Roud Folk Song and Broadside Index, and has written and edited numerous books, including The New Penguin Book of English Folksongs, and the newly released, Folk Song In England.

THE BALLAD OF CHETHAM'S LIBRARY: MUSIC AND PRINTING WORKSHOP
FRIDAY 27 OCTOBER 2017, 4.30PM - 6.30PM FREE

Come and listen to ballad singer Jennifer Reid talk about her recent research trip to Bangladesh, where she explored Manchester and Lancashire song traditions, and how they relate to Bangladeshi songs of the same type. Jennifer will also perform a couple of folksongs from the Lancashire area similar to "Barbara Allen", whose long and fascinating history will be described in depth during Vic Gammon's Library Lecture later on in the day.

Again as an introduction to Vic Gammon's talk, participants will be able to get a free letterpress version of "Barbara Allen" as produced by local printer Graham Moss from Incline Press in Oldham. There will be a chance to finish these copies with your own choice of illustrations by the hand of artist Desdemona McMannon and printer Stephen Fowler, who will provide a number of specially commissioned rubberstamps for this workshop.

2/3 Barbara Allen: Broadside Ballad, Theatre Song, Traditional Song by Vic Gammon
Friday 27 October, 7–8.30pm

3/3 Drink, Song and Politics in Early Modern England by Angela McShane
Thursday 30 November, 7–8.30pm

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,cookieless Billy Weeks
Date: 28 Sep 17 - 11:17 AM

Guest Matt: I think I understand your problem reviewing this book - it is a monumental - even daunting - work of scholarship. But the idea that you might have to 'jump ahead' to get the job done is a bit troubling. Such a review may say more about the reviewer than about the book.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 28 Sep 17 - 11:54 AM

I have just this morning finished reading:-
BILLY BRAGG - "Roots, Radicals And Rockers"
Faber & Faber ISBN 978-0-571-32774-4
and now I have the review to write. The sub-title is How Skiffle Changed The World and it is an excellent piece of work in my opinion.

Next I have to read:-
AS I WALKED OUT
Martin Graebe
Signal, Oxford. ISBN 978-1-909930-53-7
That one has the sub-title SABINE-BARING-GOULD AND THE SEARCH FOR THE FOLK SONGS OF DEVON AND CORNWALL and then I have to write a review on that one (Different publication - different approach needed).

Then if nothing else with a publication deadline comes through I will settle down to Steve Roud and Folk Song In England. I am hoping to be able to interview Steve about the book on my radio programme in late October/early November and I may have to conduct that without finishing the book, but Steve does not need much prompting to get him going on radio interviews as I know from experience so I should get away with it.

After that, I should be able to comment on FSIE here - so keep the thread going!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 28 Sep 17 - 01:28 PM

I've only got another week until I have to submit a review of the book to a magazine, and I'm only one page 170!

Been there! I remember eagerly volunteering to review the first Voice of the People CD set and quickly realising that I had to find time to listen carefully to 20 CDs and then compose something comprehensive and coherent. I'm actually quite glad not to be reviewing FSE - it would take me the week you have remaining to write the thing, never mind finish reading it.

I take your point, Matt, about the long introductory section, but it's hard to see how it could have been avoided, given past controversies and subjective definitions. What's interesting to me - given that I'm about as far into it as you are - is that there seems to be far less interest (compared with Lloyd's book) in defining and describing the nature of particular song types, than in looking at 300 years' worth of historical evidence for vernacular singing in a broad sense, and how all kinds of popular music impinged on it. I wonder how the conclusions will square with the selection of songs in the same authors' New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, most of which would have been approved of by Cecil Sharp.

However, as Vic says, let's not start jumping to conclusions before actually finishing the book...

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 28 Sep 17 - 07:21 PM

I finished it a few days ago and felt a need to start again at the beginning. There's just too much information, from so many perspectives, to take in in one go.

Unlike Sharp, who very early on published "some conclusions" that were based as much on what he wanted to believe as on actual hard evidence that he had gathered in his collecting work, Steve has gone somewhat the other way, presenting a great deal of evidence but (it seems to me) largely leaving his readers to form our own conclusions.

The main (tentative) conclusion that I have drawn so far is that, in the various more-or-less informal / non-commercial settings in which people have sung songs, those songs have typically included some very recent ones and some older ones, but at any given time not very many that were more than a century or so old. That in turn implies that many of the songs passed through a fairly small number of persons (whether aurally or in print/writing) between their original authors and the singers from whom they were collected. Yes there was continuity, variation and selection, but typically only through a limited number of steps, as least insofar as the words are concerned.

The tunes may have benefitted from more stages of transmission by the "folk", thus becoming truly reflective of some ideal folk character as Sharp and his contemporaries liked to believe, but there's not a lot of real evidence for or against that notion.

Anyone feel free to shoot me down if the above is a load of cobblers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 03:54 AM

I am really sad to say that I gave up somewhere around page 450.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 08:25 AM

Perhaps it works better as a dipping-in book than if you try to plough your way through the lot, Mike?

Richard Mellish wrote:
The main (tentative) conclusion that I have drawn so far is that, in the various more-or-less informal / non-commercial settings in which people have sung songs, those songs have typically included some very recent ones and some older ones, but at any given time not very many that were more than a century or so old.

I think your summation is pretty good, Richard. However, it looks to me as though the book is not going to give us a decisive answer to what is 'folk' and what is not. For instance, on p 23 we read: "A singer may take a song from the printed page, or in school, a church, or a theatre, but as soon as he or she starts to sing it, and others take it up, it becomes 'folk'." But that's ambiguous: is it 'folk' the moment the first singer takes it up, or only when it's passed on? Two pages later it looks like it's not just passing it on to your mate in the pub that's important, but that it needs to have been around for about two generations.

But those music hall songs and parlour songs that Sharp and others are criticised for ignoring when they went out with their notebooks in the 1900s were probably composed during the lifetimes of the singers they met (who were predominantly elderly). So had they become 'folk' by that time or not?

On p. 322 we have Flora Thompson describing village pub singing in the 1880s and telling us that the most popular songs 'would have arrived complete with tune from the outer world'. Were these less 'folk' than 'The Outlandish Knight' when it was sung in the same session?

Then on p. 390, Roud quotes farm labourer Fred Kitchen describing the music hall / parlour songs sung by his companions on their way to Martlemass Fair in Doncaster around 1905. At the time these were modern popular songs, but Roud suggests that, by the time American collectors started to note down the same songs in the 1920s / 30s, 'they had had time to bed down as 'folk'.

I know there will be people reading this who will see no point whatsoever in the debate, but since this book is probably the most complete statement we'll ever get on English folk song, it's interesting that there still seem to be quite a few loose ends.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 08:51 AM

"What's interesting to me - given that I'm about as far into it as you are - is that there seems to be far less interest (compared with Lloyd's book) in defining and describing the nature of particular song types, than in looking at 300 years' worth of historical evidence for vernacular singing in a broad sense, and how all kinds of popular music impinged on it."

Yes, I'm getting a similar sort of impression.

One day I'm hoping to read a book on English folk song that really gets to grips with the WORDS. (Martin Carthy and Shirley Collins could probably write brilliant ones, given the sort of things they've said when I've heard them speak of them) I say that as an English Literature graduate, and as a lover of poetry and novels and folk tales and stories and, of course, songs. One of the reasons I felt obliged to speak up for the value of Bert Lloyd's book, in posts above, is that the parts of his book where he talks about the content of specific songs (and song types) is, for me, where his writing is really valuable.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 10:09 AM

> it's interesting that there still seem to be quite a few loose ends.

Seriously, folks...is there a definition of "poetry" that definitively covers all the alleged examples of a poem to the exclusion of all non-poetry? And that everyone will agree on?

I don't think so.

Regardless of your definition of "folksong," you'll find a song to fit it and others that don't.

The best way out of the definition trap, as far as I can see, is to ignore the entire folk/non-folk dichotomy entirely and just discuss the song.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 03:00 PM

I don't have any of these problems. The '54' descriptors are plenty to outline what folk song is. I'm completely with Jon, very few genres if any require a hard boundaries definition. Having said that I doubt very much if any of the contributors to this thread would differ on what constitutes a traditional folk song. Steve sets his stall out in the intro and does a very comprehensive job in the following chapters. He has no real agenda other than supplying genuine information, unlike Bert and Cecil who definitely did have agendas.

Matt, what WORDS do you want to get to grips with? Perhaps the rest of us here can help.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 04:15 PM

Steve G said "I doubt very much if any of the contributors to this thread would differ on what constitutes a traditional folk song". That's probably correct for a central core of material, but we may well differ considerably about some of the layers further out: see the examples cited by Brian Peters at 08:25 AM Mudcat time today. Steve R himself sets out on pages 24 and 25 many criteria for something being "folk" or not, with particular instances meeting more or fewer of them to varying degrees. And a bit later he suggests that no specimen will ever score 10 out of 10.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 06:20 PM

Aaaaaaaargh! Lost it again! Grrrr!

The last singer I recorded about 10 years ago had songs from his farming community, songs he had learnt at school and songs he had written about his own life in farming. To me they were all folk songs.

No modern scholar has tried to put a time limit on when a song becomes folk. Obviously the longer a song remains in a folk community the more of the characteristics it picks up, but at what point a song becomes folk has not been established. IMO it doesn't need to be.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: r.padgett
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 04:12 AM

O dear ~could run a while yet

Ray

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 05:13 AM

I'm sure we're not trying to agree a definition of "folk" or "traditional". The "1954" definition isn't too far wrong, but many very long threads here have made quite clear that we'd be lucky even to agree to disagree about that. What we are doing is exploring the implications of the mass of information in Steve Roud's book, one of which is indeed that the boundaries of "folk" or "traditional" are very wooly.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 06:21 AM

The best way out of the definition trap, as far as I can see, is to ignore the entire folk/non-folk dichotomy entirely and just discuss the song.

If we react to the mass of evidence so well researched and presented by Steve Roud by closing down the debate, then his time will have been wasted. The whole point of this book is to open up the question of what is 'folk'. Roud himself describes that question in his 'Afterword' (yes, I've been dipping again) as 'the elephant in the room'.

What I (and I suspect a lot of us on this thread) have always understood as 'traditional folk song' has been based broadly on the concept as erected by Victorian / Edwardian collectors. Roud has compiled evidence that a wide range of additional songs were on the lips of the working classes of the day. If Sharp et al were justified in rejecting contemporary pop songs, then the edifice still stands. If not, then the body of material labelled 'folk song' is - not 'fake', certainly - but an unrepresentative sample. That's a bigger philosophical question than whether Steve G's farmer's original compositions should be called 'folk' or not. Without addressing it, how could one even attempt to compile a collection of 'English Folk Songs' when a publisher like, say, Penguin Books, came calling?

Roud's concluding sentence affirms his view that traditional process is of prime importance in his view of this music. With that, Cecil Sharp would agree. But don't let's all throw up our hands and cry "Oh no, another Mudcat 'what is folk?' food fight!" when this is a distinctly different debate from the one about Dylan / Mumfords etc etc.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 10:01 AM

Steve: "Matt, what WORDS do you want to get to grips with? Perhaps the rest of us here can help."

I capitalised the word WORDS simply because there seems to plenty of writing and scholarship about the definition of a folk song; who sang them; who collected them; who published them; how they were disseminated etc etc. But very little discussion about what's in the songs themselves. The stories, the themes, the imagery, the similes and metaphors, the narrative tricks, the filmic elements, the structure, the switches in perspective of the teller, the tropes ("come all ye", "as I went out..."), the repetition etc etc. I find this a little bizarre, because it's this stuff that makes me want to sing a song, and I'm sure that's the case for most singers. Yet it seems it's not what writers interested in folk song want to write about.

Of course, maybe now everyone will recommend me loads of books about precisely this that I simply didn't know exist! Any embarassment about revealing my ignorance will have been worth it, though.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 10:48 AM

One of the reasons I felt obliged to speak up for the value of Bert Lloyd's book, in posts above, is that the parts of his book where he talks about the content of specific songs (and song types) is, for me, where his writing is really valuable.

I was prompted by Matt's comment to pull down the Lloyd book from the shelves and leaf through it again. While with the benefit of hindsight it's easy to raise a sceptical eyebrow at many of the more romantic suggestions regarding the age and antecedents of the ballads (amongst other things), it did remind me how exciting I found this book when I first read it as a teenager, and how it helped to convince me that these were songs I needed to sing.

You're right that the Roud book doesn't concern itself too much with 'what's in the songs themselves' - that seems to be taken as read. Lloyd of course had plenty to say on the matter. I don't know offhand of many scholarly overviews of that kind of thing - maybe Evelyn Wells' 'The Ballad Tree'? - but things like imagery, metaphor, narrative devices and the other things you mention are always coming up in ballad workshops and have been the stuff of many a Mudcat discussion over the years.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 12:21 PM

Steve Roud once said to me - and I think that he was only partly joking -
A traditional folk song is a song sung by a folk singer.
What a folk singer sings is traditional songs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 01:05 PM

He wasn't joking! That's certainly one valid way of looking at the question.

Brian, my own experience of Bert's FSE exactly matches yours.

In answer to Matt, many of these topics have been studied in academic works (mostly US or continental) and perhaps it would be useful to start making a comprehensive bibliography of these.

As the vast majority of the ballads we now call folk songs were shaped by those who wrote the broadsides we should look more closely at the characteristics of these.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 02:51 PM

"What a folk singer sings is traditional songs."
I'm disappointed that Steve subscribes to this superficial nonsense, particularly as it contradicts his own method of work - you don't find many 'Lily of Laguna's' with Roud numbers.
It's a little like saying that Wouldn't it be Luvvrly' becomes 'Opera' when Kiri Ti Kanawa sings it   
Those source singer we questioned all discriminated between the different types of song in their repertoire
Walter Pardon filled tape after tape explaining what was a folk song and what wasn't and then described the difference between Parlour Songs, Music Hall and early pop songs, even to the point of identifying the age of the tune by whether it finihed on the accordion with the bellow open or closed.
Blind Travelling woman, Mary Delaney knew around 150 traditional songs - she could have doubled that number with her C and W songs but she refused because she said that weren't the same as the old ones.
She referred to her traditional songs as "Me daddies songs" though her father only had around half da dozen - she was referring to a type rather than a source.
Traveller Mikeen McCarthy divides his repertoire into Street songs, Come-all ye's and fireside songs.
He saw pictures when he sang traditional songs, he didn't when he sang more modern ones
I'm convinced that much of the misinformation about how the older singers was dow to the fact that they were never, or only superficially asked what they thought of their songs
It also depended on the respective states of the oral tradition when the songs were first recorded.
I haven't had time to read Steve's book properly yet, but I hope he goes deeper into the subject than this - maybe over the next few weeks while I'm laid up acting as host to a new hip
Sorry if I've entered the forbidden territory of 'what is a folk song'., but there really is a difference between one and the other and if Walter, Mikeen, Mary, Tom Lenihan… and the old crowd know what it is, it's about time we did, or at least, were able to discuss"What a folk singer sings is traditional songs."
I'm disappointed that Steve subscribes to this superficial nonsense, particularly as it contradicts his own method of work - you don't find many 'Lily of Laguna's' with Roud numbers.
It's a little like saying that Wouldn't it be Luvvrly' becomes 'Opera' when Kiri Ti Kanawa sings it   
Those source singer we questioned all discriminated between the different types of song in their repertoire
Walter Pardon filled tape after tape explaining what was a folk song and what wasn't and then described the difference between Parlour Songs, Music Hall and early pop songs, even to the point of identifying the age of the tune by whether it finihed on the accordion with the bellow open or closed.
Blind Travelling woman, Mary Delaney knew around 150 traditional songs - she could have doubled that number with her C and W songs but she refused because she said that weren't the same as the old ones.
She referred to her traditional songs as "Me daddies songs" though her father only had around half da dozen - she was referring to a type rather than a source.
Traveller Mikeen McCarthy divides his repertoire into Street songs, Come-all ye's and fireside songs.
He saw pictures when he sang traditional songs, he didn't when he sang more modern ones
I'm convinced that much of the misinformation about how the older singers was dow to the fact that they were never, or only superficially asked what they thought of their songs
It also depended on the respective states of the oral tradition when the songs were first recorded.
I haven't had time to read Steve's book properly yet, but I hope he goes deeper into the subject than this - maybe over the next few weeks while I'm laid up acting as host to a new hip
Jim Carroll it without acrimony
"As the vast majority of the ballads we now call folk songs were shaped by those who wrote the broadsides"
Nonsense again Steve - you can't possibly know that
The ballads are finely constructed works of art relying lergely on well established vernacular and commonplaces - the broadsides were largely unsingable doggerel
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 03:06 PM

Sorry about the double cock-up of that post - in a hurry to catch Casualty!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: r.padgett
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 03:09 PM

"What a folk singer sings is traditional songs." no not exclusively


Traditional songs are/were sung by folk singers ~ some could be or are

classified as being traditional folk singers ~ I think there is or

should be a definition of "traditional folk singer" although the wording escapes me at the moment!

Folk singers who are not deemed to be "traditional singers" but who sing

traditional songs (ok define again) are often referred to be

"revivalist" folk singers ~ Martin Carthy, Nick Jones, Tony Rose for example and of course Brian Peters and many many others
Ray

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 03:12 PM

I think we're at cross purposes again, Jim.
You seem to be referring to the big ballads in your last statement. We were discussing folk song in general most of which are ballads. However, since you refer to commonplaces, these are also extremely common on broadsides.

'the broadsides were largely unsingable doggerel' I don't know about 'unsingable' but you are right, the vast majority of it most of us would consider extremely unfashionable today. But to those of us who have trawled through mountains of this stuff in order to track down earlier versions of 'folk ballads' we have managed to arrive at some reasonable conclusions about their origins and reworking. If you read your Mayhew and similar you will know that in previous centuries recycling was a massive industry unlike today's throwaway society.

Matt, if you want I can't point you at some academic works that are very useful on some of the points that you mention, but I don't have a comprehensive list as I'm not an academic.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 03:38 PM

You seem to be referring to the big ballads in your last statement.
Nope - I'm referring to our finely crafted traditional songs
As our knowledge of the oral tradition onLy dates as far as the beginning of the twentieth century - anything before that is a guess and way out of the reach of definitive statements
A "broadside hack" was a derogatory term for a bad poet – not a reference to the language of the time
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 03:39 PM

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 03:45 PM

Ne'ertheless 'broadside hacks' definitely wrote many of what we now call folk ballads. Mayhew again. He describes a conversation with the writer of The Bonny Bunch of Roses. Mayhew himself wrote Villikins as a burlesque on William and Dinah and we also know who wrote William and Dinah. What about that wonderful Child Ballad 'The Daemon Lover'? But I'll let Brian tell you who wrote that.

I think it best if we continue this discussion after you've read Steve's book. We spent many months sifting through that 'unsingable doggerel'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 03:59 PM

Matt, 3.12 for 'can't' read 'can'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 04:39 AM

"Ne'ertheless 'broadside hacks' definitely wrote many of what we now call folk ballads. "
Again Steve, we can't be certain of anything - Mayhew may well have well met the writer of Bonny Bunch; he equally might have met somebody who claimed he wrote it - the same goes for any song
Can you say for certain there were no preceding versions of Demon Lover - there are enough traditional commonplaces and general human experiences within the song to suggest there might have been
When we began recording source singers we more or less decided from the start that our work would have no meaning unless we recorded what we could of the context in which the songs were sung in an attempt, not to find who made them, but to get some idea why they might have been made and what purpose they served in the communities in which theey circulated
Probably the most important discovery we made was that a significant number had been made within the lifetime of the singers
A 90 odd year old singer told us a couple of years ago that "In those days, if a man farted in church, somebody made a song about it"
You've written this off as what happened in this part of rural Ireland, but we know that Travellers made their own songs, English Scots and Irish
Walter Pardon talked about the Union songs his Uncles sang which were made at the time Georhe Edwards was reforming the Agricultural Workers Union
These are all later songs, but there is no reason to believe that most of our traditional songs started in the same way - or if there is, it escapes me.
It seems that working men and women were natural songmaker with a desire to record their lives and opinions in verse; there is no reason to believe that they always have been
The Travellers we recorded still had a living, functioning tradition in the first three years of the 1970s (put a sudden stop to with the advent of portable televisions) - they were still making songs
The song traditions in rural Ireland still functioned as living entities into the 1950s though they had faded somewhat thanks to the conscious destruction of music and dance by the Church, with the aid of the State a few decades earlier
Both the rural and urban Irish continued to make songs because the political and cultural situation demanded them.
Walter Pardon sang songs he had assiduously gathered from his family memories, so his repertoire and his opinions represented his two uncles' experiences rather than his own - dating back to the late 19th, early 20th centuries.
Sharp and his colleagues always claimed that the traditions they were collecting from were on the wane - the English song traditions almost certainly began to die when the Industrial Revolution smashed up the rural communities and drove the people into the towns and the demands of the new society began to change the lives of the remaining rural dwellers radically
Irish collector Tom Munnelly described his work as "a race with the undertaker"
Claiming we still have a living tradition is a revival fantasy - modern technology has made us passive recipients of our culture rather than part of it.   
Basing opinions and making definitive statements about something that stretches back centuries, possibly millennia, on something that is on its last legs is crazy
Our classic ballads have been dated to the 17th and 18th centuries, but we know they contain motifs and references that date back as far as Boccachio, Homer and maybe beyond, giving rise to the possibility that some may have been around a lot longer than we think.
You suggest we all go and read Steve' book as if it is somehow going to suddenly cause the scales to fall from our eyes and we will all be enlightened
I suggest we have enough collective knowledge between us here to slug it out whenever the fancy takes us
Personally, I'm tired of putting these serious debates "on the long finger" (a local folk saying btw)
Personally I need to put our findings and opinions together as soon as possible - I'm far too old to risk doing otherwise
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 04:50 AM

The sorts of songs that originally captured our interest and that were the main subject of Lloyd's book covered more or less the same range as those that the collectors in the late 1800s and early 1900s regarded as folk songs; but those were already not all of a single sort.

The big ballads tell stories that are often many centuries old. Many of them deal with the affairs of kings, queens, lords and ladies. Some involve magic. The earliest known versions as ballads typically date from the 1600s or 1700s.

The songs about shepherds, sailors, lovers separated by class-conscious parents, etc first appeared (as far as anyone can tell, pace Jim) in stage plays or in the pleasure gardens in the late 1700s or early 1800s and then on broadsides, or else originally on broadsides having been written specifically for that market.

Those two genres are fairly distinct, although there is some overlap. But both met the collectors' ill-defined criteria, both appeal to us nowadays, and both would presumably have qualified for Walter Pardon etc as proper folk songs.

What they have in common is that, by the time they were collected, they had knocked around for long enough to benefit from some continuity and selection, and generally from some variation. Continuity is implicit in the fact that they survived to be collected. Selection caused huge numbers of other broadside ballads to fall by the wayside. Variation is a mixed blessing. With some songs it has given us numerous delightfully different versions, but it has also caused some of them to be manifestly incomplete or not to make sense.

Nowadays we delight in singing and listening to these songs (as well as studying them); but in the same performance situations we also sing and hear songs from the music halls and songs written in modern times. The music hall songs were too new to be of interest to the early collectors but by now they have at least been subject to continuity and selection, if not to much variation. The same is already happening with some of the songs written by such people as Ewan MacColl and Cyril Tawney (and Woody Guthrie over the Pond). We are already selecting those that have sufficient appeal. And variation is happening: I have heard small changes in some of Cyril Tawney's songs as now being sung.

As I observed above, however, there have often been few steps of continuity and variation. Joe Rae's (Gutcher on here) present-day version of the Daemon Lover is almost word for word as printed by Scott, even including the four verses due to Laidlaw that Child saw fit to exclude.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 08:13 AM

Very eloquently expressed, Richard. The only thing I could add to that currently is that much of the more drastic variation is down to rewriting by the broadside ballad writers, which is what I was referring to in my recycling comment earlier, and what will be one of the main thrusts of my next paper at the Sheffield broadside day on the 25th November.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 08:36 AM

Jim,
I can find very little to disagree with in what you have written here. The fact remains that current academic and scholarly study puts the published corpus of traditional English folk song down to commercial origins of some sort. However, ultimately the origins of any creation cannot be proven and that includes Shakespeare's plays and many other works of art. Sometimes you have to simply take the word of those who have studied the material in great detail and come to these conclusions of origin.

Double standards. The agricultural union short-lived songs are folk songs but not my farm hand who wrote songs about his farming experiences?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 08:39 AM

>>>>>>You suggest we all go and read Steve's book as if it is somehow going to suddenly cause the scales to fall from our eyes and we will all be enlightened<<<<<<< Jim

Not at all, Jim. Steve asks more questions than provides answers. I suggested it simply because that is the purpose of this thread and I'm sure he would be delighted if we used it as a stimulus to discussion.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 08:46 AM

"Very eloquently expressed, "
Seconded, but I'm not sure it alters or even challenges anything I've said so far
Liking or singing music hall or MacColl songs does not make them 'folk', which is a process, not a preference or type of song
Some of MacColl's best songs teeterd on the edge of becoming traditional in the communities that still retained a living Tradition, but they will always be MacColl's songs because they bore his name and his copyright, no matter what changes take place - change isn't tradition either
Unfortunately, one of the aspects introduced by the revival is that of personal ownership - many come with the stamp "arranged by" - this includes traditional songs
Unlike the old compositions, song are coming into the world still-born - communities can no longer take ownership of them as the traditional communities did
It still irks me that one of the greatest finds of the twentieth century, The Maid and the Palmer', given by a travelling man who lived in a derelict house and died of the effects of malnutrition, can be copyrighted
If that is the case with a centuries old ballad, what chance does a newly composed song have of becoming 'ours'?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 08:54 AM

> The "1954" definition isn't too far wrong

Actually, it isn't "wrong" at all (or "right" for that matter), because songs empirically exist that fit it to a T.

It's a definition that says, "this what we specialists who agree on this definition mean by "folksong" and what you should mean too." It *isn't* the kind that tells what the word means in general usage: as we know, there are many such meanings - sad, perhaps, but certainly true. It's also true that there's no way to enforce this definition - also sad, perhaps, but true.

The point of dispute is whether songs included in the 1954 def. are the *only* ones that "deserve" the name of "folksong."

A related, possibly more interesting question, is why certain songs are *called* folksongs - and by whom.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 08:59 AM

"Steve asks more questions than provides answers."
I hope so, but Steve is only one of many writers who have gone to great lengths to understand folk song and if we waited for all the new ideas to come forth we's be standing around like Estragon and Vladimir, forever waiting for Godot.
I don't believe one Messiah exists who is going to produce all the answers
I find myself getting more and more depressed when I read some of the academic kite-flying that takes place (I'm not suggesting for one minute that Steve is doing this - personally, I would have been totally lost in working on our own collection if it hadn't been for his groundbreaking contribution)
Understanding our song tradition has to be as fluid and ongoing as was the tradition itself - a communal pool of ideas.
Jim Carroll
Luckily, I posted this and it didn't take, so I was able to read Lighter's fascinating contribution
See what I mean about pooling ideas?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 09:26 AM

Must remember not to post on a weekend. Just lost a whole lot of posting because the server keeps going down for maintenance.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 09:27 AM

Try again.

I'm assuming we are all 100% in agreement on what Jim says here.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 09:29 AM

Regarding academics they often get it wrong. Their agendas are restricted by their superiors and they have schedules, agendas and time limits which other scholars don't have to bow to. A noted exception for me is Vic Gammon.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 10:00 AM

much of the more drastic variation is down to rewriting by the broadside ballad writers

A few years ago I researched the history of'The Wild Rover', helped along the way by both Jim and Steve G amongst others. Like a lot of older broadside pieces it began life as a very wordy, moralistic, thirteen-verse text written in the late seventeenth century by a known author (and yes, I do think this copy is most likely the origin). From there it went through various print incarnations over two centuries, getting shorter, more concise and telling a more effective story with each new edit. However, during the later history of the song it was also changed through what I could only conclude was oral traditional processing as well (the two are not of course incompatible), and acquired at least three distinct tunes, including a particularly attractive one in Ireland (as sung by Pat Usher) that made its way to Australia - where the song must have arrived independently several times. The well-known version is definitely a 1960s concoction, though.

That's just one example of how different kinds of process can affect the evolution of one song. It doesn't have to be 'one or the other', and we don't need to take to the barricades about it.

Steve Roud's book mentions the nice example of a rather arty song, 'The Shepard Adonis' becoming the localized 'Shepherd of the Downs' in the repertoire of the Copper Family. We don't know how or when the change took place but, since it appears there isn't a broadside copy of the 'Downs' text, and oral versions are vanishingly scarce, perhaps it was indeed a Sussex countryman who amended it?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 11:28 AM

"I do think this copy is most likely the origin"
Can I just make clear that I am not denying the probable broadside origins of some of our folksongs - some of them still bear the heavy handprint of the broadside hack - it's Steve G's percentages I dispute.
One of the problems I have is the question of literacy as evidence
Many of our singers, although able to read, still had difficulty with English - it was a second language when they were growing up and it showed when they wrote something out for you.
Some learned songs from "the Ballads" - song sheets sold at the fairs, but a number said they couldn't be trusted
Travellers were in an odd position, they were largely non-literate, but greatly responsible for putting songs into print
Mien McCarthy, from Kerry, described going to the printers in Tralee and reciting his father's songs over the counter to be printed out and sold
He also described putting songs into print by request "do you have any of your daddy's songs for sale?"
Length of "Wild Rover"
One of the most popular songs we recorded from Travellers was 'The Blind Beggar'
When I researched this I traced it as far as one of the longest broadsides I have ever come across (Percy, I think)
It was over sixty verses long and in two parts
The Travellers has it in the streamlined 8 or 9 verse version
Apropos of nothing, when Mikeen first sang it for us he was camped at the back of the Mile End Road in London, within five minutes walk of The Blind Beggar Pub
He was fascinated when he found out is was the hang-out of the notorious Kray Twins and permanently displayed a "No Travellers served here" sign
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 11:30 AM

Mikeen McCarthy, of course - bleedin' keyboard
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 12:26 PM

Just to clarify Jim's comment at 11.28.

Fact: Of published English traditional folk songs 89% had their first extant manifestation on some form of commercial production in urban areas.

My opinion, take or leave, 95% of this corpus came from the same source. Many ephemeral printed pieces did not survive. We know this from the many catalogues that do survive.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 12:33 PM

As no-one else has yet offered the author of The Demon Lover, if you go to the current Barbara Allen thread and read the late great Bruce Olsen's posting of 19th Feb 98, 11.41 pm you'll get his say on the matter.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 01:24 PM

"had their first extant manifestation on some form of commercial production in urban areas."
Sorry Steve - can you explain that
Are you still claiming they originated in print - sure;y not?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 01:28 PM

>The well-known version is definitely a 1960s concoction, though.

When a friend returned from a year in Cork, ca1984, he said the version that he heard a good deal had the chorus slightly revised into

"So it's no, nay, never,
(Right up yer arse!)
No, never no more...."

Otherwise, the "well-known version."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: r.padgett
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 01:44 PM

Er the living tradition then Lighter?

Ray

A folk song is a folk song ~ what else can you can them?

Ray

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 02:12 PM

Really, Jim? We know the songs came from a wide variety of sources, mostly straight from the urban ballad writers but many first appeared in the theatre, pleasure gardens, supper rooms, music cellars, glee clubs, Music Hall, sheet music, songsters, etc., all commercial, in other words somebody was getting paid for their production, albeit only a shilling a go in the case of the broadside writers. The further you go back the more actually originated in London, for obvious reasons. Your 'Blind Beggar' for instance.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 02:23 PM

As no-one else has yet offered the author of The Demon Lover

Oops, that quiz question was addressed to me and I missed my chance of glory. Laurence Price, 1657, is the answer you're looking for. I did wonder for some time whether LP might have based it on an existing ballad (erecting his verbose and moralistic scaffolding around a traditional core), but it looks as though what happened there was a similar story to 'The Wild Rover'. I hadn't seen that Bruce O post before, actually.

And yes, I've heard the 'right up yer arse' chorus as well. Saves the sore hands.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 02:49 PM

Don't believe a word of it Steve - I'm afraid you're going to have to prove it - otherwise, we are stuck with the fact that we have nog got th faintest idea where they originated
We know that Mikeen to his father's songs and gave them to a printer which at the very least, shows that printing traditional songs for sale was a two way street
I don't believe for one minute that the hacks whose doggerel fills half a dozen of our shelves were anywhere capable of producing Sam Larner's or Harry Cox's or Walter's or Phil Tanner's gems with their obvious familiarity with the vernacular, trade names, work practices, folk-lore - and the hundred and one personal experiences recounted in the songs, often in intimate detail
It would take a hundred social historians a hundred years to fe that familiar with them
So far, all you can offer is the earliest date they went into print.
Are you really this certain that working people were incapable of expressing themselves poetically?
Not my experience - but maybe the Irish are more creative than the English!!
You are returning our people back to the old image of a creatively cultureless class
Shame on you
Even Child recognised who the songs belonged to when he called his ballads "Popular" - of the people, not how far they reached in the nineteenth century charts
Pitts referred to his output as "country songs" an did Issac Walton.
THe term "folk" was devised by Thom to identify it's home-made common origins rather than stall-bought artifacts
As I said - don't believe a word of it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 02:53 PM

I think you need to explain that last comment for the benefit of the uninitiated, Brian.

Price and Martin Parker occasionally parodied each other's work and I have evidence that they sometimes borrowed stanzas from tradition and from earlier ballads, but the vast majority of their output appears to have been original.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 03:06 PM

Jim, we've been through all of this before and you have deliberately misunderstood my comments exactly the same way numerous times. I have plenty of evidence as you well know, some of it mentioned above, that working people were often very creative, by way of song writing. It just so happens that the vast majority of them for one reason or another didn't get their songs into print and therefore they weren't spread abroad like the urban ballads. John Clare is an excellent example. Apart from his poetry and writing down the trad songs he came across he also rewrote quite a few songs in Burns' fashion, but none of them were ever collected in oral tradition. We are sometimes lucky to find them in old manuscripts but unfortunately very few made it into oral tradition to be collected and published.

>>>>don't believe a word of it<<<< Your prerogative, Jim.

'origins' as you well know have no bearing whatsoever on the oral tradition.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 03:21 PM

I think you need to explain that last comment for the benefit of the uninitiated, Brian.

Er... yes, could be misunderstood...

No need to clap four times!

Interesting comment re Parker & Price.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 05:04 PM

Working with Steve Roud on the "Sussex Traditions" project, he makes it clear that any statements that we make on our website and database should be based on evidence that we can back up, whatever our presumptions or what we would like to believe or any statements by personal contacts or socio-political agenda that we bring with us. As I said above, I have not read this book yet but it is here waiting for a less busy time. However, I have read quite a number of his articles and know his approach pretty well.
The person who brings an evidential approach to the exchanges above is Steve Gardham. Interesting and well-argued thread, though, and 100+ posts without descending to insults is encouraging for Mudcat.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 05:59 PM

"THE LITTLE SHIRT MY MOTHER MADE FOR ME"
This song was written by Harry Wincott. It was recorded by music hall singers not long after it was written. Wincott was born in London on New Year's Day 1867. He wrote a number of songs that have had an enduring popularity including "The Old Dun Cow", "Mademoiselle from Armentières" and the one I give above. My dad (born in rural Oxfordshire in 1914) used to sing it frequently around the house and as a youngster it drove me mad, but he sang it so frequently that I learned it word for word by osmosis. When I started encouraging the old singers of Sussex to come to our folk club, I started to hear it again. George Belton might sing it next to "The Bold Fisherman". George Spicer might sing it next to "The Barley Mow" Spicer's tune was substantially the same as my dad's but he had an extra verse that Wincott did not write. Belton's tune and rhythm was noticeably different from the way my dad sang it. The words all three sang were different from the way it was written. Belton had an extra verse that Wincott did not write. Bradley Kincaid's version (recorded 1933) and Wilf Carter's (1942) brought it into circulation again but not as much as Marty Robbins' from 1983. For a while it became a Country music standard.
In sense that we know who wrote it this is not a folk song. However, it behaves like a folk song; it has entered the oral tradition; it changes and develops; in the Sussex versions it becomes localised in Brighton; the people who sing it have no idea who wrote it or where it came from.
Steve Roud has included the various changed versions of The Little Shirt Me Mother Made For Me that were collected by prominent and well-respected song collectors from highly regarded traditional singers in Sussex.
Some here will right that this is right; others will say that it is wrong. I wonder how much it matters.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 07:41 PM

"Jim, we've been through all of this before and you have deliberately misunderstood my comments exactly the same way numerous times"
We have been though this and I haven't deliberately misunderstood you Steve
After fifty off years involved with folk son I would have to be pretty stupid to deliberately misunderstand anything and I find it extremely insulting that you should suggest such a thing
You passede off the Irish songmakers as retired people scribbling down poems, broadside hacks as revolutionaries making songs for the people, seagiong and farmeroking hacks which enabled them to come to terms with the vernacular and the work practices, English workers having no time to make songs because of pressure of work...... a series of off the top of the head excuses to explain the anomalies.... not a single shred of evidence beyond earliest
I have no intention of getting into a slanging match with you, but please don't insult me by saying I deliberately did anything
Pat and I have carried out thirty years of work with English and Irish singers, some of them still part of a living tradition.
I have presented our findings as best I can - that is what our singers told us - the Clare singers, the Travellers Walter and others.
I have not attempted to link origins with the oral tradition, so why bring it up unless you wish to throw up another smokescreen?
If you make such a groundbreaking statement which contradicts all previous opinions and knowledge, you really do need to back it up with more than insults and dismissal - anybody who claims a love of the songs and those who gave them to us owe them at least that.
Where is your evidence that our songs were made by hacks " all commercial, in other words somebody was getting paid for their production,"
You once said our folksongs were no different than those put out by music industry - now that's what I call insulting
"I wonder how much it matters."
Quite a lot to those of us who wish to understand it Vic
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 03:49 AM

I don't wish to extend this - I have made my position quite clear on the idea that our folk songs originated in print for money
I'll add a couple of points and leave it there for perhaps less acrimonious discussion
Steve mentioned Burns, who was collecting songs from unlettered Scots country people which he gave to James Johnson for publication in his 'Scots Musical Museum', the title of which declares the songs to be old
I dug out Mary Ellen Brown's 'Burns and the Tradition last night - this is her quote on Burns.

In a famous biographical letter to Dr Moore written after he had received acclaim as a poet, Burns described the influences he had come under when he was a boy and specifically mentions his mother and an old woman, loosely connected with the family, who provided him with an early stock of songs, tales, legends, beliefs, proverbs, and customs:

"In my infant and boyish days too, I owed much to an old Maid of my Mother's, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity and superstition. - She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the county of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, inchanted towers, dragons and other trumpery."

The oral artistic creations, cumulatively built and recreated, passed on from generation to generation, stable in general form but varied in individual performance, were his birthright and a natural and universal part of the general society in which he lived - where traditional custom, belief, and practice dominated and overt creativity and innovation were not sought. This traditionally oriented way of life and the oral artistic communications it supported and sustained played a far more signifi¬cant role in shaping and determining the directions of Burns' artistry than has been recognised.
Like all writers or creative artists, Burns was not an isolate; and he cannot be realistically divorced from the milieu in which he lived. He was a product of what had gone before and what was and his artistry often lay in uniquely blending, juxtaposing, or representing this. He was a part of a long tradition.

Steve had already conceded that the Bothie worker made songs by the hundreds unaided by printed versions - if them, why not other agricultural workers
I also dug out 'I have a Yong Suster', popular song and the Middle English Lyric, (Karin Boklund Lagopoulou, which examines song-making as far back as the 1300s and discusses at length oral composition in pre-literate Early England, comparing it to that common in Eastern Europe,.
My first clash with Steve was when he asked me disparagingly "do you believe that romantic rubbish" - not a good start to a sharing of ideas and experiences.
THere are a lot of us "romantics" about.
Time to mend fences perhaps
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 05:48 AM

Jim wrote:
As our knowledge of the oral tradition onLy dates as far as the beginning of the twentieth century - anything before that is a guess and way out of the reach of definitive statements

This gap in our knowledge is one that Roud's book sets out to fill, using sources like John Clare - who, in a happy coincidence as far as this thread is concerned, wrote down a full version of The Demon Lover, as sung by his mother in the first half of the 18th century.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 05:50 AM

Reposting for clarity with italics corrected:

Jim wrote:
As our knowledge of the oral tradition onLy dates as far as the beginning of the twentieth century - anything before that is a guess and way out of the reach of definitive statements

This gap in our knowledge is one that Roud's book sets out to fill, using sources like John Clare - who, in a happy coincidence as far as this thread is concerned, wrote down a full version of The Demon Lover, as sung by his mother in the first half of the 18th century.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 07:49 AM

>>>>>I have not attempted to link origins with the oral tradition,<<<<
>>>>>>THe term "folk" was devised by Thom to identify it's home-made common origins rather than stall-bought artifacts<<<<<<
>>>>>>he also rewrote quite a few songs in Burns' fashion<<<<<

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 07:51 AM

Oh dear, that's nothing like what I posted. I give up!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 08:22 AM

Clare is one man talking about one song - you are talking about the entire repertoire
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 10:18 AM

I have ordered this book.am looking forward to it. I have learned a lot on this thread and have enjoyed it until it became an argument..why DOES that happen ?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 10:23 AM

Contention

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 11:12 AM

Clare is one man talking about one song - you are talking about the entire repertoire

There's more than one song in Clare's MSS if you care to sift through his poetic 'improvements'. But my point was that, although 18th / 19th C oral evidence is pretty scarce, at least Roud is trying to find it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 12:55 PM

"There's more than one song in Clare's MSS i"
I know that Brian, I was referring to Steve's 'Demon Lover'
I also know evidence is difficult to fing so we must make do with common sense and the little information we have
Burns was on the sport and described a creative oral tradition.
Karin Boklund Lagopoulou describes similar dating back as far as the 1300s - presumably she has done her research
Throughout my time in folksong, there has never been any question that "the folk" made their own sons - Steve's in a new one on me and all he offers are earliest publication dates
Child in the mis 19th century describes the songs as "popular and the broadsides as dunghills and he was on the spot at the time - I'll buy that
Even Catnach described them as country songs
The general level of broadside poeetry has always been described as 'Doggerel' - we have a large number, from Roxborough to Ashton and HollowaY AND Black, none of which hold a candle to our folk songs
If there's nothing else, the poof of the pudding will do for now
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 01:11 PM

Child assumed that most of the songs he anthologised had come directly from oral tradition and that is why he used the word 'popular'. However a large chunk of them came from broadsides either directly or indirectly. He included those he selected on stylistic grounds mainly. Of course no one disputes that the bulk of the material on street literature could be described as dunghills.

>>>The general level of broadside poetry has always been described as 'doggerel'<<< Mainly by literary people I would add. When you have studied hundreds of thousands of examples of street literature you will realise that the level of poetry , idiom and language are pretty much the same as folksong.....As I rode out...Come all ye....far more common on broadsides than in folk song. The only difference is that those that entered oral tradition were the ones of value to the people that have become shaped by the people.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 02:08 PM

And in Roxburghe, Ashton and Holloway and Black you will find versions of many folk songs, but unless you already know the folk songs they evolved into you would have great trouble picking them out from the rest.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 02:28 PM

"And in Roxburghe, Ashton and Holloway and Black you will find versions of many folk songs"
You'll find some Steve, but they all are invariably broadside-type versions as unsingable as the rest, leaving me with the conclusion (everything else being taken into consideration) that theay are as likely as not to have ben taken from source singers rather than the other way round
If thye had been capable of making good songs there would be far more than there are
Child recognieed the ballad genre as "popular" (from the people) whether they appeared on broadside or not - print was all he had.
Bronso ices a far more overall view of the repertoire because he had access to field recordings - he always said he had enough for an additional volume
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Oct 17 - 02:37 PM

>>>>> but they all are invariably broadside-type versions as unsingable as the rest, leaving me with the conclusion (everything else being taken into consideration) that they are as likely as not to have been taken from source singers rather than the other way round<<<<< Am I reading this wrong or is it a contradiction?

Subject: Lyr Add: GUM SHELLAC
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 03:38 AM

Sorry Steve I had that the wrong way round, not you
I thumbed through Holloway and Black last night and found there to be very few songs that have entrered the tradition - a few that could have had they not been so ham-fisted
Ironically, the few that I know to have been sung around the revival were the ones taken up by singers usually disapproved of by academics - Bert had a couple and I spotted two sung bt Critics Group members
I'm off to hospital for a hip operation of Thursday so I'm only going to be able to take tis so far, so I'm going to cover some of the important bits of our findings - ignore me or indulge me
THe Irish Travellers were the first group we recorded in 1973 - they had a living tradition, a fairly large spread repertoire of native rural Irish, political, own-made songs with English and Scottish ones thrown in
It turns out from ours and Tom Munnelly's experiences that they were major players in singing and passing on Child ballads and they were the most important group to distribute songs by selling them at the fairs - almost exclusively a Traveller occupation
The first man we recorded was "Pop's" Johnny Connors, from Wexford
He came from a singing and musical family and was related to the piper, Johnny Doran
He was a Traveller activist, fighting for sites in England alongside Gratton Puxon - he had been imprisoned in Birmingham for his activities in the late sixties and it was there he first learned to read - he wrote an autobiographical piece that was included in Jeremy Sandford's 'Gypsies'
He had leeaned his songs largely from family members - his Uncle made songs about his trade of catching and skinning rabbits and selling them for their fur
His brother-in-law, Little Bill Cassidy, was one of the most stylish singers we ever recorded (I'm pretty sure Brian has heard Bill)
One of the earliest songs he sang for us was the Traveller version of Edward - 'What Put the Blood' - he called it 'Cain and Abel'
He introduced it with this remarkable statement:
"I'd say the song, myself, goes back to.... depicts Cain and Abel in the Bible and where Our Lord said to Cain.... I think this is where the Travellers Curse come from too, because Our Lord says to Cain, "Cain", says Our Lord, "you have slain your brother, and for this", says Our Lord, says he, "and for this, be a wanderer and a fugitive on the earth".
"Not so Lord" says he, "this punishment is too severe, and whoever finds me", says he, "will slay me, "says he "or harass me".
"Not so", says Our Lord, says he, "whoever finds Cain and punishes or slains (sic) Cain, I will punish them sevenfold".
And I think this is where the Travellers curse come from.
Anyway, the song depicts this, this er....
1 call it Cain and Abel anyway; there never was a name for the song, but that what I call it, you know, the depiction of Cain and Abel."
He described Travellers singing style at length, which he referred to as 'the Yawn':

(tune sung) That's the 'yawn' in the voice, dragged away, the yawn in the voice.
The 'yawn' is in the pipes, the uilleann pipes, which is among te oldest instruments among Travelling people, or among the world, is the pipes.
The breeding generation belonging to me, the Dorans, the Cashes, its all traditional musicians, this is in history.
Denis Turner Can you give us an example?
P J C. I gave you an example a few minutes ago, but I'll give it again.

The song he refers to he called 'The Green Shades of Yann' - an English language version of the Irish language The Brown Thorn An Droighneán Donn, which has been completely 'Travellerised' and set among the caravans and ponies rather than the usual rural setting.
Johnny was typical of the singers we questioned about their songs, knowledgeable, articulate and with strong opinions about them - not the passive "song birds" who learned songs from print and parroted what they'd heard uncritically - his main difference was that, up to a few yeears earlier ha=e was totally unable to read a word.
He also made songs, as did many Travellers na put stories to sme of them, like the description of a feud between two families, 'Poor Old Man' which can be heard on our CD 'From Puck ot Appleby'
His best song was a pride-filled evocation of the Travellers, Gum Shellac - here with note

Gum Shellac
(Roud 2508) 'Pop's' Johnny Connors, Wexford Traveller


We are the travelling people
Like the Picts or Beaker Folk,
The men in Whitehall thinks we're parasites
But tinker is the word.
With our gum shellac alay ra lo,
Move us on you boyoes.

All the jobs in the world we have done,
From making Pharaoh's coffins
To building Birmingham.
With our gum shellac ala lay sha la,
Wallop it out you heroes.

We have mended pots and kettles
And buckets for Lord Cornwall,
But before we'd leave his house me lads,
We would mind his woman and all.
With our gum shellac alay ra la,
Wallop it out me hero.

Well I have a little woman
And a mother she is to be,
She gets her basket on her arm,
And mooches the hills for me.
With our gum shellac alay ra la,
Wallop it out me hero.

Dowdled verse.

We fought the Romans,
The Spanish and the Danes,
We fought against the dirty Black and Tans
And knocked Cromwell to his knees.
With our gum shellac alay ra la,
Wallop it out me heroes.

Well, we're married these twenty years,
Nineteen children we have got.
Ah sure, one is hardly walking
When there's another one in the cot.
Over our gum shellac alay ra lo,
Get out of that you boyoes.

We have made cannon guns in Hungary,
Bronze cannons in the years BC
We have fought and died for Ireland
To make sure that she was free.
With a gum shellac ala lay sha la,
Wallop it out me heroes.

We can sing a song or dance a reel
No matter where we roam,
We have learned the Emperor Nero
How to play the pipes
Way back in the days of Rome.
With our gum shellac ala lay sha la,
Whack it if you can me boyoes.

Dowdled verse.

Note
'Pop's' Johnny Connors, the singer of this song, is also the composer. He was an activist in the movement for better conditions for Travellers in the 1960s and was a partici¬pant in the Brownhills eviction, about which he made the song, The Battle of Brownhills, which tells of an unofficial eviction in the Birmingham area which led to the death of two Traveller children. An account of part of his experiences on the road is to be found in Jeremy Sandford's book Gypsies under the heading, Seven Weeks of Childhood. This was written while Johnny was serving a prison sentence in Winson Green Prison in the English Midlands. He said that further chapters of an intended biography were confiscated by the prison authorities and never returned to him on his release.
Gum shellac is a paste formed by chewing bread, a technique used by unscrupulous tinsmiths to supposedly repair leaks in pots and pans. When polished, it gives the ap¬pearance of a proper repair but, if the vessel is filled with water, the paste quickly disintegrates, giving the perpetrator of the trick just enough time to escape with his payment.

I've taken too long over this, but I think it important in the context of how I believe a living tradition worked - gathering, singing, passing on old songs and making new ones
I know this happened in Ireland, but she is our nearest neighbour and has been influenced by us for 8 centuries ? I see no reason why we can't take what happened here as a guide for what could well have happened in the English countryside
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 04:25 AM

His brother-in-law, Little Bill Cassidy, was one of the most stylish singers we ever recorded (I'm pretty sure Brian has heard Bill)

Indeed I have (recordings, anyway), and indeed he was!

Fascinating account, Jim.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 06:01 AM

I have been reading and thoroughly enjoying Martin Graebe's book on Rev, Sabine Baring-Gould, As I Roved Out [Signal, Oxford. ISBN 978-1-909930-53-7]. It is clearly the work of long meticulous research and is well written, based on evidence and devoid of speculation. If Martin has not found evidence for what aspects of what he has uncovered in his study of letters, manuscripts by and about this pivotal figure of the beginnings of the first revival then he states these clearly.
Just now, on page 165, I came across this paragraph that really stood out for me and I had to read it several times. It has direct relevance to the exchanges on this thread about the origins of folk song. Martin quotes a letter that Baring-Gould wrote to Lucy Broadwood from Lew Trenchard on 21st May 1891. He writes:-

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 06:24 AM

(Continued from previous post sent in error)

I have no great opinion about the words of many of our Folk Songs. I find most of them (not all) are to be detected in Broadsides. Of these I have 5 thick vols. and I have gone through all the vols. in the Brit. Mus. They are coarse, vulgar things and void of poetry, but I find that the traditional versions are almost invariably better than the broadside versions.

Baring-Gould writing this 120 years ago seems to accord with modern evidence-based research findings that most of our songs started off in the broadsides but it was the ones that were taken up by the singers and entered into the oral tradition that they became shaped and rounded and became more expressive and voiced in the common tongue. Songs were altered consciously or unconsciously and most regularly improved from the printed broadside version. Additions were made to and parodies made of the original. Sets of words were sung to different melodies that suited the voice and taste of the singer. The huge creativity of the traditional singers found much more expression in the adaptation, development & improvement of existing pieces rather than the making of new pieces. Not that this did not happen as Jim has eloquently given an example above,

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 06:38 AM

C'mon Vic - it's like waiting for the other shoe to drop
Wail I'm waiting, perhaps I might proffer a possible scenario for traditional songs on broadsided
I Writer bases himself in a pub that is frequented by countrymen in for the markets, or Merchant seamen, or fishermen, or soldiers and either sits in on singing sessions, roughly scribbling down plots, some words, a verse to give a form - enough to make a full song - then takes what he has off and makes a song of it to suit the tastes of his customers
Only a guess, but so is everything else so far
I've always been fascinated with David Buchan's theory of their being bo set ballad texts, just plots and commonplaces - I don't think he presented his case too well, but I think it possible
I watched MacColl as he grew old and began to forget words, but I never once saw him dry up - he was so familiar with the stories of his songs as to make up the memory gaps as he went along
As a MacColl buff I was familiar enough to notce when he did this - a coupple of times either he or Peggy caught my eye and acknowledged that I'd noticed
This is what many singers did
If I get time later, I'll describe the two examples we have of how songs were made, along with the songs   
"Fascinating account, Jim"
Thank's Brian, there really plenty mor where that came from
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 06:50 AM

" adaptation, development & improvement"
I totally disagree with this Vic -at least until it is backed up with documented evidence rather than opinions
Baring Gould, Sharp, et al were working when the tradition was in sharp decline and there in so record whatever of them treating collecting songs as artifacts, the way a butterfly collector regards his trophies.
Sharp came the nearest with 'Conclusions' and there are a couple of nice quotes in Fox-Strangways to suggest that he felt a warmth for some of his informants, but one of the greatest holes in our knowledge is the lack of an input by the singers.
I'm afraid thisis beginning to feel like a return to the 'free as Bird Song era'
This is one of the most offensive statements I have ever come across from someone who really should have known better, a note to Lake of Col Fin from "the Vermont collection, New Green Mountain Songster by Phillips Barry in 1939:

"Popular tradition, however, does not mean popular origin. In the case of our ballad, the underlying folklore is Irish de facto, but not de-jure: the ballad is of Oriental and literary origin, and has sunk to the level of the folk which has the keeping of folklore. To put it in a single phrase, memory not invention is the function of the folk".   
JIm Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 07:07 AM

I totally disagree with this Vic -at least until it is backed up with documented evidence rather than opinions.

Then we will have to leave it, Jim. You are surrounded, here and in many books and articles, by massive amounts of evidence that, as you quote, "Popular tradition, however, does not mean popular origin" but you won't be moved, so further discussion would be pointless.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 08:51 AM

There is no "massive evidence" - only academic argument - we don't now how the songs were made or who made them, but personal experience has proved to me that 'the folk' - even those from the lowest regarded section of society, were well capable of making songs
These songs were made and sung as entertainment, just as Barbara Cartland and Charles Dickens wrote their books to entertain - two ends of a literary spectrum - at one end masses of social history and insight into the human condition, at the other, pink froth
One of the things that has been largely ignored about our folksongs is the social history they carry
If I want to know about the nuts and bolts of the Battle of the Nile, I go to the military records and scholarly studies of the subject
If I want to know how it felt for a ploughboy or weaver or land labourer to be conned into the army, stuck in a uniform, given a gun and thrust into the midst of a bloody battle, I go to the songs
Why on earth should a hack concern himself on such matters - it's not as if he was writing for a revolutionary anti-war rural or urban population who were lapping up such tragedies?
Same with all those social misalliance songs - what profit was there writing about some girl whining because her old man wouldn't let her marry the hired help?
These songs carry a feel of knowledge and emotion that reflects personal experience, expressed in a vernacular that rings of reality
I find it very easy to separate a genuine Irish song from an 'Oirish' one created by a hack
Harry Cox once sang 'Betsy the Serving Maid for MacColl and Lomax - when he finished he spat out "and that's how they thought of us" - that's what I call involvement in your art
When he sang Van Diemans Land he launched into a diatribe about the land seizures and Enclosures - again, identification that goes way beyond entertainment.
These songs became "ours" wherever they were sung - very few writers or poets have ever achieved that level of communication
If there is "masses amounts of evidence" - where is it - so far we have only the opinions of researchers and academics - outsiders all
Apart from everything else, these songs were circulated and being referred to centuries before we had universal literacy
People tend to forget that first performances of Hamlet and King Lear were being performed to the sweepings of the London streets - as late as the early twentieth century the 'Fit Ups and Travelling theatres were taking the same plays around to Irish villages in the areshole of nowhere for the delectation of small farmers and land labourers - the dumbing down of our society has a lot to answer for
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 09:35 AM

Jim says
Harry Cox once sang 'Betsy the Serving Maid for MacColl and Lomax - when he finished he spat out "and that's how they thought of us" - that's what I call involvement in your art.

... and Vic reminds Jim that on his own admission, Harry learned nearly all of his songs from broadsides which were kept in a box on top of the wardrobe in his bedroom and that the songs were changed in his handling of them (which might be a fact that is more relevant to the discussion).

I'm afraid that I feel that Jim's long posts do not serve to clarify anything about the facts of the origins of the songs and his unwillingness to concede a single point that others have made here makes these interactions futile. I respect Jim's great knowledge and his huge contribution but cannot abide his dogmatism. It makes me feel that discussions with him are of the order of What Came First - the chicken or the egg? where looking into the faults inherent in the question are not addressed.
So, no more from me on this one.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 10:06 AM

Bob THomson interviewed Harrry Cox extensively and pasted up all his broadsides in the late sixties
Harry collected them but told Bob he learned very few of his songs from them - I have no evidence of the varacity of that claim
It's not true that he learned all his songs from them anyway - Harry and his brother both learned songs locally and from family members
Even if he doid, it takes us no nearer to where the songs originated
in the end it boil;s down to one single fact Vic - if rural workers were capable of making songs they most certainly did - there is no reason to believe the traditional repertoire didn't come from that source and every reason to believe that it didn't
That is not dogmatic,0 but I'm afraid a continual insistence on something on which you have and can have no evidence is
"Bring your witness luv and I'll never deny you"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 11:10 AM

Don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to continue this - off to hospital on Thursday for a new hip and I'll be out of your hair for a week - so I'll put my important bits up now.
There is an over-riding feature of all this
Since I first came into folk-song, the full accepted idea was that 'The Folk' made their songs (some argument about the ballads, but little else)
My friend, Bob Thomson introduced me to the idea that many of them had appeared on broadsides, but he never made claims of authorship to my recollection.
My view of folk song was summed up perfectly by MacColl's extremely moving final statement in the Song Carriers series:

"Well, there they are, the songs of our people. Some of them have been centuries in the making, some of them undoubtedly were born on the broadside presses. Some have the marvellous perfection of stones shaped by the sea's movement. Others are as brash as a cup-final crowd. They were made by professional bards and by unknown poets at the plough-stilts and the handloom. They are tender, harsh,, passionate, ironical, simple, profound.... as varied, indeed, as the landscape of this island.
We are indebted to the Harry Coxes and Phil Tanners, to Colm Keane and Maggie MaccDonagh, to Belle Stewart and Jessie Murray and to all the sweet and raucous unknown singers who have helped to carry our people's songs across the centuries"

When I put this up in a discussion, Steve G's response was "do you believe that romantic rubbish?" - well, yes I did, and still do and will continue to until contrary evidence is produced - the songs are to me, 'The Voice of the People'
Working people have always been regarded as having no creative culture of their own part from their songs, music and tales - Steve's "broadside creations" theory is very much a new kid on the block
The consequences for his claim are socially and culturally enormous - for people like me, catastrophic.
If we are going to take away the claim of ownership of working people and leave them totally devoid of cultural creation we're are going to have to be damn sure we have got it right
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 11:31 AM

Jim wrote:-
Don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to continue this - off to hospital on Thursday for a new hip

I hope the operation is a great success, Jim and that you recover greater mobility and freedom for pain. Tina has had both her hips replaced in recent years and after following a subsequent rigid exercise routine, the quality of her life has been greatly improved. I hope it is the same for you.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 12:06 PM

I'm sure it will be Vic - thanks - it's my second, the other one was a new life
I'll be happier if they remember the headphones this time - I'm not sure I can handle, "hand me that nail nurse" again!!
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 12:16 PM

Jim,
My very best wishes for you and your new hip.

I have told you on many occasions how much great respect I have for you and your work. We are I am sure all of us united in our love for traditional music. The origins are pretty much irrelevant to this. The ownership comes from adoption and re-creation. Let us dwell on this.

BTW Johnny Doran is one of my favourite all-time pipers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 01:13 PM

"Let us dwell on this."
Sory Steve - to important to avoid this
Are you seriously suggesting we should let the only creative activity attributable to working people slip away from us without a debate
You made the statement ? - back it up with facts or withdraw it
Johnny was wonderful - we once had to pull his large extremely brother (appropriately nicknamed "Thump") down into his chair in a pub to stop him weighing into a bunch of local yobs who were pissing through a pub window and giving the very young barmaid a hard time
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 01:51 PM

Jim,

Whilst I don't have the knowledge and experience in this field that you and other recent contributors to this thread have, I find the comment in your last post quite perplexing.

Unless I'm completely missing the point, you appear to be suggesting that: 'folk song' is the only creative activity attributable to working people. That is patently absurd. What did you mean?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 02:16 PM

>>>>>- back it up with facts or withdraw it.<<<<<

That's absurd, Jim, and you must know it. Your own standpoint that the songs were created by ploughboys and dairymaids, nymphs and shepherds, can you back this up with one shred of evidence when applied to published English traditional song? The last time you attempted this one of them turned out to be an American whaling song adapted by Bert!

Subject: Lyr Add: THE QUILTY BURNING
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 03:02 PM

"can you back this up with one shred of evidence when applied to published English traditional song?"
Of course I can't, and your "ploughboys and dairymaids, nymphs and shepherds" is somewhat disingenuous - I never mantioned any of those - try, Travellers rural workers and village carpenters and you might be neareer
the mark - you've never really dropped your "romantic nonsense" insult, have you?
my point was, is, and will remain that it is highly likely that these songs were possibly made by the rural working class - I've produced evidence that backs up that likelihood - where's yours?
My mistake regarding Bert's adaptation was down to the fact that I was taken in by a skilful folkie - That's not going to happen again, certainly not here.

This is a song we recorded from aan elderly Clare man livinbg in Deptford, South East London, he came from a mile or so from here in West Clare but had lived in England singe 1946
Mikey was essentially a dancer - one of the best in the area; he as also a repository of short tales, including a 'yarn' version of The Bishop of Canterbury and a tale called 'The Merchant and the Fiddler's Wife' which appeared in Durfey' Pills as a song which I have never found another version of anywhere else - certainly not in the oral tradition - the si=ung verse is almost identical to Durfey's
I think the not gives most of the background except that the four men who made the song stood at the crossroads a few days after the incident and threw verses at one another until they came up with the full song
We've traved relaatives to everybody mentioned in the song
Jim Carroll

The Quilty Burning.

Mikey Kelleher (originally from Quilty)

Oh the burning of Quilty, you all know it well;
When the barrack took fire where the peelers did dwell.
The flames bursted out, sure it was a great sight;
There were women and children out there all night.

Michael Dwyer, sure, he got a great fright.
He called on his wife for to rescue his life.
His daughter ran out and she roaring, "ovoe,
Blessed light, blessed light, keep away from our door".

Then Micho Kenny, looked out through the glass,
And he saw Patsy Scully outside at the Cross.
"Oh Patsy, Oh Patsy, take out the poor ass,
For the whole blessed place it is all in a mass".

Michael Dwyer, he came down on the scene;
He ran down to the cross and called up Jack Cuneen.
"My house will be burned before 'twill be seen,
And my fool of a son is above in Rineen".

Then Paddy Shannon thrown out his old rags;
He stuck his poor missus into the bag.
"The burning, the burning, it started too soon;
'Twill be burning all night until next afternoon".

Then Paddy Healy came out in the flames;
He could see nobody there but the peelers he'll blame.
He went into Tom Clancy and told him the same.
"By damned", said Tom Clancy, "'tis now we want rain".

Father McGannon came down to the gate;
He says to the boys, "there's an awful disgrace;
For this old barracks is an awful state;
It's no harm to be banished and gone out the place".

Now to conclude and to finish my song;
I hope you'll all tell me my verses is wrong,
For this old barracks is no harm to be gone,
For many the poor fellow was shoved in there wrong.

(Spoken) "I suppose there was an' all".

The incident, that gave rise to this song, now apparently forgotten, took place around 1920, when the Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks at Quilty, a fishing village a few miles south of Miltown Malbay, was set alight by Republicans. Mikey appears to be the only person to remember the song and told us that he recalls it being made by a group of local men shortly after the event.
We have been able to get only very little information about either the song or the incident, apart from the fact that the 'Father McGannon' in the 7th verse was not a priest, but was the nickname of a local man.
We once played this to a friend, the late John Joe Healy, a fiddle player from Quilty, who said of the Paddy Healy in verse 6; "that's my father he's singing about".

The Quilty Burning.
Mikey Kelleher (originally from Quilty)

Oh the burning of Quilty, you all know it well;
When the barrack took fire where the peelers did dwell.
The flames bursted out, sure it was a great sight;
There were women and children out there all night.

Michael Dwyer, sure, he got a great fright.
He called on his wife for to rescue his life.
His daughter ran out and she roaring, "ovoe,
Blessed light, blessed light, keep away from our door".

Then Micho Kenny, looked out through the glass,
And he saw Patsy Scully outside at the Cross.
"Oh Patsy, Oh Patsy, take out the poor ass,
For the whole blessed place it is all in a mass".

Michael Dwyer, he came down on the scene;
He ran down to the cross and called up Jack Cuneen.
"My house will be burned before 'twill be seen,
And my fool of a son is above in Rineen".

Then Paddy Shannon thrown out his old rags;
He stuck his poor missus into the bag.
"The burning, the burning, it started too soon;
'Twill be burning all night until next afternoon".

Then Paddy Healy came out in the flames;
He could see nobody there but the peelers he'll blame.
He went into Tom Clancy and told him the same.
"By damned", said Tom Clancy, "'tis now we want rain".

Father McGannon came down to the gate;
He says to the boys, "there's an awful disgrace;
For this old barracks is an awful state;
It's no harm to be banished and gone out the place".

Now to conclude and to finish my song;
I hope you'll all tell me my verses is wrong,
For this old barracks is no harm to be gone,
For many the poor fellow was shoved in there wrong.

(Spoken) "I suppose there was an' all".

The incident, that gave rise to this song, now apparently forgotten, took place around 1920, when the Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks at Quilty, a fishing village a few miles south of Miltown Malbay, was set alight by Republicans. Mikey appears to be the only person to remember the song and told us that he recalls it being made by a group of local men shortly after the event.
We have been able to get only very little information about either the song or the incident, apart from the fact that the 'Father McGannon' in the 7th verse was not a priest, but was the nickname of a local man.
We once played this to a friend, the late John Joe Healy, a fiddle player from Quilty, who said of the Paddy Healy in verse 6; "that's my father he's singing about".

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 03:15 PM

I'm sorry, Jim, but none of this has any relevance to the published corpus of English folk song, interesting though it is.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 05:04 PM

Any answer to my question, Jim?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 05:24 PM

" the only creative activity attributable to working people."
THat has always been the point of view of teh establishment - maybe I should have said 'artistic creative activity representing their own lives and experiences)
What did you have in mind?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 05:27 PM

Sorry Ed - should have apologised - didn't see your message earlier
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 03 Oct 17 - 07:41 PM

I just want to add some of my own experiences to this debate, with the greatest respect to the scholars above. To do this I am going to have to write about myself, so I'll make it quick and try not to be too dramatic.
The point I want to make is very simple. I do not know what a Folk Song is, but I certainly know what it isn't. There has been a lot of talk about evidence and the only evidence I have is the life I have lived. I left home at 17 and for the most part have been living on my wits ever since. At one time I was playing music in the street to survive, I have travelled round the West country, sleeping under hedges, busking to get enough for food for the next day. Yes of course I make money from Folk Songs but I don't think that demeans the art in any way. I fell in with the Gypsies decades ago learning their Art, songs and lifestyle first hand, and was taught how to earn a living with the streangth in my hands and what ever is between my ears, living half in a house and a trailer, and I married a Romany Gypsy lass.
When it comes to songs and singing the relevance of a song has to be measured against the life of the singers who hear it. If it passes that test, weather it be printed on a Broadsheet 250 years ago or composed last week, it will be sung as an expression of that experience. It doesn't mean it's somehow better or worse for that, but it does mean it may be viewed as relevant to that huge mass of musical excellence we call Folk Song. My best freinds wife (a Romany) sat me down and taught me 'The Tanyard side' face to face as she was taught by her Mother. My singing teacher and freind the late Bill House taught me how to sit, how to breath and how to project a song as he taught me 'One night as I lay on my bed' as his father taught him when Bill was six years old in 1906, the same year as his father sang it to the Hammond Brothers.
So yes-I know a folksong when I hear it, whatever it's background. It's a simple emotional recognition, that will capture your attention, make you smile in appreciation, or shake your head in sympathy. That, I believe is where in begins and ends, and it matters not how many arguments are raised for and against any academic point. Folk Song differs from other music as night does to day wrote Bert Lloyd, but when does day become or night become day? The answer is when ever you decide.
That said I still intend buying and reading the book.
kind regards
Nick

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 03:53 AM

Thanks for that contribution, Nick. I feel very honoured to have worked with you and hope our paths cross again.

I think both Jim and I and others on this forum would agree completely with your viewpoint.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: r.padgett
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 04:18 AM

Yes Folk song is the expression of life and life experience in all its glory and the feelings expressed by the singer in its singing

I have heard many singers who know all the words and many, some of the younger singer too who have all the musical accompaniment but simply in my mind lack the true empathy in the song

That is the essence of folk song: ~ the words sung more often than not unaccompanied ~ and I read somewhere that songs become part of the singer they are carried by the singer and performance will and can change in "how" the singer is able to carry the empathy on that occasion ~ many factors will of course influence that (beer, age of singer, state of health etc

Yes slightly off topic ~ but the original song composition and its worth in the "society" it was created (no idea when or by whom) even if it were a Broadside, Music hall song or newly created at the time has no relevance ~ if the singer understands the underlying empathy then his performance is paramount

Ray

Subject: Lyr Add: PADDY MCINERNEY
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 04:18 AM

"I'm sorry, Jim, but none of this has any relevance to the published corpus of English folk song, interesting though it is."
And the folk songs that appeared on broadsides have no relevance to the origin of our folk song in m opinion, interesting though they are

Nick Dow
Thanks for your fascinating contribution ? a couple of things you wrote should be framed and hung up on the wall of everybody with a serious interest in and love of folk song
The problem with folk song academic research is that it goes in fashions and is discarded for new models like old shoes
In 1909, American researcher Francis Gummere (The Popular Ballad) came up with the idea of 'communal composition', that some of our folk songs were made by groups rather than individuals.
That fell out of fashion and is now pooh-poohed by the in crowd
Taking definitive stances, which I think is what we are arguing about here, will guarantee our remaining ignorant about probably one of the most neglected and rejected aspects of our culture 'The songs of the People'
The song I put up above, 'The Quilty Burning' was composed by four anonymous men; the one below was made on the morning of a wedding by a group of Traveller lads sitting on a grassy bank outside the church on the day of the wedding humourously predicting how the marriage taking place would end up
We recorded about half dozen versions of this, each time we were told to be careful who we played it to, which is why we have never used it.
The couple were still living back then and the singers didn't wish to embarrass them ? blind singer, Mary Delaney told us laughing, "Paddy's my cousin and he'd murder me if he found I'd sung it to you"
The song deals with 'made matches' a marriage done through a matchmaker ? such songs are to be found throughout the oral tradition ? some about willing marriages, but most about enforced ones
The woman in the song was chosen because of her skill at one of the traditional Traveller trades, buying, cleaning and re-selling old feather matresses
We got the background of the song from our friend, Kerry Traveller, Mikeen McCarthy, who was at the wedding. And witnessed the song being made
All the singers and the couple are now dead
Tom Munnelly recorded a version sung by John Reilly (of Well Below the Valley fame); it can be heard on Topic Album, 'Bonny Green Tree' - John called the groom, Bold William Delaney', possibly to save him embarrassment

Paddy McInerney
My name is young Paddy McInerney,
And a brave County Down lad I been,
In the search of a wife I came travelling,
Till I came to old Butterfin (sic) Town.

Now the first man I met was Red Danny,
And then he start talking to me,
He invited me up to the waggon,
And 'twas brandy he ordered for me.

The first thing he drew down was the dealing
And the next was Doll Julia to me,
He was bragging and boasting what a hawker,
Round the green hills of old Cahermee

The first month I married her, 'twas lovely,
And the second, we could not agree,
And the third one she wore on the trousers
And she then came the boss over me.

Now all ye young men and fair maidens,
A warning let ye take by me,
Be never bought by a piebald or a waggon,
Just like I was in old Cahermee.

I have more to say about 'The Quilty Burning' and the significance of such songs to the folk song repertoire ? I included it in this posting at some length but lost the ******* posting
On second thoughts, perhaps it's just as well as it was far too long anyway
Im Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 06:58 AM

I'm disappointed that a lot of the recent additions to this thread have been yet another re-run of the argument about origins.

Setting aside for a moment songs of more recent origin, such as in the music halls, and focussing on the songs that the early collectors accepted as being proper "folk" songs, Baring-Gould (thank you Vic 03 Oct 17 - 06:24 AM and Martin) already observed that most of them existed in broadsides. Another hundred-odd years of evidence confirm that the earliest known versions of most of them are in broadsides or other print.

Steve G and others believe that in most cases those printed version were the originals, although some may have been taken from already existing oral versions. Jim believes it's the other way round, basing his belief partly on internal evidence in the songs that the people who made them had first hand experience of their subjects, and partly on documented instances of song writing by "the folk" in recent times.

Isn't it time to agree to disagree about that (at least in this particular thread) and focus our attention on the songs' subsequent propagation and evolution?

Steve Roud maintains that what makes a song a folk song is not where it started but what people do with it. Vic's 01 Oct 17 - 05:59 PM post about "The Little Shirt My Mother Made For Me" is a beautiful illustration of that. (Opinions about the aesthetic worth of that particular song are a separate matter entirely. The same processes have been at work on all sorts of songs, from dirty doggerel to big ballads.)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 07:12 AM

"Isn't it time to agree to disagree about that"
Steve's claim on makes that totally impossible Richard - it would make the singers of these claims of composition totally out of the question if virtually all had originated in print
To Understand the importance of these songs to our history and culture it is essential to work out who made them and why they were made - hack made songs for money cast an entirely different light on that understanding
The common acceptance has been that they were mostly made by the people they were about - Steve still passes that off as romantic nonsense
It may not be important to a singer, but the importance of these song transcends that
I'l continue with this until it's settled one way or the other - sorry - too much of an issue for me
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 07:38 AM

Can I jus say here that throughout my time on Mudcat I have regarded it as ludicrous that it is virtually impossible to discuss vital subject such as folk song definitions and MacColl without them ending in acrimony and name calling
Please don't make this yet another no-go area
We are all adults and if we are not capable of behaving as such with serious, if contentious subjects we may as well settle down comfortably in our armchairs with The Readers Digest
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 08:44 AM

I've now jumped ahead, in reading the book, to 'Folk Song In Its Natural Habitat', the book's Part 3. (I promise to go back and read Part 2 later!) I'm finding part 3 a much speedier read, partly because it is more unequivocally folk-song related, rather than shading off into folk's porous boundaries with other music.

I do feel, overall, that Roud's book is (at least) two books rather than one. And that an analogous specialist writing in another discipline (say, a history of World War II, or a history of European painting, or a history of French jazz) would not have needed an equivalent to the 219 pages that make up Part 1: these can be loosely summarised as 'what is a folk song?'; and 'who collected the folk songs and how?'. Roud does have a habit of saying things like "of course, a history of folk song collection is not a history of folk song" (I'm paraphrasing from memory here), before giving us a near-book-length history of folk song collection. Or stating, that the Revival is beyond the book's remit, but then giving us a 17-page history of the Revival. I think if I'd started the book with Part 2, read onto Part 3, and then regarded Part 1 as a kind of appendix, I'd probably have finished reading it by now and found it a smoother read. Everything in the book is interesting, but I'm not sure it all needs to be in the same book.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 10:45 AM

Why is folk song definition so VITAL?

If I hear a song and enjoy it I will probably want to learn it and sing it no matter what it's origin. I am interested to know where it came from if that is known yes, but if it's origins are lost in the annals of time so what. I will still enjoy it.

Songs are to be sung,waffling on incessantly about their possible origin
is time wasted.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 11:13 AM

an analogous specialist writing in another discipline (say, a history of World War II, or a history of European painting, or a history of French jazz) would not have needed an equivalent to the 219 pages that make up Part 1: these can be loosely summarised as 'what is a folk song?'; and 'who collected the folk songs and how?'.

Sometimes they do. Books on the Crusades have a problem that they were mostly fought by people, on all sides, who had no label for what was going on - the modern idea of a "crusade" came along after it was all over. And books on the wars of the 20th century could certainly do with a recognition that both WW1 and WW2 started before they were declared and continued long after they officially finished, involving people who weren't recognized as combatants by any diplomatic protocol.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 11:24 AM

"Songs are to be sung,waffling on incessantly about their possible origin"
Only to those who can't see beyond their own personal interests Hoot
Go count how many books there are on Shakespeare, despite the fact that his plays were only there to be acted - take every aspect of music, literature, art... throughout our entire history and come back and tell me that this doen't apply equally - even pop music
It's good to reminded of why MacColl broke with Ballads and Blues and formed a club for the genuine lovers of The Songs of the People in all its aspects
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 11:37 AM

"books on the wars of the 20th century could certainly do with a recognition that both WW1 and WW2 started before they were declared and continued long after they officially finished, involving people who weren't recognized as combatants by any diplomatic protocol"

Yes, but that's not really the equivalent. Have you ever read a book on World War II that dedicated a chapter to asking the question "what is a war?", before going on to provide 200 pages of potted history of other historians who've written about World War II?

Subject: Lyr Add: THE COLD MAN BY NIGHT + THE BOBBED HAIR
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 12:09 PM

I've only got the rest of today before I drop out of this for a week or so, so I'll make the point I tried to this morning
'The Quilty Burning' represents an important period of Irish history, the period between the Easter rising and the signing of the Treaty, 1916 to 1922
Those six years produced thousands of Irish folk songs on the War of Independence, some made as deliberate propaganda pieces, but the majority were the reactions of 'ordinary' people to the events that were taking place
These latter sprang up in every County in Ireland, made by locals, accepted for a time and mainly disappearing when the events that inspired them faded from memory.
They are proof positive that farm workers, labourers, trades men and women, fishermen, even children, were capable of making songs on any subject that took their interest.
The only differences between Ireland and Britain was firstly, that Ireland still had a thriving singing tradition at the time providing a suitable matrix for making songs, also Irish history, especially since the Famine, provided a mass of subjects to inspire, even demand new songs.
Terry Moylan's huge book, 'The Indignant Muse', contains many of these locally made songs and his researches uncovered many more he was unable to use.
Politics wasn't the only subject of course ? I put up a Travellers song on 'made matches' that has never seen the light of day.
This is a Clare song on a similar theme made well about ten miles from the singer, Matin Long's home ? this one never made it into print either and the author is also unknown.

That Cold Man by Night.   Martin Long, Tooreen, Inagh, Recorded July 1975
I am a handsome comely maid; my age is scarce eighteen,
I am the only daughter of a farmer near Crusheen,
'Tis married I intend to be before its winning daylight,
Oh, my father wants me to get wed to a cold man by night.

This man being old, as I am told, his years are sixty-four,
I really mean to slight him, for he being wed before,
His common shoes are always loose, and his clothes don't fit him right,
Oh I don't intend the wife to be of that cold man by night.

The very next day without delay they all rode into town,
To a learned man they quickly ran the contract to pin down;
Into an inn they did call in to whet their whistles nigh,
In hope that I would live and die with that cold man by night.

My father came, I did him blame and thus to him did say,
"Oh father dear, you acted queer in what you done today,
In the Shannon deep I'll go and sleep, before the mornings light,
Before I'll agree the wife to be of that cold man by night".

"Oh daughter dear, don't say no more, or be a foolish lass,
For he has a house and four good cows, and a sporting fine black ass,
He has a handsome feather bed where ye may rest by night,
So change your life and be the wife of that cold man by night".

"Oh father dear, don't say no more, for I'll tell you the reason why,
Before I'll agree the wife to be, I'd first lay down and die,
In the Shannon deep I'll go and sleep before the mornings light,
Before I'll consent to be content with that cold man by night.

My match is broke, without a joke, I'll marry if I can,
Before (???) is over I'll have a nice young man,
That will take me in his arms in a cold and frosty night,
And some other dame might do the same with that cold man by night.

The practice of young women being pressurised or even forced into arranged marriages of convenience to older men has inspired many songs throughout these islands; sometimes depicting the tragedy or resigned bitterness of the situation the woman finds herself in, but occasionally, as with this one, open defiance, with a touch of humour.
This appears to be a locally-made song; we have been unable to find another example of it outside Clare.
Particularly interesting is the description of the visit to the matchmaker (the "learned man") and the celebratory ceremony to seal the 'made match'.

And another on the equally popular subject of changing fashions, from Tom Lenihan of Miltown Malbay, which must have been made when Tom was in his twenties
The action of the song takes place a few miles from where the 'Cold Man by Night originated

The Bobbed Hair (Roud 3077)
Tom Lenihan Knockbrack, Miltown Malbay Recorded 1976
Carroll Mackenzie Collection

I feel depressed and sad tonight, my heart is filled with woe,
Since I met my Biddy darling when we parted long ago.
I remember when we parted how the sun came shining down
On that fair and handsome creature and her lovely locks of brown.

When I met her I was horrified, I could not understand
What made her locks so ugly now that once was sweet and grand.
I gazed in silent wonder, yes, I looked and looked again;
My heart near burst asunder when I found she had bobbed her hair.

I said: 'Biddy dear, what happened you, that you looked so neat and trim
The night we kissed and parted in the road near Corofin?'
I asked why she had shorn her locks, she smiled and made a bow,
And the answer that she made was: 'Tis all the fashion now.'

Ah, to see my darling's hair, too, it was a lovely sight,
And although 'tis hard to make me cry, I shed some tears that night.
Before we left I asked her how this bobbing first began,
'Some years ago,' she said, 'you know, 'twas done by Black and Tans!'

Farewell, dear Bid, I'm clear fed up, there is no bobbed hair for me.
Our partnership we must dissolve, I'm horrified to see,
The locks that nature gave to thee, oh, just for fashion's sake
Clipped off, and now you neck is bare, like Paddy McGinty's drake.

Of course I know the times have changed, but I'll allow for that,
And shingled hair looks horrible beneath a nice new hat.
And why don't fashions doff the shawl our grannys used to wear?
Some has done it still and always will but they have not bobbed their hair.

The ass brays in a strong protest and swears he will not move
And goats upon the mountains bleat that fashions may improve
The swallows are about to leave, no more we'll see the hare
And stalks are burned with the blight since the women bobbed their hair.

Conversation between Tom Lehihan and Jim Carroll after the song:
Jim: Who do you reckon made that song?
Tom: Well, it was supposed that 'twas Paddy Jordan that composed it, but when he was asked about it, he said that he never composed it. That song is over sixty years.
Jim: Paddy Jordan was a Miltown man, was he?
Tom: He was a Miltown man.

Note
Bobbed Hair ? Tom Lenihan
Styles and fashions have long been a subject for humour in song.
Tom's song on a lover lamenting an early 20th century hairstyle is one of the best we have come across.
The locating of the song in Corofin appears to indicate that it was locally made; Tom said it was a great favourite there, and the reference to 'Black and Tans puts it some time after independence.
The latter refers to a punishment meted out by the Tans to women in households harbouring Republicans, as dramatized in the film, 'The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
It was also used by the Resistance in Europe during world War Two to those who consorted with German soldiers.
'The Bobbed Hair' is echoed by an American Ozark song of the late 1920s which pleads;

"Why do you bob your hair girls?
It is an awful shame
To rob the head God gave you,
To bear the flapper's name."

I really do believe that anybody claiming that our folk songs originated from the pens of professional song makers need to face the fact that country people from all over these islands were perfectly capable of making them themselves without help
If the were capable of it, why didn't they do it?
There are plenty more examples to choose from on every subject under the sun
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 12:12 PM

Jim,

I asked why folk song definition is vital.

"genuine lovers of The Songs of the People in all it's aspects" ????

I don't know who you mean by that. Presumably only those who agree with your own personal views and interests. The fact that some of us do not see the point in endlessly looking for something which cannot be defined to everyone's satisfaction does not mean that we do not enjoy some of the end product as much as you.

It seems My ignorance of Shakespeare is greater than I thought. I was under the impression that he or Bacon or whoever wrote plays to entertain an audience and earn a living. Obviously you know better.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 01:07 PM

Songs are to be sung,waffling on incessantly about their possible origin is time wasted.

I'd been waiting for that one to come up!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 01:20 PM

Why on earth should the fact that people (very much like myself) enjoy Shakespeare's plays stop anybody enquiring further into his art?
I, like Nock Dow, have no problem whatever recognising or defining a folk song when I hear one - there are libraries of literature to assist if I ever have the slightest problem in doing so
Personally, I spent thirty years asking source singers what it was and had no problem with what they told me.
What makes me laugh about you people is that if I or anybody else ever suggested that you have it have the same interest as you do, yo're the first up on your chairs screaming "folk police", but you have no hesitation it screaming the odds when our interests part from yours
"Songs are to be sung,waffling on incessantly about their possible origin" is about as 'kick in the door and burn the books" as it gets
Kindly mind your own business and let me decide for myself what my interests are
"I don't know who you mean by that. "
You really have no concept that folk songs might have more to offer than to be sung - you astound me?
Long live education eh!
Jim Carroll
Your "folk police" might have I point if I behaved like you
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 01:38 PM

"I'd been waiting for that one to come up!"
Me too
I always wonder what these people have to hide
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 04:40 PM

Richard
Fully agree.
Jim has given his twopennorth. I've given mine. Others have contributed. No doubt some people will sit in the middle. If Jim is the only one I need to convince then I know that's never gonna happen! I'll still be interested to know what he has to say when he's read the book.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 05:09 PM

Jim
Methinks ye hev been trolled!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 07:37 PM

" If Jim is the only one I need to convince then I know that's never gonna happen! I'll still be interested to know what he has to say when he's read the book."
Sorry Steve - you have given no evidence to back your claim, which flies in the face of every scrap of scholarship I have ever come across and is totally at odds by my own experiences and conclusions
Kite flying theories without evidence and without a single rational response only convinces me that your claims have no foundation in reality
You originally attempted to dismiss all the examples I put up as 'retired people scribbling poems in their spare time' - your refusal to even acknowledge the examples, the implication that song making was commonplace within the the tradition and the possible extent of them makes you somewhat dishonest (I really don't say that lightly, nor do I say it to insult you - it upsets me deeply that I have reached that conclusion about a fellow folk song enthusiast I once respected, even though I didn't agree with him)
My idea of genuine research is to take every piece of evidence offered, examine it, accept it if it works and explain why it doesn't if it doesn't convince me
I have done my level best here to do exactly that - you have not had the courtesy to do that.
You have responded with evasion, dishonesty and at time insults "ploughboys and dairymaids, nymphs and shepherds" - not the thing I have come to expect from serious people
You started off offering me character references of people who supported you, now we have come full circle "If Jim is the only one I need to convince"
Shame on you
Are you really so arrogant as to believe everybody but me accepts your unproven theory?
I find this last posting at best patronising, but rather, hurtful and nasty towards a fellow researcher - if there was nothing else, I would accept that as an indication that you are not able to defend your theory.
Personally, I don't gve a toss how many people believe something if it doesn't hold water
You theory doesn't and your behaviour here is an indication that you are aware of that and are not prepared to talk it through.
Fine by me
I'm giving a talk on our work at Galway University in November - you've just managed to add a whole new section to it.
I can handle trolls - they are easy
I realluy can't handle this level of discussion
Yours sadly
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 07:45 PM

It seems that Jim needs to read Steve's book if he really wants evidence - but somehow I doubt that he will........Sadly.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 08:03 PM

For your interest, here are a list of unpublished songs local to West Clare from our collection, all with no named author and all made within the lifetimes of the singers

Around the hills_of_clare
Bad Year sung by John Lyons
Beautiful Town of Kilrush sung by Michael Falsey
Blessed Christmas Day sung by Martin Junior Crehan
Bobbed Hair sung by Tom Lenihan
Broadford Prisoners sung by John Lyons
Cahermurphy sung by Josie Baker
Cattle Drivers sung by Michael 'Straighty' Flanagan
Clare election songs
Clare To The Front sung by Michael 'Straighty' Flanagan
Devalera_election_song
Donkey sung by Paddy Flanagan
Down By Mount Callan Side
Drunken Bear
Dudley Lee The Blackleg sung by Martin Howley
East Clare Election sung by Martin Howley
Fair At Doonbeg sung by Vincie Boyle
Fair Of Sixmilebridge sung by John Lyons
Farewell To Belharbour sung by Katie Droney
Farewell to Lissycasey sung by Vincie Boyle
Farewell to Miltown Malbay
Five Pilots of Kilbaha
Fourth Battalion of Mid-Clare
Francie Hynes sung by Michael Falsey
Girl from_clahandine
Gleesons Of Coore sung by Martin Junior Crehan
Grazier's Song
Green_flag_of_erin
Hills of Shanaway sung by Winifred Walsh
Hillside of Beenavane
John From Kilkee sung by Pat MacNamara
Johnny Boland
Kilkee Drowning sung by Martin Reidy
Kilrush Josie Baker
Lament for Willie Clancy sung by Marty Malley
Leon 1.
Leon 2
(three more songs on The Leon unrecorded but handwritten)
Heroes of Quilty
Lone Shanakyle sung by Michael Straighty Flanagan
Lovely Old Miltown sung by Peggy McMahon
Mac and Shanahan sung by Tom Lenihan
Mac and Shanahan (different song on same subject)
Memories of Clare
Men of County Clare sung by Tom Lenihan
Miltown Malbay Fair
Misses Limerick Kerry and Clare sung by Tom Lenihan
Murder of Mrs O'Mara sung by Martin Howley
My Eileen
My Native County Clare sung by Nora Cleary
Nora Daly sung by Tom Lenihan
Old Grey mare 2 versions
Pride of Kilkee sung by Tom Lenihan
Pub Down in Coore sung by Martin Junior Crehan
Querrin Bay Drowning sung by Michael Falsey
Quilty Burning
Quilty Song sung by Martin Junior Crehan
Another Quilty Song sung by Martin Junior Crehan
Rineen Ambush Five songs under this title)
Shannon Scheme Shannon Scheme
St. Brigid's Well sung by Jamesie McCarthy
That Cold Man by Night
There Is A Hero sung by Pat McNamara
St. Brigid's Well sung by Jamesie McCarthy
That Cold Man by Night
The Drovers Song (cattle rustling songs from the Land Wars)
There Is A Hero sung by Pat McNamara
Tirmanagh Hill sung by Peggy McMahon
Tobins of Kilmaley Nora Cleary
Vale of Fermoyle sung by Martin Howley
Village of Quilty
West Clare Railway (three complete songs and two fragments)


Apart from these there are over one hundred songs published for the first time in 1970 under the title ‘Ballads of Clare’ – all made in the first half of the twentieth century and all from East Clare   
If that isn’t proof that rural people are not natural songmakers, I don’t know what is
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 08:14 PM

"It seems that Jim needs to read Steve's book if he really wants evidence - but somehow I doubt that he will........Sadly."
Perhaps you can give a summary Tim - Steve hasn't so far
I have dipped into the relevant sections of the book carefully and am half way through it page for page and have not found a shred so far
Can you please explain to me how there can possibly be evidence when even Steve has admitted that our knowledge of the oral tradition does not go back further than the beginning of the 20th century?
You join Steve G in his insults when you suggest that I won't read it - how dare you make such an assumption
Sorry folks - all this unpleasantness is proof positive that no proof either way exists and thos who believe there is substitute nastiness for honest argument
Why will none of you respond to the points I have put up honestly and decently?
THey really are there to be knocked down, but it takes more than denials, evasion and character references
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 04 Oct 17 - 10:32 PM

Jim - you have a wonderful record of collecting songs - all in the later 20th century. Must - if not all - of Steve's theories relate to the collections made in the early 20th century, IMHO a significantly different period.
I have actually not read Steve's book - but I have been to one of his presentations of the contains - that was very specific (however I don't have notes), and I found it very appealing.
I too have been studying the same period and I too have found examples of the existence of broadside versions of songs collected by Gardiner in particular.
Personally - I am interested in singing the songs and who sang them - not their origins - but if I find a connection to a broadside, I have to assume something......

I wish you well with your op, and I am sorry if you thought my comments insulting - but I hope you do glean something from Steve's book - it is 700 pages long, and he has been working on it for a very long time and has significant knowledge - so there is probably some truth between the covers.....

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 02:23 AM

"you have a wonderful record of collecting songs -"
Please don't patonise me Tim - if you think that all I've done is collect songs and learned nothing from them, you insult me as much as Richard and Steve does
Steve's comments may relate to the early twentieth century collections, but his definitive statement covers the entire reperoire, including the ballads - his contemptuous reference to "shepherds and swains" romanticism is at least a seventeenth century one.
To make such a definitive statement based on the condition of the song tradition in the early twentieth century is academic madness - kile trying to assess the general health of a human being by examining a corpse.
Our song traditions began to disappear when the Industrial Revolution wrought massive changes both in the town and the countryside, breaking up the communities and putting massive pressure on the workers.
Sharp and his colleagues stressed over and over again that they were dealing with the pale shadow of a song tradition - as Tommy Munnely put it "a race with the undertaker"
By the time the BBC mounted their mopping up campaign, in England they were dealing with singers who were remembering songs that had been remembered from parents who had might or might not have been part of a living oral tradition - second or third hand rather than direct from the horse's mouth - a moribund or dead tradition.
Ireland was different in that rural agriculture and the lifestyle that came with it still had a living song tradition right through to the 40s and fifties - the non-literate Travellers had one up to the 1970s
Both these latter were not only still carrying the old songs, largely untainted, but in both cases, were still producing a rich repertoire of newly made songs.
If Steve is referring to the early twentieth century state of things, when the tradition had deteriorated beyond repetition, he needs to make that clear - so far he has either poured scorn or refused to comment on the fact that working people made their songs "romantic nonsense2
I wen to bed extremely depressed last night - I am still seething, so I got up at this gaud-awful hour and dug out a several 'character references
Steve attaches such importance to - the end result is somewhat long because I have left it intact - I apologise for the length of the piece - both to those still interested and to the site administrators for taking up so much space
The first two writers lived and worked at a time when the broadside industry was thriving and both were totally familiar with its output and spent a great deal of time comparing it with the oraol repertoir
I confess I haven't read the second for around forty years, so it came as a shaft of sunlight through all this mirk.
The third seems to have concentrated primarily on broadsides and has done stirling work in dating them
Might look in before I head for Galway - thanks for your best wishes

"The immense collections of Broadside ballads, the Roxburghe and Pepys ... doubtless contain some ballads which we should at once declare to possess the popular character, and yet on the whole they are veritable dung-hills, in which, only after a great deal of sickening grubbing, one finds a very moderate jewel."
Francis James Child letter sent by Child to Svend Grundtvig in Copenhagen, August 25th 1872.

Before concluding this very incomplete summary, something must needs be said about the broadside or ballet, which has had so marked, and in many ways so detri¬mental an influence upon the- words of the folk-ballad and song. The ballad broad¬side, which sprang into life very soon after the invention of printing, consisted of a single sheet of paper, upon one side of which were printed the words only of the ballad, or song. These broadsheets were hawked about the country by packmen, who frequented fairs, village festivals, and public gatherings of all sorts, and who advertised their wares by singing them in market-places, on village greens, in the streets of the towns, and wherever they could attract an audience. In this way bal¬lads and songs were disseminated all over the land. In later days the broadside would have two or more ballads printed upon it, and sometimes several ballads were bound together and distributed in small books of three or four pages, called “ gar¬lands ”.
Many of these broadside ballads were the productions of the literary hacks of the towns, the Fleet Street scribblers of the day; occasionally they were written by ballad-mongers of literary repute, like Martin Parker. Some of them were learned by the hawkers during their country excursions, and were afterwards recited by them, for a consideration, to their employers. In this manner the traditional ballad found its way on to the broadside, but, usually, in a very garbled form, and after many editings. Consequently, the ballad-sheet, while it aided the popularization of the ballad, also tended to vulgarize it. It was only very rarely that a genuine tra¬ditional ballad found its way on to a broadside without suffering corruption. A broadside version of a ballad is usually, therefore, a very indifferent one, and vastly inferior to the genuine peasant song.
With very rare exceptions, and for obvious reasons, the broadside contained the words only of the songs, not the music to which they were sung. The music of the folk-song did not, therefore, suffer corruption through the agency of the ballad-sheet, as was the case with the words. We must remember also that the folk-singer would often learn modern and very indifferent sets of words from the broadside, and sing them to old tunes, after the manner of the “ execution songs,” already mentioned.
These, no doubt, are the chief reasons why the music of the folk-song of to-day has been more faithfully preserved than its text. For it must be confessed that the words of the folk-song often come to the collector of to-day in a very corrupt and incomplete state. The truth is that the twentieth century collector is a hundred years too late. The English ballad is moribund ; its account is well-nigh closed.
This conclusion corroborates that which was reached by 4 4 The Society of Anti¬quaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ”, when, in 1855, they set about the collection of the Northumbrian ballads. In their first report they recorded that, so far as the words were concerned, they were “ half-a-century too late ”.
And yet, although page after page of the collector’s note-books are filled with scraps of imperfectly-remembered broadside versions, here and there will be found, sometimes a whole ballad, more often a verse or two, or, perhaps, a phrase only of genuine folk-made poetry. It is only from scraps of this kind that an estimate can be formed, and that a speculative one, of what the English ballad was in its prime. It has been pointed out that the Scottish ballad is immeasurably finer and more poetical than the English. But the comparison is scarcely a fair one. For the songs of Lowland Scotland were collected more than a hundred years ago, when ballad- singing was still a living art; whereas we in England have so neglected our oppor¬tunities that we are only now making a belated attempt to gather up the crumbs. Such ballads as “ The Unquiet Grave ” etc., which have survived in more or less in¬corrupt form, are there to remind us of the loss that we have suffered from the un¬worthy neglect of past opportunities.
Over and above this question of word-corruption, there are some folk-songs, which, for other reasons, can only be published after extensive alteration or excision. Some of these, happily only a few, are gross and coarse in sentiment and objectionable in every way. I am convinced, however, that the majority of these are individual and not communal productions, and cannot therefore be classed as genuine folk-songs. At any rate, I know that they offend against the communal sense of propriety, that the verdict of the community is expressly against them, and that those who sing them do so fully understanding that they are bad, vicious and indefensible.
But there are also a large number of folk-songs, which transgress the accepted conventions of the present age, and which would shock the susceptibilities of those who rank reticence and reserve amongst the noblest of the virtues. These are not, strictly speaking, bad songs ; they contain nothing that is really wrong or unwhole¬some. And they do not violate the communal sense of what is right and proper. They are sung freely and openly by peasant singers, in entire innocence of heart, and without the shadow of a thought that they contain anything that is objectionable, or that they themselves are committing any offence against propriety in singing them.
This is a phenomenon which opens up a large question. The key-note of folk- poetry, as we have already shown, is simplicity and directness without subtlety—as in the Bible narratives and Shakespeare. This characteristic might be mistaken for
a want of refinement by those who live in an age where subtlety and circumlocution are extensively practised, This question comes especially to the fore when the most universal and elemental of all subjects is treated, that of love and the relations of man to woman. Its very intimacy and mystery cause many minds to shrink from expressing themselves openly on the subject, as they would shrink from desecrating a shrine. The ballad-maker has no such feeling. He has none of that delicacy, which, as often as not, degenerates into pruriency. Consequently, he treats “ the way of a man with a maid ” simply and directly, just as he treats every other sub¬ject. Those, therefore, who would study ballad-literature, must realize that they will find in it none of those feelings and unuttered thoughts, which are characteristic of a more self-conscious but by no means more pure-minded age. Nevertheless, however much we may admire the simplicity and the straightforward diction of the ballad- maker, we have to realize that other times and other people are not so simple- minded and downright, and that what is deemed fit and proper for one period is not necessarily so for others. The folk-song editor, therefore, has perforce to undertake the distasteful task of modifying noble and beautiful sentiments in order that they may suit the minds and conform to the conventions of another age, where such things would not be understood in the primitive, direct and healthy sense.
These songs, however, in that they throw a searching light upon the character of the peasant, possess* great scientific value. For this reason alone, it is obviously the duty of the collector to note them down conscientiously and accurately, and to take care that his transcriptions are placed in libraries and museums, where they may be examined by students and those who will not misunderstand them.
Songs of the type that we have been discussing, as well as those whose words are incomplete or corrupt, present a knotty problem to the collector who would publish them for popular use. Only those who have tried their hands at editing a folk-song can realize the immense difficulty of the task. To be successful the editor must be in close sympathy with the aims of the folk-poet. He must divest himself of all acquired literary tricks, be alert to avoid anachronisms, and contrive to speak in the simple and direct language of the peasant. The high estimation, in which the best Scottish traditional poetry is deservedly held, is due in no small measure to the genius and sympathetic insight of those who edited it. Amongst these Burns was, of course, pre-eminent. But he was a peasant as well as a poet, and represented the peasant element in song. He was, moreover, an enthusiastic collector of the folk- tunes of his own country, of which he possessed an intimate, if not a technical knowledge. Yet, it cannot truthfully be said that even Burns was uniformly suc¬cessful in his revisions, although in such songs as “ John Anderson, my Jo ”, or “ O ! my luve’s like a red, red rose ”, he approached perfection. It must be remembered, too, that he confined his attention to the songs, and that he scarcely touched the ballads, which were left to Sir Walter Scott and others to recover and to edit. Who will do for our English ballads and songs what Scott and Burns did for the Scottish ?
Cecil J Sharp, , ‘Folk Poetry’ from English Folk Songs - Some Conclusions

At least a third of the 305 ballads canonised in his great work owe their continuance in oral tradition to having been printed as street literature, and many of those that don't are tainted by the interference of a series of literary hands, some having been totally fabricated by such. Indeed, this literary interference has been, and is, a lively and thriving tradition all of its own.
Dunghill’ (Steve Gardham)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 05:00 AM

For what it's worth, I've now read about two thirds of Roud's book, and I don't recall having read any statements in the book suggesting that the vast majority of the English folk song repertoire of today originated in broadside ballads, written by professional or semi-professional broadside hacks. I could be wrong, but if he does say this definitively I don't remember it.

My overwhelming impression is that Roud's conclusions are overall of the "it's a bit of everything" type. I do recall Roud stating that claims of truly ancient antiquity for any given folk song are unlikely (and, more to the point, unprovable) but most of the time Roud seems to be pretty sanguine and philosophical about origins and proof. He is certainly sceptical about unequivocal claims to antiquity: for example, he challenges Bert Lloyd's unsupported claim that "we know" the Cutty Wren song to have been sung as part of a pagan winter ritual. But Roud is a very documentation-based researcher so he is just as scrupulous regarding any statements from the opposite end of the spectrum: as I said, I can't remember Roud endorsing any definitive statements regarding the polar opposite standpoint. Most of the time, it's a case of "there isn't proof of this" and, for Roud, what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 06:07 AM

"What makes me laugh about you people is that if I or anybody else ever suggested that you have it have the same interest as you do, yo're the first up on your chairs screaming "folk police", but you have no hesitation it screaming the odds when our interests part from yours
"Songs are to be sung,waffling on incessantly about their possible origin" is about as 'kick in the door and burn the books" as it gets
Kindly mind your own business and let me decide for myself what my interests are"

Having read the above Jim, I have no idea what you are trying to say.

I can only guess that "you people" again means anybody that doesn't agree with your point of view.

I suggest you calm down and try not to lose any more sleep.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 06:38 AM

"Having read the above Jim, I have no idea what you are trying to say."
Didn't think you would for a minute - it was aimed at folk song lovers
I'VE SHOWN YOU MY CREDENTIALS - YOU SHOW ME YOURS
Back to reality
I strongly fear that what happened to the revival is now happening to sections of research
When the clubs ran out of new old songs they began to look elsewhere - Victorian parlour ballads, Music Hall, early pop songs - ending up with the 'horse music' definition - anything goes, from Dan Leno to Dylan - anything that would justify performing anything they fancied wherever it came from and whoever's culture it represented
That's why many thousands left the scene in the seventies and eighties.
Now we have a situation in research were some believe everything to be said on folk song has been said so "let's re-define it and keep ourselves busy"
That is why folk song will never be taken seriously outside the tiny number of folk-Masonic Lodges of rapidly ageing folkies - not unless we gat a grip and try to do something about it - like taking ourselves seriously so that others will
It's happened in spades among Ireland's your with instrumental music - go check
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 06:40 AM

"Ireland's young people" - I should have said
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 12:13 PM

I don't recall having read any statements in the book suggesting that the vast majority of the English folk song repertoire of today originated in broadside ballads, written by professional or semi-professional broadside hacks.

In the chapter on 'Back-street printers, ballad sellers and buskers', the '90-95%' figure for the number of folk songs appearing in street literature is on p 442, and although SR does enter the caveat that this is not in itself evidence of a direct link, other evidence suggests to him that there is. In the 'New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs', the same author states that 'some, perhaps most' of them 'started life as songs written for broadside production.... probably written by... broadside hacks'

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 12:24 PM

And a good hack might have written several good songs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 12:53 PM

"In the chapter on 'Back-street printers, ballad sellers and buskers', the '90-95%' figure for the number of folk songs appearing in street literature is on p 442, and although SR does enter the caveat that this is not in itself evidence of a direct link, other evidence suggests to him that there is."

OK, that's the chapter I'm currently reading. I'll look out for that. But I did use the word "originated" - not "appeared". Just because a song appears in a broadside, doesn't mean it was written for that broadside. I mean, I know that 'The Streams of Lovely Nancy' was printed on a broadside, but it seems hard to imagine that a broadside writer would have consciously sat down and penned so many non-sequiturs.

So I'd be interested in the evidence behind: "probably written by ... broadside hacks" too – as I can't really imagine what that evidence would look like. (Given how, as Roud points out, broadside printers nicked each others' material.) I wonder what percentage of broadside songs have known authors?

Just to clear, by "folk songs" here, is Roud referring to songs he's given a Roud Index Number to – all the folk songs he's ever come across? Is he saying 90–95% of the folk songs he's ever encountered have appeared in street literature?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 01:13 PM

Regarding "Streams of Lovely Nancy" - Roud 688 - there is an Irish version of the song - The Strands of Magilligan - I am not 100% sure of how old it is, but it was collected in 1933 and published in Huntington, Songs of the People (1990) p.259 (according to Roud) from the singer Sam Henry.
Several years ago in heard Dave MacLurg sing it at Mystic and it made me revive my singing of Streams (as collected from William & Turp Brown in Hampshire)
This "Strands" version is NOT in the Bodleian Ballads - but may "Streams" are with dates as early as 1813.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 02:34 PM

Just to clear, by "folk songs" here, is Roud referring to songs he's given a Roud Index Number to – all the folk songs he's ever come across? Is he saying 90–95% of the folk songs he's ever encountered have appeared in street literature?

He means 'folk songs' as notated by collectors in late 19th / early 20th century England.

As to the other evidence, I'll let you finish the chapter rather than try to paraphrase. However I don't think SR would dispute that broadside writers were quite capable of plagiarising traditional songs as well as other people's broadsides.

'Streams of Lovely Nancy' is an interesting one. As my old friend Roy Harris once wrote: "One of the loveliest jumbles in English folk song. Impossible (so far) to know what it's all about." But then, the song as sung in the revival didn't always include all available verses.

I had a quick look at the Bodleian site, where there are loads of SOLN broadsides, with at least two different versions of the story (such as it is). One follows the standard opening with verses about a woman parting from her sailor lover, while in another the opening is the same, but he seems to be a soldier judging by the reference to 'marching away'. The place names change as well. What that tells me is that at least one and possibly both of these are rewrites of another text, but that the writer wasn't particularly worried that the opening verses didn't make much sense or have anything to do with the tale of the parted lovers. Here are two examples:

'Streams of Lovely Nancy' (1)

'Streams of Lovely Nancy' (2)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 02:53 PM

I am afraid - Brian - neither of your "Streams" links work...But I think I know what you have in mind.

Best - Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 03:11 PM

I suspect that these are the correct links -

http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/static/images/sheets/20000/17810.gif

http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/static/images/sheets/10000/07200.gif

I am recording an interview with Brian on Saturday morning, I now have an extra subject to talk to him about. I'm sure that Making links on Mudcat will be fascinating listening when it it broadcast.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 03:14 PM

I'm sure that Making links on Mudcat will be fascinating listening when it it broadcast.

But they work fine for me! Internet down everywhere but Glossop, it seems?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 03:16 PM

... however, Vic's second one doesn't work. I'm looking forward to that discussion, Vic.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 03:30 PM

Neither of Brian's links work in Lewes
Both of my links work in Lewes.

Good. A contentious interview on radio can make interesting listening, whereas long contentious threads on folk music forums.......

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 03:37 PM

Lewes is a strange place, Vic, you must admit.

I think we need some independent evidence about whose links work the best.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Marje
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 05:33 PM

Well, I can report that none of the four links work in Devon on a Kindle Fire tablet.
Hope this helps!
Marje

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 05:56 PM

I'm sorry Marje, but your doubtlessly well meaning observation doesn't help the intriguing argument move forward at all. Sorry

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 06:46 PM

For me neither link works if I just click on it. But right-click, copy link location, and paste into the address bar works for both of them. Make sense of that if you can. (As it happens, I've also today had an HTML part of an email that opens perfectly in two browsers and displays a totally blank page in two others.)

I'm glad that The Streams of Lovely Nancy has come up. That song on its own could make an interesting case study of the folk process. Wherever, whenever and however it originated, it was widely propagated both orally and through print, implying that singers liked it and broadside printers saw a market, but none of the extant versions makes much sense. More coherent than most is the version collected from Carrie Grover across the Pond, which has a castle decked (plausibly) with ivy rather than ivory, and "limestone so bright" rather than diamonds as the beacon for sailors.

I am very sorry that Jim should feel insulted by anything that I have written. Jim has good reasons for believing what he does and I am in no position to say he is wrong. And origins do indeed matter if one's purpose is to take a song as evidence of social history and what people thought and believed at some past time. But unless we can be sure who wrote a song, we can't be sure whose beliefs it reflects, if indeed it reflects anyone's. Broadside hacks could and did write pieces of total fiction.

Steve Roud's book is concerned with the phenomenon of folk song defined by various criteria but more by who sang the songs in what circumstances than by where they originated.

It's getting late at night and if I add any more to this post it will probably make less sense rather than more.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: JHW
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 07:02 PM

Sorry but I don't have time to read these posts and the book. I've read the Introduction up to now but it's very heavy to hold up.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 05 Oct 17 - 08:57 PM

> I know that 'The Streams of Lovely Nancy' was printed on a broadside, but it seems hard to imagine that a broadside writer would have consciously sat down and penned so many non-sequiturs.

Semi-seriously, what if he was drunk?

More seriously, why would a rural singer be more likely to have done so?

Someone, hack or otherwise, who was vaguely familiar with the convoluted diction of some 17th and 18th century poetry might conceivably have thought that this was how a lyric was supposed to sound.

Just my 2 cents.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 04:38 AM

I have carried out a pretty comprehensive study of Streams/Strands which is in the Dungbeetle articles on the Mustrad website. The Strands of Magilligan did indeed have its origins in northern Ireland and its progress through the hands of various printers and oral tradition can be traced in ever changing forms from Liverpool to Manchester to Birmingham and then to the southern counties by when it had become a rather garbled 'Streams of Lovely Nancy'. Eventually once scholars started studying the song they came up with a whole load of weird and wonderful theories as to what it meant.

This is one of the few where I wouldn't hazard a guess as to whether it first surfaced in print or was written by some hedge poet, perhaps both.

Matt, try rereading p13.
Jim, avoid this page at all costs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 04:54 AM

Matt, see my posting, 1st of Oct. 12.26.

These figures are mine, but Steve and I worked together on much of this angle.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 05:03 AM

"try rereading p13"

You mean sentences such as: "Most songs which were later recorded as folk songs were not written by the singing and dancing throng, or by ploughboys, milkmaids, miners or weavers, but by professional or semi-professional urban songwriters or poets"

Well, personally I don't have any particular vested interest (ideological or otherwise) in whether this is true or false, likely or unlikely. Even from a class perspective, the professional or semi-professional urban songwriters are hardly likely to have been aristocrats; there was money to be made, but I doubt there was a huge amount of it (especially given how much broadside printers nicked each others material) – Roud describes broadside sellers as one step above beggars, so presumably the writers were essentially the urban working class (albeit perhaps more literate than most?).

But I'd point out that p.13 doesn't cite evidence, it makes statements. It sounds like there might be more back-up to such statements in the parts of the book I've not yet got to. I need to finish reading the book to see how much evidence of specific authorship there is. Evidence that moves beyond pointing out that a song appeared as street literature to evidence that that appearance was originary; evidence that the appearance on a broadside of, say, a Cutty Wren song or a pace egging song, or Six Dukes Went a Fishing means that Fred Bloggs, professional broadside writer, wrote it more or less around the same date it was printed.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 05:26 AM

Congratulations Jim you are a legend in your own lunch time.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 07:36 AM

...evidence that the appearance on a broadside... means that Fred Bloggs, professional broadside writer, wrote it more or less around the same date it was printed.

It's always going to be very difficult to provide a smoking gun for a lot of these songs, since most broadsides were anonymous, and in any case there's always the possibility that another version existed before the oldest known copy.

However, in the specific case of the 'Wild Rover' I was talking about earlier, we have a known composer (Thomas Lanfiere) of the 17th century 'Good-fellow's Resolution' broadside - which is very clearly a 'Wild Rover' precursor - and we know that this author specialised in writing moralistic 'Bad Husband' ballads of this type. That suggests that his is the original copy. It is exactly the kind of turgid doggerel that people have been talking about above, but following on from Lanfiere's original over the next two centuries you can trace a number of edits, in which bits of his ballad have been cherry-picked, rearranged and eventually assembled into something resembling a folk song.

That's one well-documented example, and I daresay it won't be possible to do that for all the 90%.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 07:51 AM

"It's always going to be very difficult to provide a smoking gun for a lot of these songs, since most broadsides were anonymous, and in any case there's always the possibility that another version existed before the oldest known copy."

Of course - that's why I'm interested in the assertion that most of them were probably written by professional urban writers or poets. If most of them are anonymous, and we don't have bookkeeping records of broadside printers and their scribes, where does this "probably..." evidence come from? Is is just simple assumption: that the earliest broadside printing of a given song "probably" means that was when it was written? That's an eminently reasonable presumption, but it's still a presumption.

I'm interested in these "probablies" and that 90–95%, not because I'm unwilling to be disabused of any romantic notions, but because I'm genuinely curious as to why there are so many odd folk songs in the canon. If, as Roud's own research suggests, broadsheets about scurillous murders were the biggest sellers, how have we ended up with so many pastoral folk songs with often quite arcane words and practices?

Sure, I can see why all those songs about lads and lasses rolling in the meadows could have come about, but what would have been the motivation/inspiration for an urban professional writer in writing a song that facilitated seasonally-based begging at the Big House with opaque lyrics about wrens and/or sprigs of May? (And not just one, of course, but whole schools of them?)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 08:18 AM

what would have been the motivation/inspiration for an urban professional writer in writing a song that facilitated seasonally-based begging at the Big House with opaque lyrics about wrens and/or sprigs of May?

A quick look at the Roud index doesn't show any broadside copies of either 'Pace-Egg' or 'Cutty Wren'. Maybe Steve G will know that such things exist somewhere. Or maybe these are part of the 5-10% that never appeared as street literature.

I don't have any agenda here either, just trying to respond as best I can.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 10:54 AM

Steve Gardham says earlier -
"I have carried out a pretty comprehensive study of Streams/Strands which is in the Dungbeetle articles on the Mustrad website."

I can see the song mentioned in No. 17 on your Dungheap list - is this what you mean? Because it is not mentioned much? Or am I missing a more complete look at the song from somewhere else???

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 10:56 AM

Pace-egging songs indeed appeared in chapbooks along with the texts of the plays. There are as you know lots of different mumming plays and not all of them appeared in chapbooks. They vary considerably and with these oral tradition is the major factor. However the Pace Egg specifically owes much of its spread to print.

The Cutty Wren can be traced back to 1744. I haven't seen a street lit version. See the ODNR no.447. As part of an annual custom in past centuries it does indeed appear to be part of the 11%.

The seasonallly based begging included carols, Poor Old Horse, Six Jolly Miners, Deby Ram many of which were printed on broadsides.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 12:15 PM

Profuse apologies, Tim.
I remember writing the article and just assumed that's where it ended up as with most of my studies. With wrist slapped I will try to find where it ended up. I know John Moulden has also studied the progress of the ballad.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 12:29 PM

I found a very long study and correspondence in my notes dating back to 2005. Having assembled as many versions as possible of 'Streams' and 2 related songs 'Come all ye little streamers' and 'The Green Mountain(US)' I started corresponding with Stephen Reynolds of Oregon and with John Moulden in which I found that Stephen was already well down the line in preparing a long article for the FM Journal, so instead of publishing myself I assisted Stephen with his work. One outcome was that the 3 songs were eventually given separate Roud numbers having all been lumped together prior to that.

I still have all the notes, maps of Magilligan and Loch Foyle where I believe it originated. John who had researched Irish broadsides more than anyone else had never seen an Irish broadside of the song. It is quite flowery and descriptive in keeping with other ballads from that part of Ireland. (IMO) If anyone wants to see versions of The Strands of Magilligan there are 2 in Hugh Shields' Shamrock, Rose & Thistle and one in the Sam Henry collection. I don't remember seeing an article. Is Stephen Reynolds still around?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 01:15 PM

Matt.
The 'probably'.

Both Steve and I, sometimes together sometimes independently, have spent the last 30 years and more studying in great depth not only the broadside ballads that became folk songs but others pretty similar that may have become folk songs but didn't make it to be collected as folk songs. We have found some that have named authors but by the very nature of the beast the great majority don't have information on the author.

We found a fair amount of evidence that some of them had indeed most likely been taken from oral tradition, but when we traced them back to the earliest extant version this was overwhelmingly a printed or commercial source. I say commercial, one notable example is the theatre and pleasure gardens. These are often easily noted on stylistic grounds as being somewhat flowery in their language and subject.

The fact that printers all lived in urban areas adds to the fact that their suppliers, the ballad writers were close at hand. I have presented above plenty of evidence that rural working people sometimes wrote ballads but generally speaking they had not got ready access to printers and so those creatively inclined did not very often see their work spread to other areas like our folk songs and printed ballads did. In close-knit communities these songs no doubt will have had some currency but for one reason or another the majority didn't last or were not spread any further than that. There is a good example in Southern Harvest, a local song that survived in 3 versions in villages around Winchester, but these songs are very few and far between in published collections.

I have made it very clear on numerous occasions that our figures apply only to published traditional songs from England. Elsewhere different dynamics produced different statistics as Jim keeps telling us quite rightly. (Hence the title of this thread!)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 06:32 PM

Did Stephen Reynolds's work (with Steve's input) eventually get published in the Folk Music Journal? I don't recall seeing it.

I note that "One outcome was that the 3 songs were eventually given separate Roud numbers having all been lumped together prior to that." I therefore need to correct my reference above to the Carrie Grover version, which I now see doesn't count as a version of "Streams" (Roud 688) but of "Green Mountain" (Roud 18820, index S217728).

However these songs do have a lot of shared content, and not just typical floaters.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 06 Oct 17 - 07:17 PM

Steve Gardham - I am also intrigued by your note -
"a local song that survived in 3 versions in villages around Winchester" - which song do you have in mind???

This is totally highjacking this thread - but while Jim is having is Hip done - what else is worth talking about (Good luck Jim....)

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 07 Oct 17 - 05:26 AM

"We found a fair amount of evidence that some of them had indeed most likely been taken from oral tradition, but when we traced them back to the earliest extant version this was overwhelmingly a printed or commercial source."

"The fact that printers all lived in urban areas adds to the fact that their suppliers, the ballad writers were close at hand."

I apologise for being a bit of a stuck record on this, but what generally have you considered evidence for composition? ie evidence that a broadside was actually composed by a broadside writer, rather than just supplied?

It does indeed stand to reason that a supplier to a printer would have lived nearby, but, if 90% of those songs were indeed actually composed (rather than just supplied) by broadside writers, it rather begs the question of where they got such gifted talents and broad general knowledge from - being able to knock out so many songs with geographical and technical details about often arcane rural customs and seafaring practices. I don't suppose they had that many research resources, or much time on their hands.

There's also the question of audience demand; what I've read in Roud's book so far corresponds with what I'd expect about the topics popular in broadsides, and no mention has been made (so far, don't want to prejudge!) about often arcane rural customs and seafaring practices in public tastes. If they did indeed compose all those songs, then it seems strange to me that no scholar yet has remarked on what literary titans these writers were, where they acquired their knowledge, and why their subjects so often appear to be out of step with what you'd expect to be commercial. Where did their knowledge and interest in seasonal rural customs spring from? Where did the commercial demand for a song like 'Herrings Heads' spring from?

"generally speaking they had not got ready access to printers and so those creatively inclined did not very often see their work spread to other areas like our folk songs and printed ballads did."

See, it also seems to me that if we allow "ready access to printers" to be a consideration, surely we have to bear in mind that, de facto, a printed version of any given song is more likely to be the earliest extant discoverable version simply because, well, if I write a song down in my diary, that's not as likely to still be findable 100 years later than if it had been printed 300 or more times.

If the earliest printed or written iteration of a song being from a printed ballad is considered to be best evidence of a song's authorship by a professional ballad writer then, de facto, a not-especially-literate populace, with no access to print, cannot have written them – by default. There's an element of circularity to that logic.

Roud suggests himself that broadside publishers would merrily pillage all sorts of sources: it seems therefore odd to me that they would be pillaging all sources APART from oral traditions, especially considered music is ultimately an auditory one. It is surely far more likely that the existence of songs anomalous to urban tastes and experiences are evidence of pillaging from oral traditions; the alternative would be that London's broadside writers were singular literary titans, creative visionaries with a remarkable general knowledge, and that we should be using the word "genius", not "hack" to describe them.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 08 Oct 17 - 04:46 AM

There can hardly be any doubt that some songs were originally made by people who had been there to see the events described, some were made for the stage or pleasure gardens, some were made by known authors such as Laurence Price, and some by anonymous hacks. We're in danger of focussing on a few examples that clearly fall into one of these categories and generalising to conclude that this category covers a large proportion of the whole corpus.

For example GUEST,matt milton refers to "often arcane rural customs and seafaring practices". How many songs describe such things? Versus how many tell idealised bucolic stories of Colins and Phoebes, ploughboys, love at first sight on a May morning, etc? Or songs that reflect a landsman's ideas of life at sea rather than the experience of real sailors?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 08 Oct 17 - 06:27 AM

I am perhaps in danger of projecting my own predilections outwards here I've never bothered to learn those Colin and Phoebe type songs.

But one frustrating aspect of Roud's book is that I feel he doesn't involve himself in the repercussions of some of his findings. If a wassail song or May song or a seasonal songs relating to winter mendicant traditions was probably written by an urban broadsheet writer, that to me gives rise to all sorts of questions. Did much that we take for granted about the content of those traditions never actually exist in practice? Were broadsheet writers actively intervening/shaping the content of those traditions? Given that such songs are a significant part of what many folk singers today would regard as canonical, it seems odd to me that this wouldn't be explored in a large social history of folk music.

Another omission that I find odd in the book is that, given Roud's scholarship, he's uniquely placed to provide informative demonstrations of the folk process at work: while he mentions the fact that, just because working people did not write the songs, they liked them enough to learn them and shape them, it seems bizarre that he doesn't present any examples of how transformative (or not) this was.

I say bizarre because this is pretty much the key element of folk song. I had generally adumbrated broadsides as flowery, laborious and over-written, as compared to a folk-processed poetic, streamlined economy in a folk song as I have learned it. I mentioned the Streams of Lovely Nancy earlier because it was the most dramatic example I could think of of the folk process at work: a song that common sense suggests probably wasn't first written the way it has come down to most of us. But there are much more lucid examples I can think of off the top of my head: Six Dukes Went A Fishing for example, or the version of 'Brisk Young Sailor' collected in the Vaughn Williams 'Bushes and Briars' book. Or the genuinely weird song 'The Pelican' (collected by Gardiner, I think).

It seems odd to me that someone writing such a mammoth project, entitled 'Folk Song in England' wouldn't want to discuss the folk process more, and provide examples from his considerable research showing it at work. Those conclusions might be "actually, songs don't change that much"; or they might be "it's interesting to note what the song loses in unnecessary detail from this broadside of 1860 to the version collected by Cecil Sharp in..." There's none of that (so far as I've read) in Roud's book. Which is one of many reasons I'm finding it quite a frustrating read.

Another thing that's just occurred to me is there's not much discussion of the Child ballads, which are a pretty canonical part of folk singing today. But I guess Roud would point me to the bit in his introduction where he states that the book is about what folk music was, rather than what it is. I'm increasingly feeling that Roud's own priorities about what's important to discuss, to expand on, to go into detail on, or to include or exclude, are very different from my own interests in folk music. I think I was expecting a very different book to this one.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 08 Oct 17 - 11:36 AM

Fair comment from GUEST,matt milton Date: 08 Oct 17 - 06:27 AM! It seems there's plenty of scope for another book. But still I remain grateful for what Steve and Julia have put into this one.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Oct 17 - 04:15 PM

Despite it's great breadth, Steve's book is only an overview of the subject. Just think how long the book would have been if at every touch and turn he had included examples. And if he had included even one example it could easily have gone to 50 pages on its own demonstrating the evolution of the song through say theatre, print, oral tradition. If you want chapter and verse on individual songs might I suggest Steve's other recent book The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, or even the Marrow Bones series edited by myself and Malcolm Douglas. Or my Dungbeetle articles on Mustrad.

Matt>>>>it rather begs the question of where they got such gifted talents and broad general knowledge from - being able to knock out so many songs with geographical and technical details about often arcane rural customs and seafaring practices<<<<<<

As Richard writes, these songs only actually form a small percentage of the corpus of material under discussion. The vast majority of the corpus is songs of a generic nature. The writers were obviously literate but generally at the bottom end of the poets scale, sometimes poets trying to turn a quick buck (bob). Writing poetry/songs has always been a precarious existence even at best. Many of the naval engagements were common knowledge and the taverns had plenty of seamen who wished to impart their knowledge of the battle. We have evidence they used newspaper reports occasionally. Of course they recycled older ballads, but as I said, as a rule even these can be traced back to what appears to be an original. Most of the songs attached to customs we have no idea how and where they originated and these form a major part of the 5%. However even some of these have their earliest extant versions in cheap print.

Here's a challenge for you, Matt. Give me a song that is part of the corpus that includes information that would be exclusive to rural dwellers. (Apart from which, we know there was a massive drift of country people into towns and cities to find work at the time when cheap broadsides were at their height. Some of these may have been literate enough to have become broadside writers.)

Tim, will find that song for you shortly.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Oct 17 - 04:50 PM

Matt [Another thing that's just occurred to me is there's not much discussion of the Child ballads, which are a pretty canonical part of folk singing today]
Not that many of the Child Ballads actually were found in oral tradition in England in the late 19th/early 20th century. In fact if you look at the Child Ballads, the 305, not many of these seem to have existed in oral tradition in the British Isles for very long. There are obvious exceptions of course. Many of them were revived by the likes of MacColl, but their claim to substantial oral tradition is very slim. Quite a large portion have only been found in print, most of the Robin Hood ballads for instance.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Oct 17 - 05:30 PM

Tim, struggling. The nearest I can get at the moment is either Avington Pond (but seemingly only 1 version) and Three Hearty Young Poachers (2 versions, perhaps that's the one I was thinking of). I'll have another try. I thought I had plotted the 3 versions of the song I referred to as coming from within a 20-mile radius of Winchester but it might have been just the 2. I've just turned 70 so I'm allowed a little senility.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Oct 17 - 05:33 PM

04.50 posting.
It would appear the forum is struggling with my use of <<>>>. I will use some other method of quoting from previous posts in future.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Oct 17 - 05:35 PM

*** I will use some other method of quoting from previous posts in future*** Just testing.

---

The text was retrieved and displayed in a simple set of brackets. ---mudelf

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 08 Oct 17 - 05:54 PM

Steve - Thanks - I thought you might be thinking of Avington Pond (obviously local) - but as you say on one version. You certainly had me searching in both Southern Harvest and the Manuscripts.
I will be looking into Young Henry the Poacher.........3 versions spread over a widish area.....

Best - Tim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 08 Oct 17 - 06:07 PM

Ah - I see it now - Three Hearty Young Poachers - Roud 1690 - and I see what you mean about it appearing local - and both versions from close to Winchester.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 09 Oct 17 - 11:08 AM

Here is a link to an Interview with Steve on Grizzly Folk.......

https://www.grizzlyfolk.com/2017/08/30/what-is-folk-music-an-interview-with-steve-roud/


Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Oct 17 - 03:06 PM

Thanks, Tim
Great interview!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 10 Oct 17 - 07:07 AM

This morning, I finished reading the book about Sabine Baring-Gould by Martin Graebe. It is a mighty read in more senses that one. By the time that I got to page 339 of tiny print, I came to the penultimate paragraph which I reproduce below. I knew that in honesty and fairness that I had to give it here as a counterweight to my post of 03 Oct 17 - 06:01 AM where I quoted that S-B was firmly of the opinion that the majority of the songs that he has collected as a young man were derived from broadsides. In this paragraph Martin writes -

One of Baring-Gould’s characteristics was that he had some mental flexibility and could change his mind if the evidence showed that his hypothesis was wrong. In respect of folk song his mind changed on several topics over the years. Having initially neglected the words of songs in favour of tunes he came to believe that the words were also important and deserved as good treatment as the tunes. Part of the reason for not having valued the words was his initial assumption that most traditional songs were derived from broadsides and other printer sources. He came to understand that this was not always the case and that many of the songs were older than the broadsides and better in many respects than the printed versions. He also realised that some, particularly the younger singers like John Woodridge and Sam Fone, had learned their songs from broadsides and he recognised that not only could singers fit broadside words to tunes that they knew, but that some could compose tunes themselves. He also realise hat some singers were capable of creating songs from scratch – to record a local event, for example. The flexibility of understanding on Baring-Gould’s part was not a characteristic of other folk song collectors and theorists of the time demonstrated.

I think that the key words are flexibility of understanding rather than approaching this (or any) subject with a rigidity of thinking.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Oct 17 - 11:47 AM

***He came to understand that this was not always the case and that many of the songs were older than the broadsides***

To pinch one of Jim's most often used arguments: How could he possibly have known that? If he was referring to the late 18thc/early 19thc broadsides, yes there's plenty of evidence but mainly from older printed sources. Those in manuscripts are few and far between.

There is also the fact that although SBG spent some time in the BL and had his own collection of 19thc broadsides he did not have access to anything like the resources we have today. This also applies to Frank Kidson who was also very clued up on song origins and histories. These are not criticisms by the way, just observations.

I've just started on the new book, Vic, and looking forward to it immensely. We perhaps need a new thread. I'll start one.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 10 Oct 17 - 11:54 AM

I couldn't help thinking of a part of this discussion when watching this 1981 documentary about Diarmuid Ó Súilleabháin. I know, an Irish context but the part where the Muscrai songmakers get mention underlines Jim Carroll's point made earlier. I would find it very hard to believe nothing of the sort would have happened elsewhere.

That aside, it is a lovely fillum to watch.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Oct 17 - 12:21 PM

You are absolutely right, Peter, that it is a lovely fillum to watch and listen to and songmaking something like what occurs here undoubtedly went on in other places.

Unfortunately by the time the collectors came along to record this in England any local songs were completely swamped by the printed songs that were being spread around the whole country. I can think of something similar in the Hunt supper gatherings that can still be found in the north. For some of them the repertoire is being constantly added to in this way, but the folk scene has passed it by and is unaware of it. One area where this was very lively was the West Pennine area near Sheffield, but here the local interest has died out and the singers are now part of the folk scene. The carols in the same area is another example of a lively scene still flourishing.

If you look at the wonderful film of the singers in the Blaxhall Ship in East Anglia from the 50s there are no local songs being sung. They are all songs from the general English repertoire. I have given examples of rural songwriters in my local area but none of their songs have survived to become part of oral tradition.

It may well be that 250 years ago England had something like what is shown in Diarmuid's film but if it did precious little has survived.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 10 Oct 17 - 03:39 PM

When I read Martin's comment that I quoted above where he writes:-

He also realised that some singers were capable of creating songs from scratch – to record a local event, for example.

I couldn't help thinking of Jim's long list from his post on 04 Oct 17 - 08:03 PM. I don't recognise any of these songs from their titles but the content they suggest - elections, fairs, drownings etc. seem to put them in the category that Martin was describing; and well worthy of a song collector's attention.

Yes, Steve, I will contribute to the thread that you have started, but first I have somehow to give an impression of this fascinating, wide-reaching book in a 400 word review.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Oct 17 - 03:58 PM

Yes, well worthy of a song collector's attention. As far as publishing goes the likes of Sharp would have wanted the songs to have a universal appeal in order to sell books which would exclude many songs with a local flavour. Perhaps they also had something of this in the back of their minds whilst they were collecting. However songs like 'Lakes of Colephin' reached a universal audience in print and oral tradition. Only a small percentage of both printed and local songs made it into the national corpus and dispersed print certainly had a lot to do with this. Maybe simple chance accounts for a lot of what survived.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 10 Oct 17 - 04:37 PM

Steve wrote:-
...the likes of Sharp would have wanted the songs to have a universal appeal in order to sell books which would exclude many songs with a local flavour.

Interestingly, The broadside printers seemed to have the opposite approach; they seemed to want place names to relate to their particular area to increase their local appeal.

In the various Van Diemans Land printings, how many different towns did "Poor Tom Brown" come from?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Oct 17 - 05:47 PM

Yes, localisation was one of their tricks, but it wasn't that common. The printers were generally in too much of a hurry to worry about the finer points. The type setting of the ballads was often left to an apprentice. Perhaps this was down to the writers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Christopher Thomas
Date: 15 Oct 17 - 10:44 AM

There's a few interesting hares in this thread. You might like to look at the review in my blog at

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Christopher Thomas
Date: 15 Oct 17 - 10:50 AM

That should be : www.broadsidestories.net/blog/folk song in england
But I can't seem to make the blue clicky work!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Oct 17 - 11:51 AM

Very fair and well-written review, Christopher. I'll have a closer look at your site later.

While searching for this review I found another very different at www.caughtbytheriver.net written by Cally ...... which comes more from the angle of a music historian.

Both reviews I think Steve would be very happy with.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 16 Oct 17 - 03:52 AM

> That should be : www.broadsidestories.net/blog/folk song in england
But I can't seem to make the blue clicky work! <

That URL gives me a "404", though with a link to the home page http://www.broadsidestories.net/

From the home page, clicking on the "Broadside Stories" tab at the top takes me to a page which says "Click on the Broadside Stories bar above for the full index". But that's what I've already done to get that far. I can't get any further.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Christopher Thomas
Date: 16 Oct 17 - 05:34 AM

Going to the Blog page from the Home page should work! but thanks for your interest

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Oct 17 - 09:15 AM

Hi all
Good to be back
It's amazing what goes through your mind while you're lying on your back with nothing to think about, as I was once told by a female friend
We seem to have moved on somewhat since Steve and I went head-to-head all those centuries ago.
This beautiful statement by the MacColl at the end of the Song Carriers series is what started it all

"Well, there they are, the songs of our people. Some of them have been centuries in the making, some of them undoubtedly were born on the broadside presses. Some have the marvellous perfection of stones shaped by the sea's movement. Others are as brash as a cup-final crowd. They were made by professional bards and by unknown poets at the plough-stilts and the handloom. They are tender, harsh,, passionate, ironical, simple, profound.... as varied, indeed, as the landscape of this island.
We are indebted to the Harry Coxes and Phil Tanners, to Colm Keane and Maggie MaccDonagh, to Belle Stewart and Jessie Murray and to all the sweet and raucous unknown singers who have helped to carry our people's songs across the centuries."
The Song Carriers covered the whole gamut from the song referenced in Wedderburn's Complaynt of Scotland to the WW2 song, 'My Darling Sleeps in England so your sweeping condemnation covers the lot and not just Sharp and his gang
I posted it and Steve asked "do you believe that romantic rubbish?"
I confess - I confess - yes I did, and I still still do, and nothing that has been said since has made me doubt it - for me, it dot's all the folk i's and crosses the t's, for me at least.
Had Steve confined his percentages to what "appeared in print", rather than originated, and addressed those figures to what was collected by Sharp my response would have been "I know that, my mate, Bob Thomson told me that there were a lot back in 1970"
"Origination" is a different ball game altogether.
I believe quite firmly that rural working people not only were capable of having made our folk songs, but our own researches indicate that there is no reason whatever to doubt that they did - but I have always emphasised that we can't possibly know because our working knowledge of the oral tradition goes back no further back than the beginning of the 20th century
I have given an indication of the number of anonymous local songs made in the lifetimes of our singers - they can be heard on the Clare County Library website under 'The Carroll/Mackenzie Collection'
Clare people made songs by the hundreds and, as Peter Laban pointed out, it was almost certainly the same throughout Ireland
Our friend, Maurice Leyden up in Ulster is at present compiling a collection of songs made by textile workers
If they made songs in that number, why shouldn't our known folk songs be numbered among them
We found the same was the case with the non-literate Travellers - songmakers using their skills to express aspects of their lives
Steve offered the excuse that (to paraphrase) English workers were too busy earning a living to make songs
My old friend Harry Boardman compiled an impressive number of similarly made songs when I lived in Manchester in the sixties
AS a singer looking for songs, I walked into Manchester Central Library in 1968 and asked if they had any local songs and was handed a few books of broadsides - I found one singable song
AS I handed them back the nice lady asked me, "have you seen the newspapers we have on microfilm
I spent the next few months peering at editions of 'Black Dwarf' and other political publications, all containing song columns of material (mostly anonymous) composed by cotton workers, spinners, land labourers, teachers, political activists - not all deathless verse by any means, but often a damn signt better than the conveyor belt stuff spewed out by the hacks
Some of the Lancashire weaver poets published, most did not -
I seem to remember Roy Palmer did some similar research in the Midlands; I know people around The Grey Cock Folk Club in Birmingham did.
We know that Bothy workers made songs independent of print Maire Ruadh, or Red-headed Mary was making songs and leading protesters in defiance of those clearing out the crofters, - the BBC even has recordings of waulking songs being composed on the spot
The mining communities produced their own songs and their own stars - Joe Corrie and Tommy Armstrong spring to mind.
Many of these songs were ignored by the collectors because they did not fir the mould - but they certainly fitted the definition of "folk" I choose to work by.
Working people were once natural songmakers - it seems ludicrous to ignore that fact and put the making of our folksongs down to largely ham-fisted hacks churning out largely dross to make money - Child's "dunghill" sums that side of song making perfectly - that man was a star (did you know he actually made a song himself, but I can't imagine him ever singing it?)
It occurred to me while I was incapacitated that what is desperately needed is a forum where thase arguments can take place without acrimony or agenda-driving - a place where we can simply exchange ideas on subjects such as this.
Hugh Shields one established a paper-based 'Irish Folk Music Federation' - we have many of their cheaply produced booklets - invaluable stuff
I see no reason why an on-line site cannot bring people from all over together to thrash out these subjects
Of course, we might be forced to get our act together and come to some understanding as to what we mean by folk song (I'll go and get me tin hat!!)
By the way - the song being discussed above
"Matt, try rereading p13. Jim, avoid this page at all costs."
Insulting as ever Steve
I have now read a large section of Roud's book and so far have found little to seriously disagree with
I don't "avoid" reading anything because I might disagree with it
Try answering some of my points instead of hiding behind referees who agree with you
Hopefully, if we ever get to exchanging ideas we can lose this unpleasantnessd
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Oct 17 - 10:31 AM

Why don't you learn to split long posts into paragraphs, Jim?

Two or three lines, then a blank line. It makes on-screen reading so much easier.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Oct 17 - 11:12 AM

Welcome back, Jim!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Oct 17 - 12:12 PM

Thanks Steve - it really is good to be back - you can tolerate beautiful nurses for so long
"Why don't you learn to split long posts into paragraphs, Jim?"
Dunno guest - put it down to my crappy Secondary Modern education
I tend to go with the flow
Will make an effort
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Oct 17 - 01:16 PM

Jim, You need to reset your cookie. You're guesting at the moment.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 16 Oct 17 - 01:28 PM

many of the songs were older than the broadsides
To pinch one of Jim's most often used arguments: How could he possibly have known that?

Two Scottish examples: "Parcel of Rogues" and "The Braes of Balquhidder". For both, a tune of that name was printed decades before any words we know of.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Oct 17 - 02:21 PM

Stenhouse: 'This song, beginning "Fareweel to a' our Scottish fame," is likewise an unclaimed production of Burns.It is adapted to the old air, entitled "A Parcel of Rogues in the Nation" which appears both in M'Gibbon and Oswald's collections. Dr. Blacklock had also written a song to the same melody; for Burns, in a note subjoined to his verses, says, 'I inclose what I think the best set of the tune. Dr. B's words, inclosed may follow the same tune. Johnson, however, omitted the Dr's verses, as he had no room on the plate.

Are you claiming this as a folk song, Jack? I think Jim's definition might exclude it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Oct 17 - 02:31 PM

Is there any evidence that the several strathspeys with the 'Braes' title ever had any words at all prior to Tannahill's which though rarely are found in oral tradition quite widely?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Oct 17 - 05:52 PM

Bah. I have the book for my birthday thanks to my lovely girlfriend, and I am very grateful to Brian Peters for his comments above - and I am now going to have to read the whole book.

Based on the few bits of the above that I have read I have three comments so far.

1. Nobody seems to give credit for the input of Barry Walker on Lloyd.

2. I wish Malcolm Douglas were still here.

3. Although my blood pressure is but 130 over 80 (not bad at the age of 69) I am going to have to source relevant tablets and some worry beads before reading the whole of this thread. Have the pseuds already appeared? I see some horse definitioners (or close thereto) have.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Oct 17 - 04:55 AM

I thought I'd catch this before it sank entirely out of sight
I still haven't read the book right through - mainly through having to prepare a talk Im due to give in a couple of weeks, so I decided to read through the chapters that interest me most an return to the whole thing later
So far, I find it an indispensable gathering together of facts that I'll find immensely useful in future
I do find myself dipping into Lloyd's book of the same name quite often as I miss his warmth and enthusiasm for the song even when his facts are somewhat questionable
Bert was a singer who never quite made up his mind which side of the fence he was on, but he did love the songs with the passion of a performer, which was obvious to anybody who ever saw him perform live - I have to say I miss that side of things in Roud's book though I may not have come to it yet
I disagree with some of Steve's comments "a folk song is a song sung by a folk singer" being one that sticks out like a sore thumb, though it is qualified somewhat
I can see this statement being used in future as serious an argument as the old "horse" joke to justify putting anything under the "folk umbrella"
Both statements are utter nonsense when taken seriously.
One thing the book has confirmed for me is that there are no messiahs carrying the folk word - there are no conclusive answers to many of the questions and there never will be
THere is some information scattered around out there which, if we are going to fill in some of the blanks, need to be brought together - that requires co-operation, not the type of conflict and evasion that this subject has generated so far
I came to research through MacColl's suggestion that in order to become a better singer we needed to examine and understand the songs
The first suggestion made to a new member of the Critics group was to listen to as many field singers as were available and work out what they were doing - this set Pat and I off on a journey that has never really ended
At the Group meetings, we would embark on a night of practical work, at the end of which, Ewan would flop back in his chair, tell us he had had enough and was going to bed, then, more often than not, embark on an hour-long plus soliloquy on something that had been raised during the work we had done.
They were off the cuff and generated by sheer passion for the songs Ewan loved - they would invariably send me home walking a foot above the pavement
I have recordings of many of those sessions - I still get a buzz and a lump in the throat listening to them - after all this time.
It struck me that a perfect springboard to reinvigourating our music would be a combination of Roud's detail, Bet's fond love and MacColl's informed passion for the songs that have become part of our lives.
Incidentally, Steve Gardham said somewhat insultingly "Jim, avoid this page at all costs."
I read page 13 without being struck down by lightening, I disagree with some of it as it does not all conform with much we learned from our own field work (but am happy to debbate this with Steve Roud or anybody at any time (as long as I am treated as an equal).
Perhaps Steve G and others should read the end of that chapter where Roud says about the '54 definition "apart from a quibble with "oral" in the fist sentence, if I had been at the conference, I would have happily voted in favour of the resolution"
Roud seems not to have the problem of whether Bob Geldof counts as "folk" that many people seem to have
But there again, there are no messiahs
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Oct 17 - 10:47 AM

I read the chapter and all of the book thoroughly and have already returned to the salient points several times having annotated the bits that were most relevant to my own studies. I have no quibble at all with any of the '54' descriptives and never have had. What I have always said is that 'folksong' has come to mean different things to different groups of people and denying that is burying one's head in the sand. I can deal with this as most words in the dictionary have a whole list of synonyms and I can't see why 'folksong' should be any different.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Oct 17 - 11:02 AM

"What I have always said is that 'folksong' has come to mean different things to different groups of people and denying that is burying one's head in the sand."
As has a lot of words Steve, but if you are serious about your own work and interests you have to go with the established and documented consensus - it is a nonsense to do otherwise
If you involve yourself in something as folk song publicly you take responsibility for it
If you disagree with any aspect of how it is regarded, you either go with it or fight for any changes to be included in the new understanding
We are supposed to be thinking human beings, not sheep
That fact that nobody can agree on a new definition and any confusion is down to laziness or indifference is good enough for me
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Oct 17 - 11:07 AM

That's a silly viewpoint, Jim. Have a good think about it before you press the send button. You appear to be saying that words can only have one meaning. NO LAZINESS and definitely NO INDIFFERENCE!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Oct 17 - 11:10 AM

Tell me, why is any definition needed ?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Oct 17 - 11:49 AM

So we can talk to each other why do you have to put 'Beans' on a tin label?
Why do you people do this - if we bahave as you do you'd be the first to scream 'folk Police'
Nobody is forcing you to participate in this - why not go to another thread and tell them what they should and should not be discussing - or go and burn a few books maybe?
""I think 'Somebloke sums it up- what a lot of bollocks."
Reciprocated, I'm sure Jim
"Beoga and Gatehouse"
Who ?
I prefer the thousands of young kids who are taking it up independently and the Clancy Summer school and the Irish Traditional Music archive as my examples
You only have to turn TV or radio on any night of the week to see the results of the present influx of youngsters - maybe the media hasn't made it up as far as you!
Nowt much wrong with this for
PRIME TIME TV
"Willie McBride" (No Man's Land) with Arthur McBride
Sorry Raggy - a slip
I know what song you are talking about - I used to sing it until it got sung to death
Personally, I prefer Boggles 'Waltzing Matilda'
"You appear to be saying that words can only have one meaning"
No Steve - I'm saying they have to have A MEANING
If my definition is incomplete - what's yours?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Oct 17 - 11:54 AM

Sorry nuased up some of thaat posting - some should have beeeen sent to Folk club thread
Never got the hang of multi-tasking
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Oct 17 - 12:44 PM

Jim, for traditional folksong you already have your 'definition'. I prefer to use the word 'descriptors', but I'm quite happy to use it as A definition.

Any other usage of the word you don't accept so there is no argument.

The other usage of the word 'folksong' as stated above by others is much more loose and defies a definition as do many things that don't have hard and fast boundaries. Even the '54' descriptors are open to interpretation and don't all have hard and fast boundaries as stated by SteveR. You don't accept the wider more loose meaning but you're the only person I know who doesn't.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Oct 17 - 01:17 PM

"Any other usage of the word you don't accept so there is no argument."
You implied that there are many - what are they?
" You appear to be saying that words can only have one meaning. "
That is what this is all about Steve - both here and on the Clubs thread
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,John Robinson
Date: 21 Oct 17 - 05:15 PM

Many thanks, as I had no idea this book existed until now. I've recently started to sing and play guitar in my local pub, after being gently coerced by a local session musician, so further knowledge and source material is always more than welcome.

I bought Steve Roud and Julia Bishop's revamped Penguin Book of English Folk songs a while ago, and wish I'd got the hardback version, because my paperback copy is already extremely dogeared.

I find it hard to find 'English' folk songs, but perhaps that's just me. After a bit of digging I often discover that whatever shiny new/old song I've learned was originally Scottish, collected by Francis J Child, but I suppose that's the often cited 'folk process' for you. Still, I fancy learning Brigg Fair: that's closer to home for me.

I think the ambiguous origins of many folk songs are what lend them their appeal, and I tend to avoid overly academic approaches to a musical form which, after all, did not originate in someone's study. 'What is a folk song?' I don't know. I'm too busy singing them to care, or I have no time to ponder, but I passionately love them - and that's what I would like to pass on to anyone who cares to hear.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 21 Oct 17 - 05:38 PM

"At the Group meetings, we would embark on a night of practical work, at the end of which, Ewan would flop back in his chair, tell us he had had enough and was going to bed, then, more often than not, embark on an hour-long plus soliloquy on something that had been raised during the work we had done.
They were off the cuff and generated by sheer passion for the songs Ewan loved - they would invariably send me home walking a foot above the pavement"
to have that kind of passion for music is wonderful as it is to be able to pass enthusiasm and passion on to others.
I have been sitting down playing music for the last hour and would still do so even if i never had another gig.
I regret to say that much of the enthusiasm and passion shown by lloyd and macColl seems to be not as prevalent on the uk folk scene as it used to be, Carthy always seems to show passion ane enthusism for trad music too

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 21 Oct 17 - 07:52 PM

Mr Sandman (ie. Dick.......) although you have been around for many years, and know your stuff - you can't and don't know everyone involved in this music and how much "enthusiasm" they may have for it. Don't assume too much...please!

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Oct 17 - 04:40 AM

I don't know who John Robinson is, but for me, he sums up what books like this should be about - an excellent short recommendation to an important book
Can I just reiterate why I find definitions of folk song so important
As someone who came from a working family, I was educated to believe that people like me had no cultural history and if I wished to acquire a culture I had to go to the great writers or painters or composers - in the case of the latter, the best of those were mostly foreigners.
The general thrust of my education was that culture was not for me anyway - all I needed on leaving school was to tot up my pay packet at the end of the week (one teacher actually told me that when I was late for his class because I had been delayed by a music teacher who kept me back to explain something I had failed to grasp.
My introduction to the finer points of folk song came through Lloyd's book, which suggested that working people might have a culture worth talking about.
That was magnified a thousandfold with the nights I spent in Critics Group meetings - beautiful songs and ballads created, sung and passed on by working people.
That became part of my self-identification, something to be proud of.
That has remained with me ever since , through my contact with Irish land labourers and small farmers, the Norfolk fishermen we met, the village carpenter who gave us all those songs and all that information, gathered from his farm-labouring family, and most of all, from the despised, uneducated, non-literate Travellers who have proved to be the saviours of many of our traditional ballads.
Thirty odd years with them has confirmed everything Ewan and Bert were saying all those years ago.
One of the weakest sentences in Roud's book comes on the page Steve G insited I shouldn't read
"Most songs which were later recorded as folk songs were not written by the singing and dancing throng, or by ploughboys, milkmaids, miners or weavers, but by professional or semi-professional urban song-writers or poets."
Our knowledge of our oral folk song tradition goes back only as far as the beginning of the twentieth century, beyond that, all is a mystery
Nobody has the information to quantify how many of our folk songs were created, certainly not "most" - the information does not exist.   
The term 'folk' was first assigned to the culture of the "lower" classes in the 1840s
Before that it was "popular" - of the people and that goes back even earlier, at least to the 1770s, when John Brand put together his 'Popular Antiquities"
Francis Child assigned his Ballads to the "common" people when he entitled them "Popular" - of the people.
The earlier researchers had no hesitation in recognising the creative merits of labouring people, it's taken 20 and 21st century desk jockeys to tear down that suggestion.
For me, most of our folk songs are obviously the creations of people who knew what they were singing about first hand - so many of the songs come with dirt under their fingernails and an intimate knowledge of tools and work practices.
It took someone with local knowledge to know that Oxborough Banks referred to an area settled by returning Australian transportees when 'Maid of Australia was composed - our songs are full of snippets of information like this
That's why I believe most of our folk songs were made by 'the folk' and, my love of them as beautiful songs aside, that's why I believe them to be as important as I do.
Bob Geldof - eat your heart out!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Oct 17 - 07:57 AM

RTIM,naturally i am talking from my limited experience as is everyone else including your good self.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 25 Oct 17 - 04:33 PM

Jim,
You seem to be the only person obsessed with the need to have your terms defined to the nth degree, and also obsessed with the origins.
To the rest of us the origins are irrelevant as the people who set up the 54 descriptors soon realised. Within a few months they had dropped that particular descriptor of anonymity. The rest of us are quite happy to accept the 54 descriptors when describing traditional folksong.

You keep asking us for OUR 'definition' of folksong. Mine will be different from most other people. I won't give you a definition because I don't believe such abstract ideas should or can have definite hard and fast boundaries, but if it helps I will give you the wider descriptors as I believe to be acceptable to the many people I know on the folk scene, both academically and non-academically.

Loosely: Those songs that are sung in folk clubs, folk festivals and the folk scene in general;

those songs that are found in the record shops' racks under the descriptor 'folk';

those songs that are sung by folk singers;

those songs that are identified by being accompanied on recognised folk instruments (usually acoustic as opposed to electric);

those songs performed by performers who refer to themselves as folk singers.

If I really tried I could come up with more descriptors and I'm sure others can add to this list. Included in this description will be many songs that also come under other genres, indeed that fit better into other genres. That's the nature of all widespread types of music in the western world.

You only want to include those songs that are 54 songs and those that have been written in imitation. No problem. I'm inclined that way myself.

Your prerogative is to not like this list of descriptors, but know then that you are alone in your very narrow view of opposing what the world and his wife think is folksong!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 26 Oct 17 - 03:49 PM

Jim said
> It took someone with local knowledge to know that Oxborough Banks referred to an area settled by returning Australian transportees when 'Maid of Australia was composed - our songs are full of snippets of information like this

Where did that information come from. I've read elsewhere that the originally intended location was the banks of the Hawkesbury River in NSW.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 04:14 AM

Bob Thomson, who lived in Cambridgeshire, did a great deal of research on the song as it was particularly popular in East Anglia - he turned up the information on the settlement on convict returnees around the Oxborough Hall area
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 04:52 AM

"You seem to be the only person obsessed with the need to have your terms defined to the nth degree, and also obsessed with the origins."
OI might equally say thay you are the only person obsessed with thaki the creadit of making our folk songs away from rural working people and giving it to untalented hacks - I would imagine both accusations are unfair
I don't believe in chasing origins of songs any more do I believe it possible to discover the truth about who made those songs
What I do know for a fact is that rural working people made songs (in this small area, by the hundred so probably throughout Ireland, by the many thousands)
These indicate to me that they probably made our folksongs - there is not the slightest reason to suggest that they were incapable of the task
Out folk songs are full of snippets of information such as this - we had a long conversation with Walter Pardon about this in relation to 'Butter and Cheese and All', where he associated the 'hiding up the chimney' with the 'press gang' rails found in many East Anglian rural homes - Sam Larner had a similar conversation with MacColl and Lomax at one time
When the press gangs were scouring the areas looking for 'volunteers' the eligible males would hide up the wide chimneys crouched on specially placed rails to avoid being pressed
I can't remember if MacColl and Seeger used Sam's recording on 'Now is the Time for Fishing' but I have it here somewhere
Our folksongs are made up of such bits of information, as I said earlier, they have dirt under their fingernails
I read Roud's chapter   on the Broadsides with interest, the first thing that stuck me was that they were largely urban based
We recorded very elderly singers here in Clare who lived tem miles from Ennis, our market town, yet never managed to get there until they were into their middle age, transport and roads being what they were.
Ho did these shoddy urban poets get their knowledge to make songs with such details - farm practices, work at sea - even the folklore - they would have had to have been social historians and skilled folklorists in subjects that had no even been published in order to possess such detail
I've said often enough, one of the great gaps in our knowledge has always been that researchers gathered songs the way people collected coins, with no great interest in what the singers knew about them.
Our limited researches indicate that they knew a hell of a lot and they possessed talents that had been ignored - bu we were very much latecomers to a tradition that had died off before ourt time (with the exception of the Travellers)
"Those songs that are sung in folk clubs, folk festivals and the folk scene in general; "
So 'I Don't Like Monday's' is a folk song - utter crap!
"those songs that are found in the record shops' racks under the descriptor 'folk'; "
I found a shop that listed all Hank Williams records under 'folk' one
Utter crap
"those songs that are sung by folk singers; "
You can't define a folk singer until you define a folk song - a Catch 22 definition that ends up swallowing its own tail
"those songs performed by performers who refer to themselves as folk singers."
Folk singing has long ceased to be dedicated to folk song and has now become a convenient title for those not talented enough to make it in their own preferred fields - it has become a dustbin throw anything it suits anybody to call folk song
I'm disappointed in you Steve - I disagree with you strongly on your definitive attitude to (unknowable) origins, but this is the pits and manages to rubbish an entire century of study.
It is revival folk song research (sic) based on a folksong movement that has long lost its way
You really do need to have got our more, but now it is too late, now we need to what little we have from the older singers and apply common sense to it - we owe them that
Jim Carroll (sadly)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 05:15 AM

"but know then that you are alone in your very narrow view of opposing what the world and his wife think is folksong!"
Sorry missed this
Don't you have any books at home?
How did they all get it so wrong when they attributd folk songs to "the folk"
Tht eejit, Frankie Child, what was he thinking of when he entitled his ballads "popular" - ie of the people
I suggest that the loneliest people on the planet are those who can't come up for a definition of their discipline and have to invent their own private one
You said you had no problems with the '54 definition - where does your pick-'n-mix selection fit in with that?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Rozza
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 06:53 AM

It took a degree of dedication to read the book. I am in awe of Steve Roud's dedication and concentration in amassing and presenting all that information about popular singing in this country. I had hoped for more analysis of the textual, melodic and thematic characteristics of traditional songs. It would also have been good to read something about traditional singing style - decoration, voice quality etc. But then the book would have been twice as long and far more liable to fall apart, literally and figuratively.

Ruairidh

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 10:32 AM

Jim,
You have missed the point of my posting entirely. I'm beginning to think that what the others on the other thread are saying is true. You are out of touch with the world as it IS, attacking things that you are out of touch with and at odds with the rest of the world. That is a great shame as you know I have deep respect for your work.

You keep saying you want to discuss these things. I posted that synopsis in response to your request for other 'definitions' in good faith. Please read them carefully. I am not saying they are good or bad, simply the status-quo in the big bad world. You can deride them as much as you like but they ARE the status quo.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 10:35 AM

You are name calling and addressing none of the points I have made
I gave my opinions on your 'definitions' (you can't make definitions without getting a consensus)
Have the courtesy to reciprocate with argument rather than name calling
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 11:03 AM

Jim,
That's not name-calling. It's what I believe to be the case. The other thread is certainly a good example of someone well out of touch with the rest of the folk world.

What I gave is NOT a definition, it is a list of descriptors like the 54 list.

Jim, I'm sorry you are so unhappy with all this. I'm certainly not unhappy. I do my research into traditional song, write my books, contribute in other ways, and when not doing this I go out into the folk scene and enjoy many many performances from 'folk singers' new and old. I certainly don't judge them on any 'definition'. They are entertaining. I don't ask for any more and I don't need to.

I also happen to write songs and record them, some of which are taken up by younger singers and I'm very grateful for this. Please lighten up and enjoy yourself.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 11:23 AM

"That's not name-calling."
If you don't reply with discussion - it's name calling Steve
Not the thing I am used to from a fellow researcher
It leaves me with the impression that, like your percentage theaory, you 'definitions don't hold water when put to the test
I'm enjoying myself no end, by the way
and aIa still get a great deal of pleasure listening and singing
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 12:44 PM

Steve,
You have made a mistake there not asking for anything more than entertainment. How dare you bring that word into this thread or the other dominated by the same person.
The Ballads and Blues meetings were very entertaining but St James (Miller not Carroll) didn't like this it wasn't taking things seriously enough so after about six years of suffering he went and formed the Singers Club. He gained a few disciples one of whom is now trying to preach to the rest of us.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 01:42 PM

"St James Miller"
Would that be the same as Sir Bob Zimmermann d'you think Hoot
More necrophobic grave dancong on someone who ran rings around the lot of you, including the crook who ran away with your Club takings
SEE 'NO AGENTS NEED APPLY
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 02:43 PM

I'm out, with the others!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 02:59 PM

Firstly just to make clear that the guest listed at 12.44 p.m.was me.

Jim I don't know to whom you are referring to as a crook. Could you enlighten me? as being there from around 1957 to 1965 I am completely unaware of the matter of missing club takings.

You are making accusations about people's honesty. Funnily enough it reminds me of a book that I just read which includes an item relating to the acquisition of a number books from Foyles Bookshop written by someone who was there at the time. I still find it a little hard to believe and the reason for legitimising the excercise.

Re Zimmerman & Miller yes it is the same both pretending to be be someone else fortunately for both they came up with songs that became successful to the general public.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 04:17 PM

> Bob Thomson, who lived in Cambridgeshire, did a great deal of research on the song as it was particularly popular in East Anglia - he turned up the information on the settlement on convict returnees around the Oxborough Hall area

OK, thank you, that explains how the name in the song became "Oxborough", that name being familiar to people in that area, including returned convicts, and thus replacing "Hawkesbury".

(But sorry for continuing the thread drift.)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 07:16 PM

I hope Steve Roud is seeing all this debate - if he has time??

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Oct 17 - 04:49 AM

"(But sorry for continuing the thread drift.)"
I think understanding such things is part and parcel of these discussions Richard
Bob, with his friend, Mike Herring, did similar work with the song, 'Drink Old England Dry', linking the verse about the Dutchman with the draining of The Fens
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 28 Oct 17 - 08:01 AM

This remark by John Robinson made a few days ago slipped by without comment:

I find it hard to find 'English' folk songs, but perhaps that's just me. After a bit of digging I often discover that whatever shiny new/old song I've learned was originally Scottish, collected by Francis J Child...

John, you need to remember that Child's sources were overwhelmingly Scottish, and there's far less evidence about what people in England were singing around 1800 than there is for Scotland, simply because nobody much was collecting it. Even so (and acknowledging that ballads like 'Tifty's Annie', 'The Battle of Otterburn' and 'Sir Patrick Spens' did originate in Scotland), a lot of the ballads most popular in tradition most probably originated in England. The notes to the songs in Roud and Bishop's 'New Penguin Book' make this pretty clear.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Oct 17 - 09:26 AM

From a singers point of view, I always found it a problem to find English versions that met up with Scots texts, so I began to Anglicised Scots one, bearing in mind that this wasn't always desirable as the beautiful Scots vernacular language often gave you words and phrases that it might be possible to replace but would be a great loss to do so.
Work in Ireland has uncovered a ballad repertoire which was considered not to have existed - my friend, the late Tom Munnelly listed 50 Child Ballads that were still extant in Ireland among the older generation up to the mid 1980s
I would look out for two albums in particular, 'Songs of the Irish Travellers' and 'Early Ballads in Ireland - 1968-1985' - the foirmer includes an exquisitely sung version of 'Young Hunting' entitled 'Lady Margaret', by Traveller Martin McDonagh - not only a beautiful version of a rare ballad but, in my opinion, one of the finest examples of traditional singing available (to the accompaniment of the singer's son chopping wood fro the family business).
If I thought there was an audience for the longer narrative song hear in Ireland, I would have no hesitation in learning the Roscommon version of Banks of Newfoundland recorded by collector Joe Byrne back in the 1980s
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Oct 17 - 02:59 PM

"English versions" of the ballads
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 01 Nov 17 - 10:24 AM

I am reading this book, but I am reading it very slowly. I break off after every chapter to read something else. It gives me time to think about the implications of everything that has been written. I find that I need to go back and re-read sections to make sure that I have considered all the implications. Already, the pages that I have read has a mass of those 'post-it' type stickers marking statements that I will need to go back to re-read and reconsider. In a way, I am very glad that I am not reviewing it (though one editor has already indicated to me that he would have preferred that the book had been sent to me by the person who allocates material to reviewers). The reason that I am glad is because I would hate to have to rush through a book that is as dense and meticulously researched as this because of a review deadline. So far, I have resisted the great temptation that Brian Peters failed to do and 'skipped ahead' to read conclusions - but this has been difficult. I want to savour and enjoy what is likely to be the most important book that I have read about the subject that has absorbed my attention all my adult life.
This morning I reached the end of Chapter 7 and we have reached the end of the 18th century in considering a multiplicity of evidence, we reach a section where he, at last, offering some preliminary findings. He has been considering the impact of written and published song and tine material - opera, theatre stage shows, broadsheets, chapbooks and other sources on what was sung by the classes of people from whom the 'folk singers' came:-

.... on what we can surmise to be the state of 'traditional song' of the period. On a superficial reading across the genre, this seems to be true of musicians' tune books in general, which, as far as songs are concerned, are often much closer to the 'art music' of the period than other sources. It may be that their compilers, being semi-professional jobbing musicians, spent time in theatre orchestras and military bands, and playing for middle-class concerts and balls, and that their repertoires reflect this. But this is a superficial impression, and needs to be checked further before it can be accepted as evidence.Page 293

He then goes on to consider the last part of evidence from that century, the manuscripts of Ralph Dunn and in particular the song Poll of Plymouth. This interests Steve because:-

It was repeated in literally dozens of songsters, chapbooks and broadsides, but doesn't seem to have been noted by any of the folk song collectors. Page 294

What Steve seems to be saying here is that there is something about this song (of which he gives the lyrics) that did not attract potential singers. It didn't have the qualities required for it to be taken up by 'The voice of the people'. Without that, the song does not alter and develop on being passed on through entering the repertoires of the common people (whoever they may be). It is when songs start to be altered in this way that they have become more interesting to Steve and other contemporary researchers than the constant haranguing about definition.
The last two paragraphs of Chapter 7 are more revealing about Steve's attitude and his modus operandi than anything else that I have read in the book so far.

As the evidence stands at present, we can reach some tentative conclusions. If the manuscripts are accepted as evidence of vernacular singing, the folk-collectors severely underestimated of higher class art/popular music of the pleasure gardens and theatres in the traditional-song repertoires of a century before their time. The influence of print on traditional song was extensive. The degree of continuity between say, 1790 and 1890 is surprisingly low, and songs did not, in the main, last for a hundred years in the popular tradition, unless the degree of continuity is disguised by the collectors' selection policy. The latter is feasible but does not bear close scrutiny. It seems to argue that all collectors would recognise an eighteenth-century art song at sight, and decline to note it. This may be true of those who had a good working knowledge of popular sing history such as Sabine Baring-Gould. Frank Kidson and Anne Gilchrist, but these collectors are precisely the ones who would have found such survivals interesting and would have noted them. The balance of probability is that these songs simply did not survive to be collected around the turn of the twentieth century.
But the evidence can be read the other way round. As we know that 33 per cent of the 'folk songs' collected later originated in the eighteenth-century of before, the fact that we can find so few of them in the sources investigated simply means that these sources are not sufficiently 'folk' and we are looking in the wrong place. Certainly, compilers of manuscripts will have been, by definition, more literate that the average working person, because they could write as well as read, but we are back to our basic problem. If the 'folk songs' of the time left no tangible trace, we can say little or nothing about them. Page 296

Consider the contributions of all the previous commentators on English folk song. There is little doubt that Sharp and Karpeles knew what they were looking for before they set out the find it. They collected what that wanted to hear and ignored anything that was outside their preconceptions. Then much later we have Lloyd and all the other Marxist commentators, Harker and other de-bunkers, Georgina Boyes and other feminists; they all bought the pre-determined socio-political agendas with them. All have given us invaluable information to help to a greater understanding of the subject but we have to approach all of them with a pre-knowledge of the author's position. The only ones who have radically changed academic opinion have been the ones who have written that the position of women in the collecting work of the first has been seriously understated; they are producing plenty of evidence to support this. The interesting talk by Lizzie Bennett that I heard at a Traditional Song Forum meeting this year produced facts that this happened in Sussex and I had not heard this information before.
The main factor in my (incomplete) interpretation of Steve's approach is that he bends over backwards to omit anything to which he cannot point to a providing evidence. It is this clarity of thought; this abhorrence of assumption that is, I believe, going to provide the way for future academic researchers and writers on the subject of folk song.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Nov 17 - 04:55 PM

A neat critique, Vic.

Not sure really how relevant or significant the sexism of previous eras is here though. I have never really considered much that Lucy Broadwood, Annie Gilchrist, Mary Neal, etc., were any different to the male collectors as far as collecting goes. I've not come across this as a burning issue among all the scholars I know.

Fully agree with your last statement. I've worked with Steve for many years now and have yet to find any distracting agenda with him. He is simply a truth seeker with a burning desire to set the record straight. He is as you say cautious in his approach (unlike myself I might add.)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 01 Nov 17 - 05:36 PM

I have never really considered much that Lucy Broadwood, Annie Gilchrist, Mary Neal, etc., were any different to the male collectors as far as collecting goes.
.... and neither have I, or at least in the years that I have heard all these names, It was many years after I heard Cecil Sharp's name that I heard that of the great achievements of Mary Neal and I am sure some earlier writers did not give her the credit she deserved - especially after she fell out with Sharp. Was Maud given all the credit she deserved at the time or has that only come later? In particular, I am thinking of Georgina Boyes' article The Lady That Is With You.... Maud Karpeles (1885 - 1976) in Step Change Ed. Boyes. (Francis Boutle (2001) and in various places in her better-known The Imagined Village. There are other examples. The neglect of the historical contributions of women is having to be reassessed in a wide range of disciplines.
You ask how relevant it is here. I was contrasting the approach of Steve Roud with those who bring a already developed socio-political agenda to their writings. I was trying to categorise them and stating that one that had gained most credence was the one that argued that the contribution of women had not been fully recognised.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 04:54 AM

My main problem with the book 'so far' is that folk song is treated as literary fiction rather than what I believe it is - poetic interpretations of actual experiences by those who lived them.
This appears to be the basic difference between how Lloyd and Roud approached the same body of song - Bert presents folk song as being 'of the people', Steve gives them as being 'for the people'
I remain unconvinced that literary hack incapable of producing singable songs
Our researches have found hundreds of anonymous songs in Ireland which were made during the lives of the singers but whose parochial nature and subject matter caused them to die out shortly after the events that inspired them faded from memory
If 'the folk' were capable of song making there is every reason to belive that it was they who made our folk songs
I take Vic's point about collectors being selective and I believe they missed a great deal of vital material in doing so, but I don't count Victorian Parlour Ballads or Music Hall compositions among those - they were literary compositions and had no part in 'folk expression'
If you counted them as folk songs you would have to include the operatic arias sung by Welsh miner's Operatic Societies
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 04:56 AM

Sorry - should read
"I remain unconvinced that literary hacks incapable of producing singable songs made our folk songs"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 11:20 AM

Jim wrote:-
I don't count Victorian Parlour Ballads or Music Hall compositions among those - they were literary compositions and had no part in 'folk expression'
By chance this morning, I read this by Steve Roud in the 'New Book' -
It is because of this fundamental similarity that these 'pop songs' from the music halls could be easily absorbed into the local tradition and become 'folk songs' (Page 329 - My emphasis)

Now we know that we are as unlikely to agree a definition of folk song as we are to find a leprechaun's crock of gold at the end of a rainbow, but what this points out is that Jim places all emphasis on "origin" whereas Steve is much more concerned with "process" once a song has entered a local or national repertoire.

Another point -
Jim has written
I remain unconvinced that literary hack incapable of producing singable songs whereas Steve shows through evidence that songs of broadside origins are developed improved, localised and made more singable once they have been taken up by the people.
and on another current thread Jim writes -
I am suggesting that at one time working people actively participated in our culture and produced our songs as expressions of their lives, those songs were widely taken up, took rrot elsewhere adapted to suit different localities, ages and circumstances, during the course of which their authors were largely forgotten - thay are your folk songs - nothing to do with age, style or subject matter.
But nowhere does he offer any evidence to back this up and as Steve Gardham and I have written, Roud is an absolute stickler for evidence; if you can't show the reasons for a suggestion, then you should not make it.

One more point - another difference and here I am on dangerous ground fearing that it may be instigating a verbal firestorm such as appears in that other thread.
I wrote -
I was contrasting the approach of Steve Roud with those who bring a already developed socio-political agenda to their writings.
... and much as I agree with the majority of what I have learned of Jim's political views, I feel that he is someone who beings pre-formed views to these discussions and cannot back them up with the research findings that modern scholarship demands.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 12:06 PM

When I went to Steve Roud's presentation of his book at Sidmouth - I believe he clearly stated that his primary interest in a song is when and where is was performed in the voice of the singers.
Therefore It didn't matter what it's source was, it was the fact that is was sung over time, and possibly altered, to suit each singer, that most interested him - and that he considered these Folk Songs.
I am probably Paraphrasing very badly......but that was certainly my impression.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 12:46 PM

The only ones who have radically changed academic opinion have been the ones who have written that the position of women in the collecting work of the first has been seriously understated; they are producing plenty of evidence to support this. The interesting talk by Lizzie Bennett that I heard at a Traditional Song Forum meeting this year produced facts that this happened in Sussex and I had not heard this information before.

You could say the same about collectors much further afield. In Yiddish and Klezmer music, one of the most important collectors was Sofia Magid, who did some of the most important fieldwork ever despite being Jewish under Stalinism as well as female in patriarchal Russian academia. She was almost entirely unrecognized for it, but at least she managed to preserve her archive and not get sent to a labour camp or shot. We are only just beginning to explore what she left. Samples here:

https://yiddishsong.wordpress.com/tag/sofia-magid/

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 12:48 PM

"once a song has entered a local or national repertoire. "
Which can be said of any song (back to the Birdie song or the Welsh miner arias)
"Roud is an absolute stickler for evidence"
Not really - his statement that so many songs probably originated on broadsides is totally unqualified
I believe the evidence - ie - that working people did create their own songs - makes this unlikely
The broadside poets were notoriously bad songmakers so why make such a claim
If Bothy workers made their own songs and miners like Tommy Armstrong and Joe Corrie were rattling them off - not to mention the textile workers in Lancashire, the weaver poets of Scotland, Agricultural workers in Norfolk... et al, why should they not have made the folk songs?
Steve is writing in the 21st century - in the 19th century there wa no question that rural workers made the folksongs - Child dismissed the hacks as dunghills when the broadside trade was thriving.
What new evidence has emerged to prove the mid-nineteenth century writers didn't know what they were talking about?
None, as far as I can see.
WE don't know who wrote the folksongs so we are left to use our common sense based on what little information we have.
From your own words "Steve Roud once said to me a traditional folk song is a song sung by a folk singer. What a folk singer sings is traditional songs."
Joking or not, that is a circular statement - you need to define one before you can attribute anything to the other.
Maybe he was joking, but there are far too many people arguing this to ignore it.
Irish people produced songs which were sucked into local traditions immediately in their hundreds - why not English working people
An examination of the songs themselves imply far too great a familiarity with the subject matter and the use of vernacular, folklore, etc to be the work of outsiders.
Steve Gardham one suggested that English working people were far too bust earning a living to make songs - where did they get the time to adapt them and, more to the point, why bother when they were capable of making them themselves
As long as folksong scholarship has existed there have always been those ready to claim that folk songs are too good for the fool to have made - which leads us back to the old preobem - nobody ever bothered to consult them to find what they were capable of
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 01:07 PM

Maybe Roud explains this. Given that so much of the standard British song repertoire comes from known authors, why isn't their authorship better acknowledged?

In Turkish bardic song (roughly comparable in its position to the Child ballad corpus) the great majority of the repertoire was composed by known authors who are invariably recognized - ok, it helps that they usually worked their own names into the last verse, but that could been dropped or munged if singers had wanted to. So everybody knows which songs go back to Yunus Emre (contemporary with Chaucer) or Pir Sultan Abdal (contemporary with William Dunbar) - and there are many songs by both of them which are still sung regularly. In Anglo-Scottish song, Anon has staked out copyright to everything before Burns and most of what came after.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 01:34 PM

I don't think this explains much Jack
If Irish people composed their own songs, why not Brits?
If sections of the British population composed songs, why not all of them
Where did the knowledge and faamilirity come from among poor, urban-based writers (those are the ones Roud goes into)
Our knowledge dates only to the turn of the century when the traditions were very much on the wane
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 02:06 PM

If - as Jim states - "Our knowledge dates only to the turn of the century when the traditions were very much on the wane"

Then - Why is he so certain that his 20th Century experiences in Ireland were reflected in 18th and 19th Century England?

At least Steve Roud has real physical evidence that Broadsides were written (by "Hacks") and printed in the earlier Centuries - but none that they were written by ordinary people.....

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 02:26 PM

If Irish people composed their own songs, why not Brits?
If sections of the British population composed songs, why not all of them?

That misses the point - I wasn't talking about songs of mysterious popular origin. There are huge numbers of British and Irish songs which appeared on broadsides more than 200 years ago, and where the evolutionary evidence suggests a single source. In almost every case, where they are still sung, the singer doesn't know where they came from, despite their origin being knowable. While in other traditions that feat of collective memory is quite routine. How come the English forget so easily what the Turks almost invariably remember?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 03:56 PM

Thought I'd dealt with that Jack
The broadside output runs contrary to the traditional repertoire in style and in quality - most of the published broadside collections are crammed full of unsingable songs - read Hollway and Black or Bagford or Ashton...
Literacy is peculiar anyway in terms of the country singers - certainly the ones we interviewed
Something in print is treated as fixed and sacrosanct
Singers have commented to us that songs they have bought are not to be trusted and have been rejected rather than altered
Harry Cox had a large collection of broadsides but he told Bob Thomson he never learned from them
Even the subject matter of the broadsides is iffy
If you read Hugill's Sailortown you will find that sailors as a whole were hated and feared (except maybe in wartime)
Yet here are all thise songs lamenting the hard life of a sailor or Jack coming ashore, pulling a string and having his way with the townies woman, or going into a gin-shop, smashing it up and stealing all the booze - heroes all
These ate class boasts about about 'our boys' coming out on top.
THe same with navvies - read the note to the song on the club thread I put up this morning - not much evidence of a 'Bold English Navvy' there.
Soldiers the same - the garrison towns weer no-go areas.
The folk songs throughout reflect a sympathy for and a knowledge of their subject matter that, in my opinion, is almost certainly based on an insiders view.
Even the ballads are made from the point of view of the 'lower classes' - the lame dog invariably getting the best of his better.
Some of the historical ones are downright seditious - not the stuff you peddled around the streets in the 18th century
If you have a chance, get hold of Alec Stewart telling traditional tales - the humour is the same as us much of the turn-of-phrase.
"Why is he so certain that his 20th Century experiences in Ireland were reflected in 18th and 19th Century England?"
Steve's point appears to be aimed at the 19th century repertoire - Steve Gardham is now insisting that his 90% refers to that time, though it appeared to cover everything at one time
When Sharp's gang were doing the rounds they were collecting material learned in the latter half of the 19th century and were insisting that their job was a race against the undertaker as the tradition was dying.
The Iris tradition lasted probably to the late 1940s and was still pretty active - singers we knew were remembering from a living tradition - the BBC was largely recording dead one.
The Irish Travellers tradition was very much alive to the middle of the seventies - their communities were virtually non-literate yet, as with the Scots Travellers, if you wanted the big ballads or narrative songs, that's where you went
We really don't know anything for certain, but the printed word appears not to feature in the making of traditional songs as far as I can see - borrowing from them maybe.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 05:41 PM

By sheer fluke I read this today. In Hugh MacDiarmid's The Company I've Kept there is a conversation between him, John Ogdon and Ronald Stevenson about Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (who MacDiarmid knew very well for most of his life). Stevenson says this (thinking about the quotation of folk tunes by art music composers):

Dozens of phrases from Shakespeare have been absorbed into common parlance in Britain; the same can be said for Dante in Italy; the difference is that in Britain most people don't know it's Shakespeare they're quoting, whereas in Italy they do know it's Dante. A few years ago, on O'Connell Bridge in Dublin, an Irish tramp quoted Yeats to me. I said, 'Could you direct me to the Abbey Theatre, please?' and he replied, correcting me with kindly reproof, 'You mean Yeats's theatre'; and he proceeded to quote Yeats to me.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 05:44 PM

**the printed word appears not to feature in the making of traditional songs as far as I can see** And there we have it in a nutshell, Jim. Your opinion. Fine. I'll keep reposting this statement every 5 or 6 postings so that you don't have to. Is that okay with you?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 06:48 PM

Walter Pardon learnt just about all of his songs from his Uncle Billy Gee who in turn learnt them from Walter's grandfather. Guess where Walter's grandfather got all his songs?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Nov 17 - 04:44 AM

"Guess where Walter's grandfather got all his songs?"
Walter's grandfather was ain impoverished land worker who went to sea to feed his family and ended up with them in the workhouse - I doubt if he spent many pennies buying broadsides.
Walter said that there was no trace of his family ever learning songs from print - he never saw a broadside and the only evidence of a printed version of a song in his family horde was a version of 'Bonny Bunch of Roses', which Walter learned from hearing his uncle Tom sing
Walter never threw anything away - when he died, his house was full of boxes of papers going back two generations
He told us that he once saw a street singer in North Walsham, but he coudn't recall any of his songs.
Do you know something he never told us?

"Your opinion."
Which is the point I have been making all along - all this is just our opinion Steve - yours, mine, everyone else's - we have nothing to go on for it to be anything else.
It's why I don't make pronouncements and why I wish you didn't

"Dozens of phrases from Shakespeare have been absorbed into common parlance in Britain"
Which was a two-way street Jack
There are a number of books on our shelves linking the works of Shakespeare (son of a glove-maker) with the customs and practices of his time; 'Shakespeare's Puck and his Folkslore', William Bell (1852), 'Folklore of Shakespeare' T F Thiselton Dyer (1883), 'The Flora and Folk Lore of Shakespeare' F.R. Savage (1923) and 'Old Customs and Superstitions in Shakespeare Land', J Harvey Bloom (1929) ; all showing that Shakespeare constantly dipped into the peoples' culture for his inspiration.
The most comprehensive work, a large, two volume collection of essays by various authors, is 'Shakespeare's England (Oxford Union 19717), which deals with the lot, language, sports, fine arts, sciences... right through to music and broadsides.
That's why it's always struck me as irrational to attribute our culture to literary sources.

My paternal grandfather was one of the founders of the maritime section of The Working Mans' Association when he was at sea.
He bacame a Shakespeare nut and past the infection on to my father who passed it on to me.
He filled dozens on notebooks describing Shakespeare's works in down-to-earth North-of-England language
When he remarried and moved to Stoke on Trent, he was latched onto by a local college and invited on several occasions, to speak on his enthusiasm - in broad Scouse   
He also remembered a few shanties, which he had picked up from fellow seamen after they had gone out of use.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Nov 17 - 03:55 PM

I think there must be 2 Walter Pardons from Knapton, Norfolk, Jim.

Quote from the one I'm referring to.

"Uncle Billy (Gee) was an outstanding fellow. He was born here in this house. I learned nearly all my songs off him; he was born in 1863. Most of the songs he got from my grandfather. My Uncle Tom at Bacton, he knew a lot, but they were different from what Billy's were.

Most of them come from the one man; he knew a hundred, my grandfather did.............................My grandfather got the songs from broadsheets, apparently that's how they were brought round, so they always told me."

There's a lot more detail in the interview but I think you get the flavour.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Nov 17 - 04:27 PM

**we have nothing to go on**

I've been studying broadsides and other forms of commercial music from previous centuries for about 40 years now, Jim. How long and how intensively have you been studying them? Is there anywhere I can look at the results of your studies on them?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 03 Nov 17 - 04:47 PM

Steve - Where does the Walter Pardon quote about Broadsides come from?

eg - Who interviewed him and when...........I am not calling what you say into doubt - I just feel it should be referenced.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Sue Allan
Date: 03 Nov 17 - 05:09 PM

I think you are making too much of the 'rural workers v broadside hacks' argument Jim, and so getting hot under the collar about it quite unnecessarily. It is not the straight dichotomy you are making out, but rather a fluid situation and a two-way street: songs were re-cycled in both directions, with broadside printers picking up on songs sung in the countryside by singers in pubs and so on and towns and printing them to circulate more widely, for profit, and country people learning songs from ballad singers who bought their supply of ballad sheets from the printers or stationers, and sang them at country fairs and market - and would also have picked up on other songs being sung to relay to the printers. Obviously the ballad singers and sellers tried to sell their sheets to whoever would buy, but some may just have listened. In rural Cumberland and Westmorland small printers in market towns were churning out broadsheets and chapbooks, and buying in from the larger urban printers. So it does seem to me that the situation is not black and white but very many shades of grey.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 03 Nov 17 - 05:10 PM

Tim may have a better reference, but here is one I found that you can easily check out. Apologies for butting in, but I was interested and thought I'd share.

"Quotations from Walter himself are taken mainly from transcriptions of conversations with Peter Bellamy (published in Folk Review, August 1974, pp.10-15) and Karl Dallas (published in Folk News, August 1977, pp.14-15)."

From http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/pardon2.htm

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 03 Nov 17 - 05:30 PM

Thanks - That's pretty clear...........

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Nov 17 - 05:56 PM

That is correct JD but I got them from the booklet that came with the Mustrad 2 CD set so basically the same source.

Hi, Sue.
Of course it was a two-way process and I have plenty of examples of broadside printings that obviously came from oral tradition that didn't survive to be collected from oral tradition. However, the earliest extant versions even of these are still found to have come from some literary source or from some urban commercial source. If we are talking about the English songs published as part of the general corpus I for one am convinced that the vast bulk originated in this way in urban areas, not rural. It is possible that some of the pedlars were also contributing to the corpus as 'collectors' but I've seen no evidence of this. Of course looked at from a more recent regional approach there are all sorts of songs that came from rural writers, but in my experience these songs very rarely made it into the national corpus for a variety of reasons. I'm sure you have plenty of examples of local folk songs in Cumbria but how many of these appear in the national corpus as published by the likes of Sharp, Broadwood, Baring-Gould, Kidson etc?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST, Sue Allan
Date: 03 Nov 17 - 07:11 PM

Hi Steve,
well I can think of just one off the top of my head - ?D?Ye Ken John Peel?, written by local person, became popular, went into print as broadside and in chapbooks (Fordyce, Newcastle) and then published in local book 1866, Stokoe &Reay 1893, National Song Book 1905 etc etc. Later collected from oral sources by eg Williams.
There are other regional songs which circulated in a similar way, which presumably you wouldn't include in ?the national corpus?, a term with which I am unfamiliar in the folk song context. I?m sure you?re right that proportionally more, possibly many more, songs originated in the pleasure gardens and theatres (not all urban: there were plenty of small companies doing ?rural touring?, albeit often advertising the latest songs from London) and the songs composed by working class & artisan class (skilled workers) singers and musicians at Harmonic Societies and Glee Clubs.
I?m puzzled by ?the national corpus? you refer too though as I?m not sure there really is such a thing: there are too many variables - eg regional songs which become national as opposed to those which do not, Scottish (more usually ?Scotch? in eighteenth century)songs which are in fact English for example, while those published by Sharp et al represent a relatively limited number of singers in a few selected locattions, eg in my area, none of the collectors who came here ever went to a hunt meets so missed out on 30% possible Cumbrian songs. Can of worms warning!!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Nov 17 - 08:51 PM

I think there must be 2 Walter Pardons from Knapton, Norfolk, Jim.
I am not going to enter into debate about any contradictions there might be with walter only to say that we have him on tape rejecting the idea of broadsides being a part of the family reprtoire
I have the recordings Tim is referring to with Dallas.
This is what Walter told us about the situation his grandfather and family was in -

"?I think he swore at the old man. Anyone who answered back, you see, that was instant dismissal in them days then, this would be, I should think, in the early 1850s or even 1840s. He was given instant dismissal and no-one would employ him. My grandfather and his three sisters, he had to keep them and their mother. He?d got no money so he went to Yarmouth and went to sea, like Sam Larner did, you know, this trawling. My grandfather and his sisters and the mother had to go into Gimmingham Workhouse while he was away at sea, ?cause no-one would employ him. There?s a man told me that when his mother was a little girl, they all come past the house crying to think they had to go in the workhouse; she cried to see them cry. But father said my grandfather told him he liked it in the workhouse, it was warm and he was fed. Well, they?d have starved, workhouse or starve, so they went in there until he could come home with some money?.

"I've been studying broadsides and other forms of commercial music from previous centuries for about 40 years now, Jim"
And you have yet to produce one definite song they you can prove originated on a broadside
Pushing paper around a desk proves nothing Steve - as nobody ever got around to asking traditional singers about their songs, we have no information who made them
You have yet to address the fact that the output of the broadside hacks indicates that they were incapable of doing so
You seem to have abandoned your original argument that "hacks" meant something other than bad poets.
We were talking to and recording traditional singers for thirty years and we can prove categorically that from the middle of the nineteenth century, rural workers were prolific song-makers fully capable of making our folk songs - far more than the purveyors of bad verse that Cjild and his contemporaries wrote off as "dunghill" writers
"and so getting hot under the collar about it quite unnecessarily."
I'm afraid I can't agree Sue (I'm not getting hot under the collard, by the way - I was when my conclusion based on thirty years of work with traditional singers was dismissed as "romantic nonsense", but that passed when I found he was had no real evidence to back up what he said and put forward arguments like "English workers were too busy to make songs" - or that the large repertoire of locally composed songs were "the scribblings of retired people"....
Whether the people who have, up to now been credited with making folksongs, did make them is a pretty fundamental question - as far as I am concerned, such an important claim needs to be either proved or admitted to be no more than a theory without evidence
Steve has vacillated so much that it is difficult to keep up -
First it was "all folksongs" (based on centuries of repertoire covered by 'The Song Carriers - which is what prompted his "romantic nonsense" comment, then it went to only that collected at the beginning of the 20th century
I'm not quite sure where we are now
If Steve is right, we are back to the Phillips Barry dismissive comment that 'The folk' were incapable of composition and could only repeat what they hears
"Popular tradition, however, does not mean popular origin.....the ballad.... has sunk to the level of the folk which has the keeping of folklore. To put it in a single phrase, memory not invention is the function of the folk".
Taking the credit of making its songs from an entire class of people and putting it into that hands of notoriously bad writers is, as far as I am concerned, a serious business and needs to be proven beyond doubt
If working people were capable of making songs, logic tells me they probably made the folk songs - they were far to good and knowledgeable of their subject matter to be the work of shoddy Urban writers (they were the ones Roud described)
Jim Carroll

Subject: Lyr Add: THE BOBBED HAIR
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Nov 17 - 09:12 PM

Just as an example, this is fairly typical of the songs that were being made in their several hundreds by rural workers within fifteen miles of this town in the 1930s - none ever appeared in print and the vast majority were anonymous
It appears to be the case that they were common throughout Ireland
It has been argued for some odd reason that Ireland was somehow different than England, bu the local repertoire here inluded large numbers of songs which probably originated in Britain, including a significant number of Child ballads still extant into the 1970s
Jim Carroll

The Bobbed Hair (Roud 3077) Tom Lenihan Knockbrack, Miltown Malbay
I feel depressed and sad tonight, my heart is filled with woe,
Since I met my Biddy darling when we parted long ago.
I remember when we parted how the sun came shining down
On that fair and handsome creature and her lovely locks of brown.

When I met her I was horrified, I could not understand
What made her locks so ugly now that once was sweet and grand.
I gazed in silent wonder, yes, I looked and looked again;
My heart near burst asunder when I found she had bobbed her hair.

I said: ?Biddy dear, what happened you, that you looked so neat and trim
The night we kissed and parted in the road near Corofin??
I asked why she had shorn her locks, she smiled and made a bow,
And the answer that she made was: ?Tis all the fashion now.?

Ah, to see my darling?s hair, too, it was a lovely sight,
And although ?tis hard to make me cry, I shed some tears that night.
Before we left I asked her how this bobbing first began,
?Some years ago,? she said, ?you know, ?twas done by Black and Tans!?

Farewell, dear Bid, I?m clear fed up, there is no bobbed hair for me.
Our partnership we must dissolve, I?m horrified to see,
The locks that nature gave to thee, oh, just for fashion?s sake
Clipped off, and now you neck is bare, like Paddy McGinty?s drake.

Of course I know the times have changed, but I?ll allow for that,
And shingled hair looks horrible beneath a nice new hat.
And why don?t fashions doff the shawl our grannys used to wear?
Some has done it still and always will but they have not bobbed their hair.

The ass brays in a strong protest and swears he will not move
And goats upon the mountains bleat that fashions may improve
The swallows are about to leave, no more we?ll see the hare
And stalks are burned with the blight since the women bobbed their hair.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 04:11 AM

I don't see anything in Jim's quote from Walter Pardon that says his grandfather wouldn't have bought broadsides. They were cheap.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Sue Allan
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 05:02 AM

Apologies for all those question marks in my post: they were typed as inverted commas so not sure what happened there!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 05:21 AM

You're on a machine running a recent version of Windows. They don't let you type an ASCII-standard straight quote sign (as you can on any other operating system, like the one I'm using). Instead, when you type ' on a keyboard attached to Windows, you get a curly-single-close-quote sign ’, which isn't ASCII and isn't recognized in HTML source by most browsers, so they display ? instead. Max hasn't yet got round to modifying Mudcat's text-entry code to keep track of Microsoft's incompetence.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 05:38 AM

Jim wrote -
logic tells me they probably made the folk songs
You have been picked up on a similar block in your thinking by Steve G. so now it must be my turn.
You are misusing the word "logic" here. Logic requires carefully referenced structural argument. Logic is generally held to consist of the systematic study of the form of valid inference. A valid inference is one where there is a specific relation of logical support between the assumptions of the inference and its conclusion.

You haven't offered a single piece of historical reference to make the above statement. What you are talking about is what you "presume" to be the case; what you are describing is an "assumption" or even a "gut feeling". An unkind person might even call it "wishful thinking" but I wouldn't because that has pejorative overtones.

Jim wrote (03 Nov 17 - 04:44 AM)
It's why I don't make pronouncements and why I wish you didn't.
... but you do, Jim, you make them all the time and that is why you are challenged on them because they they do not have the rigour or evidence that modern academic research demands.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 05:44 AM

"I don't see anything in Jim's quote from Walter Pardon that says his grandfather wouldn't have bought broadsides. THey were cheap"
To a family forced to living in a workhouse, nothing was cheap, Jack, certainly nothing as unnecessary as songsheets
I checked what Walter actually said about broadsides - can't find the reference to his saying his family never bought them, but what he did say was that none of their "folk songs" ever came from them - walter was extremely specific as to what he thought were folksongs
We went through his repertoire with him once and listed those he regardd as not being folksongs.
This is what he dismissed - some of them undoubtedly are from broadsisdes
Naughty Jemmy Brown
Old Brown?s Daughter
Marble Arch
One Cold Morning in December
Peggy Band
Ship That Never Returned
Skipper and his Boy
Suvlah Bay
The Steam Arm
Traampwoman?s Tragedy
Two Lovely Black Eyes
The Wanderer
We?ve Both Been Here Before
When The Fields Were White With Daisies
When You Get Up in the Morning
Wreck of the Lifeboat
Write Me a Letter from Home
All Among the Barley
As I Wandered by the Brookside
Balaclava
Black Eyed Susan
Bright Golden Store
British Man of War
Cock a Doodle Doo
A Country Life
Faithful Sailor Boy
Generals All
Grace Darling
Grandfather?s Clock
Help one Another Boys
The Huntsman
I Traced Her Footprints
I?ll Come Back to you Sweetheart
I?ll Hang my Harp
I?m Yorkshire, Though In London
Irish Molly
I Wish They?d Do It
Shamrock Rose and Thistle
Lads in Navy Blue
Miner?s Return
Mistletoe Bough
More Trouble in my Native Land
He was not sure about Farmer's Boy which, he said had been ?Written by someone who didn?t know the difference between wheat and barley".

Mike Yates once wrote an article pointing out, rightly, that traditional singers sang songs other than folk songs
I responded with this - A FOLKSONG - BY ANY OTHER NAME (article 41)
That remains my view
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 05:51 AM

Jack Campin: No ... I typed my post on my ipad!!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 05:52 AM

"The Dandy Man" seems to have gone astray from that list
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Sue Allan
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 06:30 AM

Even weirder ... my last post re. ipad says it's from Jack Campin! what on earth is going on here?! Definitely put Sue Allan in box so it should have said guest Sue Allan (forgotten password to reset cookie).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 06:32 AM

I broadly share the views of Sue Allan in her post of 03nov 11 07pm.
I think songs and tunes were composed by all levels of society from the humblest to the higher echelons.
They moved in all directions and were picked up by performers who took a fancy to them.
Some of the material remained much as the original and others changed to the taste of the performer or his audience.
With regard to the quality of the songs,a farm worker could easily have had a better use of words than a bad broadside writer or vice versa.
The argument as to who had the most influence depends on the the opinion of the commentator,whose views will be shaped by what he or she thinks is most important.
No one today knows exactly what happened in the past,the only evidence we have is snapshots of the time,what the collectors chose to record.
What they chose to leave out of their collections and the explanatory notes.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 07:07 AM

I am with Sue in this, seeing shades of grey more than black and white.

I also feel that Jim and Steve are to some extent at cross purposes, arguing about different subsets of the thousands of songs that have existed in England. Jim has ample evidence of "the folk" in Ireland making new songs about current events up until modern times and surmises that the folk in England were surely capable of the same, at least around 200 years ago if not more recently. However a large proportion of such songs in Ireland spread only locally and were collected only if someone happened to go collecting in that locality. The same seems very likely in England. So, however many songs were genuinely made by ploughboys, milkmaids, weavers, etc, few of them ever reached Sharp, Baring-Gould and co unless at some point they found their way into print and thus got more widely disseminated. Likewise all of us would surely agree that a large proportion of broadsides were pretty poor stuff, were actually sung by the folk only briefly if at all, and were never collected.

The songs that are of interest are those that were sung for at least a few decades, in some cases centuries, from when they were first made. These include the classic corpus from the collectors a hundred-odd years ago. (Opinions differ as to whether more recent ones, for example from the music hall, deserve the label "folk", but certainly the folk have sung some of them.)

Sticking to that classic corpus, the earliest evidence of most of them is in print, and some of them were certainly written for the stage or the pleasure gardens by the likes of Dibden. Who wrote most of them will never be known for certain. Jim would like to attribute a lot of them to the folk, largely on the basis of internal evidence of expert knowledge of the subjects addressed. Others attribute the bulk of them to "hacks" largely on the basis of style.

One of the most beautiful songs is the Coppers' A Shepherd of the Downs. It can hardly be disputed that that song derived from The Shepherd Adonis (rather than the other way round), but someone changed it along the way, greatly improving it. And yet in the last verse there appears the phrase "we hear", which is quite superfluous to the story and serves only to satisfy the metre and provide a rhyme. Roud says (on page 307) that that last verse "appears nowhere else". It is very unlikely that evidence will ever emerge of who exactly wrote that verse, but whoever did so borrowed that phrase from umpteen other songs. A broadside hack or a Sussex Shepherd?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 07:48 AM

I have no problem with most of your points Richard
The evidence of workers making song in Britain throughout the 19th century; the Chartist newspapers ran weekly columns by weaverts et al which are still accessible in Manchester Central Library
I seem to remember Stave conceding that The Bothie workers made their own songs without the aid of print.
The BBC even recorded Scots women in the Hebrides making songs on the spot extolling the sexual virtues of Alan Lomax.
Song Making continued right into the twentieth century with miners like Joe Corrie, who is, I believe on par with the Irish local songmakers
What made Ireland stick out as a songwriting nation was its 'over-abundance of history' - events like The Famine, the mass evictions, the enforced emigrations and the fight for national freedom demanded that songs were made, both in print and orally - this happened in every County in Ireland, North and South
Can I just remake my point as to why I believe the question of who made our songs to be an important point
In a couple of weeks time, Pat and I are speaking to Galway Uni students on the conclusions we drew from our collecting in Ireland
We intend to finish with this on locally made songs

"To bring this a little nearer home, following the Famine, the emigrations and the mass evictions, in the 1870s, when the British government decided to break up estates owned by absentee landlords and redistribute the land into Irish hands, some areas, particularly Clare, Limerick and parts of Galway objected to the way this was done, claiming that already wealthy farmers with large farms were being given the largest portions.
The most popular form of protest adopted was the 'cattle raid'; cattle would be stolen from the wealthiest farms, stampeded through the larger towns accompanied by the rustlers, shouting and blowing on horns and then let loose on large stretches of open lands, The Burren, in North Clare being a favourite spot
The official protests were abandoned around 1911, but in some places continued to Independence and beyond and these actions gave rise to a number of songs We were given this by Clare man, Michael 'Straighty Flanagan' he called it 'The Graziers'; Patrick Galvin included it in his 'Songs of Irish Resistance' as 'The Grazier Tribe'

Eg 10 ?Michael 'Straighty' Flanagan The Graziers

This brings us to probably the most important discovery we made throughout our collecting activities, local songs.   
Apart from the general repertoire, West Clare singers had a wealth of home-made songs, largely anonymous, dealing with local events, people or aspects of daily life and quite often made during the lifetimes of the singers. Only a couple, as far as we could find, had made it into print. We?re not referring to songs from the national repertoire which has had local place-names tagged onto them; these are common enough, but the home-grown compositions which have seldom taken root elsewhere because of their specifically parochial nature, quite often disappearing when the cause of their inspiration faded from memory.
These songs included many aspects of life, from everyday experience to national events viewed locally. As one 94 year old singer told us, ?In those days, if a man farted in church somebody made a song about it.
This is a song, almost certainly made in Corofin, North Clare some time in the 1930s, commenting on a new hairstyle; the singer is Tom Lenihan of Miltown Malbay.

Eg 11 Tom Lenihan The Bobbed Hair

We have recorded a number of such local songs and have been made aware of many more ? back in the 1970s a book entitled 'Ballads of Clare' edited by Sean Killeen was published containing 147 of these songs originating in East Clare. Some casual enquiries suggest that songs such as these were once common all over Ireland and have been largely neglected or have disappeared from the repertoires because of their parochial and ephemeral nature. The implication of the existence of these songs is extremely significant
Since the early days there has been a running argument as to whether the ?ordinary? people were capable of making our Classic ballads. Now, this idea has spread to our songs, with suggestions that 90% plus of them originated on the broadside presses and this questions the entire concept of rural song making
We believe that working people were natural song makers who found it necessary to put their feeling and experiences into verse, for entertainment certainly, but the subject matter and the time in which they were made makes them essential pieces of our history
For instance, over forty years ago we got this next song from several Travellers, all of whom asked that we don?t make it public as the couple in the song were still very much alive at the time; we've respected those wishes up to now but feel that all concerned, the couple and the singers, are now long dead, so there?s no harm in playing it on occasions such as these
The singer here, blind Travelling woman, Mary Delaney, told us laughing, "Paddy's my cousin and he?d murder me if he found I'd sung it to you" The song deals with ?made matches, marriage done through a matchmaker; such songs are to be found throughout the oral tradition, some about willing marriages, but most about enforced ones. The woman in the song was chosen because of her skill at one of the traditional Traveller trades of the time, buying, cleaning and re-selling old feather mattresses. We got the background of the song from our friend, Kerry Traveller, Mikeen McCarthy, who was present when the song was made. He said it was made on the morning of the wedding by a group of Traveller lads sitting on a grassy bank outside the church humorously predicting how the marriage taking place would end up

Eg 12 Mary Delaney Paddy McInerney"

Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 08:21 AM

Richard Mellish wrote:
"So, however many songs were genuinely made by ploughboys, milkmaids, weavers, etc, few of them ever reached Sharp, Baring-Gould and co unless at some point they found their way into print and thus got more widely disseminated."

This is a really important point. Phil Tanner sang 'Henry Martin' and Sam Larner 'The Lofty Tall Ship', both excellent variants of a single song, interestingly different melodically and textually, but strongly similar as well (Cecil would have called that 'Continuity versus Variation').

It beggars belief that the song would have been known at locations 350 miles apart simply by travelling along some rural grapevine, and indeed there are numerous 19th century printings. Though how the melody kept the same form at that degree of separation, without the help of print, is the really interesting question.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,uniformitarianist
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 09:18 AM

Do those who make an academic study of these things have anything similar to the geologists concept of "uniformitarianism"?

If so the recent evidence that those at the 'humblest' levels of society do write songs allows us to ask "do we have any evidence that 'ploughboys, milkmaids, weavers, etc, ' didn't write songs?" rather than having a strict requirement for evidence that they did.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 09:25 AM

"along some rural grapevine"
Not sure how much of a mystery this is Brian
Sam described stopping off at various ports as a trawlerman and taking part in singing competitions
These songs didn't necessarily have to travel by land.
Navvies also played a part in their transmission
I attended a talk given by Peter Cook once where he discussed the richness of the oral tradition in Aberdeenshire, particularly in relation to the Greig collection
He projected a 19th century map of the area onto a screen and then superimposed a plan of all the railways, roads and canals being worked on at the time
I don't know about the rest of the audience, but it impressed me
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 09:48 AM

The simplest answer to your question, Brian, is that one of the ways these ballads were disseminated over large distances is that the pedlars who travelled great distances always carried a stock of broadsides and songsters with the rest of their wares. Of course we cannot discount migratory workers as well. We have much less information about how the melodies travelled for obvious reasons. The normal street/market ballad sellers of course sang the songs to their buyers but by and large these didn't travel great distances.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 10:03 AM

Sue,
In answer to your comment re English national folksong corpus. This is something some of us use to describe that great body of published anthologies from about 1890 up to WWII. Whilst this has a massive southern bias, this is a useful body for us to study and comment on, and it is this body of material that I have always referred to when presenting my percentages (fact: 89% earliest manifestation in urban commercial material, opinion: 95% originated in this way.)

**the classic corpus from the collectors a hundred-odd years ago** a quote from Richard's post above, for example.

Of course much more material has come to light since those collections were published, a lot of it of a local nature. Some would argue that 'D'ye ken John Peel' nowadays fits far better into the genre of 'national song or community song' rather than 'traditional folk song' which it undoubtedly is. How many people outside the hunting fraternity would know more than the chorus for instance?

You mention the hunt suppers and the distinct repertoires involved. As you know from our recent conversations I am very aware of these and the fact that in some areas they are indeed flourishing whereas in others the locals have lost interest and their singers are now very much part of the folk scene.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 10:16 AM

"The simplest answer to your question, Brian, i"
That thn an "answer", this suggests that both oral and print transission are viable options
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 10:31 AM

They're not just viable options, they are the only options. Don't really understand what you are trying to say, Jim. I think you mean 'transmission' rather than 'transition', and no-one is arguing with this or indeed could.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 10:33 AM

Brian Peters wrote
It beggars belief that the song would have been known at locations 350 miles apart simply by travelling along some rural grapevine

Last Saturday I sang MacDonald's Return To Glencoe in a folk club; the same twelve verses exactly the lyrics, if not the great ability to put over a song, that I had recorded from the great Davy Stewart in 1972. One of my enduring memories of that meeting with him was asking him to write his name and address for me and handing him my notebook and a pen and my acute embarrassment as the pen hovered over the paper, he said to me, "Ye'd better write it oot yersel'. laddie, I ha'nae got ma specs wi'me." (He was wearing them at the time). I still blush when I think of that 45 years later. He then chanted out his Possil Park, Glasgow address for me.
Afterwards, I thought to myself that I had found something very important, a 12 verse broken token ballad from a man who could not read and write! The oral tradition at work!
Later again I thought of two lines that Davy had sung:-

Like she whom the prize of Mount Ida had won,
There approached a fair lassie as bright as the sun....."

Something about those lines stuck out like a sore thumb. I wondered if some minor poet/broadside hack had been at those lines. They were very different from other ways the start of the story appears in other broken token ballads.

Decades later I was at the Take 6 project was being launched at Cecil Sharp House. When was that? Something like 6 years ago? This was the pilot project that EFDSS had for digitising the collections of all the great collectors. One of the speakers at the launch - Malcolm Taylor? Steve Roud? (more likely) had said that one of the first six collectors in that pilot group had collected songs in Portsmouth Workhouse. My ears pricked up. That old workhouse building was now part of St. Mary's Hospital and I had ridden past it on my bike every day in the seven years of my secondary education. As soon as I got home I did an internet search for George Gardiner + Portsmouth and it appears that this had been something of a treasure trove of old songs, but what was this? To my surprise there was MacDonald's Return To Glencoe notated in the first few years of the 20th century and give or take a few words it was identical to the version that I had recorded from the man whose by-name amongst the Scots Travellers was 'the Galoot'.
The Portsmouth version also had 12 verses and included the lines I quote above.

My interest in the song re-kindled by singing it for the first time in while in public for quite a few years, I did an internet search for it. One of the references that the search found was from The County Clare Library. Now for those of you who don't know, one of the things that this library does is to share on its website/database the material collected by a number of important song collectors in the west of Ireland. My link takes you to an article, The Long Song Singer: Martin Reidy of Tullaghaboy 1901-1985 by Tom Munnelly.
Tom writes about Martin

His spartan cottage is just off the road from Connolly to Lisroe in West Clare. In this cottage he was born and reared. He spent all his long life there, a solitary bachelor eking out a living on his mountain farm after his parents had departed this world and the other members of the family had scattered to the four winds. Not that Martin was discontented with such a life, for he had little inclination to travel beyond his immediate environs except perhaps to walk his cattle to the fairs in Ennis or maybe go for a pint and do some shopping in Connolly. His disinterest in the world beyond his mountain was such that he never even travelled the twenty-odd miles to the mating Mecca of Lisdoonvarna in all his years.

Tom goes on to quote that same song in the version he collected from this isolated informant.
Tom only got nine verses from Martin (Vic writes showing his smug side) but they again include the two lines that I quote above. This makes me share the opinion expressed by the worthy Mr. Peters that this "beggars belief" that this travelled between these three different locations in time and location without the aid of print.
I go to the Roud Broadside Index and search for this song and find quite a number of references to it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 11:03 AM

Vic - The version song collected by Gardiner - ie. MacDonald's Return To Glencoe, was collected in Portsmouth Workhouse from Charles Bateman who was born in Ireland............

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 11:14 AM

A lot of old matelots from all over when they left the Royal Navy settled in Posrtsmouth after they left, especially the ones who had signed up for the maximum 27 years, they had nothing to back to their home area for.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 11:24 AM

"this "beggars belief" that this travelled between these three different locations in time and location without the aid of print."
Not only did Martin not make it to Lisdoonvarna, but he only made the market town of Ennis, about five miles away, a few times in his long life.
When he was 'discovered' by the revival he was taken to sing at the Cork Folk Festival - he stepped out of the car on the main street, looked wonderingly up and down and declared it to be 'a grand bit of a village'
He sang the longest song we ever recorded - 'The True Lover's Discussion', lsting over 15 minutes
He once told us that "I wouldn't give you tuppence for a short song"
As Tom Munnelly points out, the song was widely popular throughout Scotland and Ireland among country singers - it is as likely as not that it was carried into Ireland by the Northern singers and made its way down the country.
Martin learned his version as a child but he could never remember where he got it.
His area, Tullochaboy, on the higher slopes of Mount Callan, was once a rich hunting ground for singers and storytellers.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 11:39 AM

Should read:
" it is as likely as not that it was carried into Ireland by the Northern singers who travelled to Scotland regularly to pick potatoes 'The tattie howkers'
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 11:48 AM

" think you mean 'transmission' "
I do - I assume spell checker did that
I'm trying to say that oral transmission is as likely as print for that particular song, particularly considering the sitances
The coastal trade between Yarmouth and Swansea was a far more likely rout that the peddlers, when you consider a 'long rout' for a peddler was considered the one from Birmingham to the South East which would involve a trip lasting three and a half months for a trader plying his wares - according to the PDF covering 19th century trade
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 11:51 AM

"Like she whom the prize of Mount Ida had won,
There approached a fair lassie as bright as the sun....."

This goes way back in oral transmission: The prize was the Apple of Discord awarded by Paris to Aphrodite, precipitating the Trojan War. According to Wikipedia, Mount Ida goes back beyond Homer, figuring in pre-Olympian Greek myth.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 11:59 AM

it is as likely as not that it was carried into Ireland by the Northern singers who travelled to Scotland regularly to pick potatoes 'The tattie howkers'

It is a well-established fact that Scots songs travelled to Ireland since the time of the Cromwell planters; there is much evidence for this. It is also very interesting the way that the songs changed during that journey - the way that The Auld Beggarman becomes The Lame Poor Poor Man for instance.
What is much more difficult to go along with is that a multiplicity of collected versions refer to the Mountain of the Goddess in Greek Mythology - Mount Ida in Crete - and the prize that was won there and that this was not changed in the mouths of the people without reference to print.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 12:00 PM

Again Vic Smith - Bateman in the 1891 Census was a Dock Labourer living in Warlington Street and again in 1901 was a Grocer's Porter, again in Warblington Street (next door to 1891 address - not far from the Dockyard) - so was possibly not a sailor - unless he served in the Navy and then took shore jobs later. He was born in Cork circa 1847.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 12:14 PM

Greek mythology is fairly common in Irish song Vic
Paddy Tunney, whose mother Brigid, also sings the song (as he does) with the same "Mount Ida" reference, put it down to the Hedge Schoolmasters who set up clandestine schools under the most repressive periods of English rule
They taught the classics to Irish peasant kids which fed into the songs made such references commonplace, so wherever it started out, there wwas no reason to rationalise it.
I don't know if you've had our Irish singer friend, Oliver Mulligan at your club, but his wife, Susan, a Greek Scholar, used to curl me up when she'd ask him to sing 'The Dung Beetle Song', referring to 'Sheila Nee Iyer' which mentions Sisyphus - a Greek mythological character who gave his name to the insect.
Jim Carroll


.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 12:38 PM

I know SFA about it, but does such convoluted syntax often appear in folk compositions? The long prefatory adjective clause, followed by the subject-verb inversion (and shouldn't it be "like her who"?) sound rather genteel to me, dare I say it, like something a hack might write?

But as I say, I have no idea. Please enlighten me. Thanks

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 12:46 PM

Vic,
'Donald's Return to Glencoe' was very widely printed on broadsides all over the British Isles and even in America, but none of these have more than 11 stanzas. None of these are any earlier than 1800, in fact I'd guess a date of origin of about 1825 based on the many printers and the content of the ballad.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 12:57 PM

I'll stop lurking and make a few comments:

First, I dislike the term "hacks" .. it's a disparaging term. Broadside poets is a better description I feel, and more accurately describes what they did. Yes, they got paid... so did Wordsworth. Some of them were good poets, some were not.

Second, just because a song was collected from a singer who could not read, or who was uncomplimentary about broadsides, does not mean that somewhere further back in the transmission process, a broadside had not been used - either as a source, or as an aide memoire.

Third, it is logical to me (!) that some singers wrote songs. As has been suggested, if these remained local, there was less chance that the collectors heard and noted them, even if some other members of the community learned and sang them. In a slightly more literate environment (such as industrial Lancashire) the authors might be known, the songs might be published and so the song collectors dismissed the songs (or didn't even bother going there because it was industrial not rural).

Fourth, whatever the source of the song, it is what happened to it in oral transmission that interests (most of) us. The way the words were re-crafted (or indeed stayed the same), the way the tune was added, adapted, varied ...

Fifth, no-one is disputing the existence of the songs collected by Jim and Pat in Ireland - recently written songs. Thank goodness Jim and Pat are there to record them. An equivalent in England would be the hunting songs of Cumbria and elsewhere. It's a pity that the latter context is politically incorrect!

I'll go and watch some fireworks now...

Derek

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 01:36 PM

First, I dislike the term "hacks"
I'm sure they weren't happy about it either Derek, but it was a common reference to their bad poetry as far back as you care to go
Singers may well have learned them or filled in texts with them, but this is no indication that the songs originated on them

One of the problems of knowing what went on in the minds of both the collectors and the singers regarding the local songs is that they went around asking for 'the old songs' and while they my have passed into a local singing tradition (we recorded many that did, such as 'The Wreck of the Leon' - see Clare Library website), they could not be described as 'old'
Mary Delaney complicated this by refusing to sing thirty year old Country and Western songs but was happy to describe as "old" a Travellers song that had been made a year earlier - presumably she was judging them by style rather than Age

As far as I'm concerned everything about both the making and the transmission of the songs is equally important - whether working people were capable of composing hangs on the question of whether they made the songs - an incredibly important question
I and many others have always gone with the idea that, if you wanted to know the nuts and bolts of sea battles, you would go to the naval records, if you wanted to know how it felt for a land worker to be pressed into the navy and be stuck in the middle of a bloody battle, the only way you'll find that out is through the songs

There's an interesting point regarding this in the Bothy songs, a number of which refer to the farm-hand having served at sea (ie 'Scranky Black Fairmer' and 'The Lothian Hairst'.
One of the practices of humane sea captains sailing into Aberdeen or other Eastern seaports at the time of war was to allow some of the crew to land up the coast from the ports in order to avoid the Press Gangs
Many of these who had no families would look for work in the farms on the way, especially around harvest-time - insider knowledge

"But as I say, I have no idea. Please enlighten me. Thanks"
Vernacular speech Jack - the folk songs are structured around local and county accents
The problems with the broadsides is not that they are ungrammatical but they are blocky and ungainly - they lack the reality of relaxed, everyday speech and sound 'forced' and false - they don't lie on the tongue easily.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 01:52 PM

"The problems with the broadsides is not that they are ungrammatical but they are blocky and ungainly - they lack the reality of relaxed, everyday speech and sound 'forced' and false - they don't lie on the tongue easily."


In other words, not unlike

"Like she whom the prize of Mount Ida had won,
There approached a fair lassie as bright as the sun....."

with its hifalutin syntax and hypercorrection?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 02:31 PM

""Like she whom the prize of Mount Ida had won,
There approached a fair lassie as bright as the sun.....""
It's quite possible that that particular song is the work of either an Irish or Scots Gaelic poet that has been absorbed into the tradition
As I said, the Irish repertoire has a number of such songs Paddy Tunney specialised in them
That language is not common to folk songs
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 03:00 PM

'Tom?s ? Canainn' of the group, Na Fili was the real expert on these 'hedge school' songs
What little I know of them came from a talk he once gave at Loughborough
What gives this particular song its traditional flavour is the fact that it is a 'broken token' song, where a soldier or sailor returns from the wars and chats up a former lover who does not recognise him -
He produces half ring they had bronken in two on his departure to prove his identity
I never understood how you could break a gold ring in two and always pictured a feller wandering around the countryside looking for women with a hacksaw hanging from his belt, until Pat came up with this fascinating 'insider information'. I've never seen it referenced elsewhere
Jim Carroll

"Lady in Her Father's Garden - Peggy McMahon undated
See also: 'Lady in Her Father's Garden' Tom Lenihan Recorded at singer's home, July 1980
This is probably one of the most popular of all the 'broken token' songs, in which parting lovers are said to break a ring in two, each half being kept by the man and woman. At their reunion, the man produces his half as a proof of his identity.
Robert Chambers, in his Book of Days, 1862-1864, describes a betrothal custom using a 'gimmal' or linked ring:
'Made with a double and sometimes with a triple link, which turned upon a pivot, it could shut up into one solid ring... It was customary to break these rings asunder at the betrothal which was ratified in a solemn manner over the Holy Bible, and sometimes in the presence of a witness, when the man and woman broke away the upper and lower rings from the central one, which the witness retained. When the marriage con?tract was fulfilled at the altar, the three portions of the ring were again united, and the ring used in the ceremony'.

ILLUSTRATION

The custom of exchanging rings as a promise of fidelity lasted well into the nineteenth century in Britain and was part of the plot of Thomas Hardy?s 'Far From The Madding Crowd'.
These 'Broken Token' songs often end with the woman flinging herself into the returned lover's arms and welcoming him back
Tipperary Travelling woman, Mary Delaney who also sang it for us, knew it differently and had the suitor even more firmly rejected:

"For it's seven years brings an alteration,
And seven more brings a big change to me,
Oh, go home young man, choose another sweetheart,
Your serving maid I'm not here to be."

Ref: The Book of Days, Robert Chambers, W & R Chambers, 1863-64.
Other CDs: Sarah Anne O'Neill - Topic TSCD660; Daisy Chapman - MTCD 308; Maggie Murphy - Veteran VT134CD."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 03:28 PM

'blocky and ungainly' indeed and in most cases oral tradition has improved on this. However in their own time they were immensely popular judging by the numbers that were sold. I wonder why.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 03:43 PM

Can I remind everyone this thread is called "Folk Song in ENGLAND" -

I asked Steve a question at Sidmouth about the situation in Ireland - and he said - Ireland is different - This book is about ENGLAND..............

Just saying..........

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 05:08 PM

Robert Chambers, in his Book of Days, 1862-1864, describes a betrothal custom using a 'gimmal' or linked ring:
'Made with a double and sometimes with a triple link, which turned upon a pivot, it could shut up into one solid ring... It was customary to break these rings asunder at the betrothal which was ratified in a solemn manner over the Holy Bible, and sometimes in the presence of a witness, when the man and woman broke away the upper and lower rings from the central one, which the witness retained. When the marriage con?tract was fulfilled at the altar, the three portions of the ring were again united, and the ring used in the ceremony'.

There is a kind of linked wedding ring from Turkey (and maybe other places) which has several links in a puzzle-like arrangement. The folklore explanation is that women are supposed to be too stupid to reassemble them if they take them off to have an affair. If the husbands really believed that, their wives would be playing the field en masse.

Chambers must have been talking about rather wealthy people.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 03:30 AM

Chambers must have been talking about rather wealthy people."
Chambers's article extends the practice to the rings sold at country fairs which were crudely riveted together and the two separate pieces deliberately scratched by the lovers so that when they were compared, they corresponded as proof of the promise
It has been suggested that the 'token' given to Fanny by Sergeant Troy in 'Far From the Madding Crowd', and which was discovered by him in her coffin was such a device
It was an ol custom, the earlier rings being somewhat elaborate, but later adapted for the poor.
You used to be able to buy quite nece reproductions in shops like 'Pat Times'
I had a friend in Manchester who used to wear a three-part Arabic one.
"This book is about ENGLAND"
At the time these songs were being made Ireland was still very much a part of the British Empire Tim
Steve has used thie excuse that "Ireland was different" a number of times, but the two song traditions correspond more than they diverge and there are many examples of English and Scottish songs that have turned up from Irish field singers
Three years ago we recorded a version of 'The Girl With a Box on her Head' from a 95 year-old farmer living a few miles from here
He also gave us, Katherine Jaffery', The Keach in the Creel,v and a stunning version of Lord Bateman
Other songs we recorded from this area include The Cruel Mother, The Banks of Sweet Dundee, The Crabfish, The Blind Beggar, Young Roger (The Grey Mare), The Frog and the Mouse.....
In reference to 'The Demon Lover' Child recommended that researchers should seek further information in Ireland - a version of it turned up in Roscommon in 1983
Ireland in the first half of the 20th century presented a mirror image of English rural life must have been half a century or so earlier and the 8 centuries of colonial interference and commerce left an indelible footprint on the culture.
As Peter Cook described in his talk, that process was a two-way one
If we don't have the information required to reach a conclusion on our songs in Britain, it seems to me logical that we use what is on hand elsewhere (Britain's nearest neighbour seems a pretty fair alternative)
To ignore Ireland in a study of our songs is as illogical as ignoring Sandinavia when it comes to our ballads
Jim Carroll

This is Tom Munnelly's list of Ballads he collected, still extant in Ireland between 1969 and 1985 - we added Famous Flower of Serving Men to the list   
THE ELFIN KNIGHT
LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT                                                
LORD RANDAL (Appendix: BILLY BOY)                                                EDWARD                                                                        
THE CRUEL MOTHER                                                                 THE MAID AND THE PALMER                                                         THE TWA MAGICIANS                                                                 CAPTAIN WEDDERBURN'S COURTSHIP                                         
THE TWA BROTHERS                                                                YOUNG BEICHAN                                                                
DIVES AND LAZARUS (Appendix: RYE-ROGER-UM)                                YOUNG HUNTING                                                                 
LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNET                                                 
FAIR MARGARET AND SWEET WILLIAM                                         
LORD LOVEL                                                                        THE LASS OF ROCH ROYAL                                                         SWEET WILLIAM'S GHOST                                                         1
BONNY BARBARA ALLAN                                                            PRINCE ROBERT                                                                 2
BONNY BEE HOM (Appendix: THE LOWLANDS OF HOLLAND)                        7
LAMKIN                                                                        4
THE MAID FREED FROM THE GALLOWS (Appendix: THE STREETS OF DERRY)
WILLIE O WINSBURY                                                                 THE BAFFLED KNIGHT                                                         THE GYPSY LADDIE                                                                         GEORDIE                                                                        THE BRAES OF YARROW                                                                 KATHRINE JAFFRAY                                                                         THE SUFFOLK MIRACLE                                                                 OUR GOODMAN                                                                GET UP AND BAR THE DOOR                                                                 THE JOLLY BEGGAR                                                                         THE KEACH I? THE CREEL                                                                 THE SWEET TRINITY                                                                        THE BROWN GIRL. (Appendix: SALLY THE QUEEN)                                 

ADDITIONAL CHILD BALLADS RECORDED BY OTHER COLLECTORS IN IRELAND.
THE FALSE KNIGHT ON THE ROAD
LORD RANDAL
BONNIE ANNIE
TAM LIN
THE CHERRY TREE CAROL
JOHNNY SCOTT
JAMES HARRIS OR THE DAEMON LOVER
THE GREY COCK
THE FARMER'S CURST WIFE
JOHN OF HAZELGREEN

Sorry about the state of the list - can't get them any straighter

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 03:51 AM

"blocky and ungainly' indeed and in most cases oral tradition has improved on this. "
You cannot possibly prove which way around this happened and it is ingenuous to suggest that you can
There were many broadsides sold but very few if any examples of them being sung widely - by Roud's description, it was an Urban occupation anyway.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating - look in Bagford or Roxborough or Ashton or Ensworth or Euing or Hindley.... they are overwhelmingly bad songs - that's why their authors fully earned the derogatory title of "hacks"
You may as well claim that William McGonagall wrote the Child Ballads.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,ST
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 06:36 AM

With regards to the inclusion of phrases such as "Like she whom the prize of Mount Ida had won, There approached a fair lassie as bright as the sun": surely one possibility (and of course not the only possibility) is that a non-literate writer of the song had heard this line elsewhere, thought it fitted a song s/he was writing and/or perhaps liked it and included it in their own. If the rest of the verses in that song don't sound "broadside" the perhaps they aren't.

I have done the same thing myself when I have occasionally found myself making up songs. I don't record or publish these, just sing them down at the pub so I'm more concerned about whether I like them (and how well, or more likely badly, they go down when I've sung them) than exactly how I come to make them up. In this way, perhaps I resemble some of those songwriters that existed in the illiterate classes of the past. (I know quite a few others who write songs like this - perhaps non-commercial "folk???" songs are still being born after all but who wants to collect them until or unless they've survived for a few generations?!) When such songs come to me I sometimes find I've inserted a phrase that's been inspired, or even lifted complete, from some other song. It never more than just a turn of phrase so I'm not concerned that I'm infringing copyright (and anyway most of my other repertoire and source of these phrases is "traditional") so there they sit in "my" song. Surely that's a possible explanation for some of the occurrences of broadside-like phrases in songs that may not have been entirely composed by broadside writers.

By now, my reading of the posts here seems to suggest that just about everybody is accepting songs arise from a variety of sources and sometimes from a mixture within one song. Agreement seems to have been reached on this but there are many who have fallen to defending their own views that no-one is really attacking as completely wrong anymore (if they ever were) simply because they have failed to notice no-one is totally disagreeing anymore.   The world isn't black and white; it's grey.

Subject: Lyr Add: SHEILA NEE IYER
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 07:06 AM

Guest
Paddy' Tunney's 'Hedge School' explanation is the one that always rings the truest to me, though your 'mixture iwing one song' addition would explain things - something thrown into an already existing song.
A couple of years ago, tutor/singer, Brian Mullen played a recording of Mrs Tunney's exquisite rendition of this song to a group of students who had never heard it before - at the end of the session they were queuing up to get a copy of it.
Those who haven't heard it I would urge you to seek out a copy (happy to oblige)
Below is an example of Hedge Poetry on overdiive
Jim Carroll   

It was on the banks of a clear, flowing stream
That first I accosted that comely young dame
And in great confusion I did ask her name
Are you Flora, Aurora, or the fame queen of Tyre?
She answered, "I'm neither, I'm Sheila Nee Iyer

Go rhyming, rogue, let my flocks roam in peace
You won't find amongst them that famed Golden Fleece
Or the tresses of Helen, that goddess of Greece
Have hanked 'round your heart like a doll of desire
Be off to your speirbhean," said Sheila Nee Iyer

May the sufferings of Sisyphus fall to my share
And may I the torments of Tantalus bear
To the dark land of Hades let my soul fall an heir
Without linnet in song or a note on the lyre
If ever I prove false to you, Sheila Nee Iyer

Oh had I the wealth of the Orient store
Or the gems of Peru or the Mexican ore
Or the hand of the Midas to mould o'er and o'er
Bright bracelets of gold or of flaming sapphire
I'd robe you in splendor, my Sheila Nee Iyer

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 07:10 AM

Derek wrote -
First, I dislike the term "hacks" .. it's a disparaging term. Broadside poets is a better description I feel,

You are right, Derek, it is a denigrating word, but if we are not to use the word 'hack' then we need another to distinguish broadside writers of the past and newspaper reporters of today from 'songwriters', 'poets' and 'writers'. If not 'hack' then we need some word to call those who are forced to write to a very short deadline and do not have time for reflection or time to live with and refine what they have written.
The hangman was not going to wait for the broadside writer to come up with some beautiful prose or poetry written on reflection and as a result of research. The printer needed them ready to sell to the crowd where the execution was taking place.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 09:32 AM

Jim,
I'll send you an email. I don't want to respond in public as what I have to say is personal.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 09:36 AM

PLease do Steve, but I'm not sure what difference it will make
I it's any easier, you can PM me
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 11:37 AM

"along some rural grapevine"
Not sure how much of a mystery this is Brian
Sam described stopping off at various ports as a trawlerman and taking part in singing competitions

Point taken about Sam's travels, Jim, but I selected those two examples of 'Henry Martin' because they're the best known from recent tradition (and rightly included in your list of favourite recordings). However, exactly the same goes for the numerous traditional versions collected all over the Southern counties and as far North as Yorkshire: very consistent texts, and tunes that are recognizably variations on a common source. I'm prepared to believe in Steve's travelling pedlars carrying broadsides but, as he says, that still leaves a mystery surrounding tune transmission. Also, the broadsides I've seen don't include the repeats of the last phrase of line 3, which are universally present in sung versions. Looks like there was a popular sense of how the song should be sung.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Snuffy
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 12:41 PM

Oral transmission throughout Britain would have been facilitated through the navvies and other workers who moved round the country, but stayed in one place long enough to pass on songs from afar and absorb local offerings.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 12:47 PM

**a popular sense of how the song should be sung**

Now here's one that could really do with a lot more research.

I can present only a few possibilities. Many of these songs were also sung in the big cities in the likes of coal cellars, glee clubs, supper rooms, and social gatherings. It may well be that at least some of the pedlars picked up the formats/tunes to some of the songs in this way. The scenario....pick up your pack of songsters and broadsides from the printers then drop into one of the above establishments and acquire some of the tunes.

Also don't forget there were many shared tunes and formats and often a refrain 'derry down' would suggest the tune. I use this example as by far the most widespread tune for ballads in the English-speaking world over the last 5 centuries.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 12:59 PM

Absloutely, Snuffy, like seasonal harvest workers, many of them Irish as well. One of the songs quite common in Yorkshire rural areas is 'I wish they'd do it now' in quite different variants all learnt from seasonal labourers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 01:18 PM

"because they're the best known from recent tradition"
I have never had a problem with the idea that the broadsides had an increasing influence on the repertoire as the tradition deteriorated but I still reckon the options are still open that it was orally transmitted - you made the point yourself about the similarities of the tunes, which indicates oral transmission
One of those "nobody knows - QI questions again"
Steves marathon pedlar's journey from Yarmouth to Gower seems the less likely of thecchoices.
Peter Cook's Canal, railway road workers continues to attract me and, as he was talking roughly about the same period with the Greg material, increasingly so.
It seems to me that there are a lot more questions here being avoided rather than answered - not referring to you, of course
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 01:54 PM

Brian wrote -
Phil Tanner sang 'Henry Martin' and Sam Larner 'The Lofty Tall Ship', both excellent variants of a single song, interestingly different melodically and textually, but strongly similar as well (Cecil would have called that 'Continuity versus Variation').
It beggars belief that the song would have been known at locations 350 miles apart simply by travelling along some rural grapevine

Jim wrote -
Steves marathon pedlar's journey from Yarmouth to Gower seems the less likely of the choices

Credit where it is due to the person who suggested the song's unlikely journey, please.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Sue Allan
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 01:57 PM

There certainly were marathon pedlar journeys: ?Putty Joe? - Joseph Hodgson from Whitehaven in Cumberland - relates in 1850 stories from his travels not only in the north of England but also in Scotland and as far afield as the midlands, the south east, London and even Dublin.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Sue Allan
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 02:01 PM

Blast: I put double quotation marks instead of single and STILL they end up as question marks! What?s going on here? (am typing on iPad)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 02:15 PM

"Credit where it is due to the person who suggested the song's unlikely journey, please."
Why is it unlikely that the song could have been ben carried by navvies or around the coast by sailors involved in the maritime trades Vic
James M Carpenter was having no trouble picking songs up from Swansea docks between 1928 to 1937
In the latter half of the 19th century, there was a thriving coastal trade right around Britain - the maps are all there.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 02:36 PM

Jim,
The point that I was making was that it was Brian's suggestion that the journey was 'unlikely' ("beggars belief" was the phrase he actually used)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 02:46 PM

Sorry Vic, I was responding to this
"The simplest answer to your question, Brian, is that one of the ways these ballads were disseminated over large distances is that the pedlars who travelled great distances always carried a stock of broadsides and songsters with the rest of their wares."
I thought you were
"I put double quotation marks instead of single and STILL they end up as question marks!"
Sue,
Bit cumbersome, but I've resorted to previewing it, replacing the question marks and then posting
I usually manage to miss a few but a bit better than appearing to permanently question your own statements
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 06 Nov 17 - 08:49 AM

Jim wrote
"I put double quotation marks instead of single and STILL they end up as question marks!"
Sue,
Bit cumbersome, but I've resorted to previewing it, replacing the question marks and then posting
I usually manage to miss a few but a bit better than appearing to permanently question your own statements.

If you have "Notepad" on your PC - most computers using Microsoft Windows do - than try preparing your posts using that rather than any word processing programs where you start getting into letter and symbol coding problems. Then you can cut'n'paste what you have written into Mudcat without having nearly every symbol changed to a question mark. Am I making sense?

Of course, using 'Notepad', you lose the spell-checking facility which is helpful to most of us in using 'Word' and the other word processors, but you can still get around this! Still use your word processor to write your posts but then cut'n'paste your text into 'Notepad' and then and then cut'n'paste from 'Notepad' into Mudcat. This is a bit laborious I'll admit, but less cumbersome than "replacing the question marks and then posting".

I tried it out with this post and it seems to work.

@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~

Right! That's it from me for this thread as I am now packing ready to fly out to The Gambia for a month - our 21st visit to that wonderful country since 1997.
One of the things that we will be doing is recording, photographing, videoing and documenting the small group of high status Manding jali families that we have been working with in Brikama and Bakau since 2000 and studying how their traditions are developing as younger jalis come in and how material comes and goes in popularity. Mandinka is an entirely oral language as are all the six ethnic languages of The Gambia so the problem of written v. oral tradition does not arise and modern songs written by creative jalis like Pa Bobo Jobarteh and Jali Sherrifo Konteh sit very happily with songs that existed alongside others that we know existed in the time of Mungo Park's exploratory West African trips and nobody gives a monkey's! Well, saying that we sometimes have the very inquisitive green vervet monkeys who are sometimes sitting in nearby trees apparently listening very carefully. Great mimics, the vervets - they will sometimes join in the clapping when they see humans clapping!
However, you do have to be very careful about what you say within the hearing of monkeys. One of my favourite pieces of jaliya is a story and song called Kedo. That tells of a time in the past when the Fulas and the Mandings were at war with one another and for the price of a meal of peanuts the monkeys would spy and report to both sides about their movements, plans etc.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Sue Allan
Date: 06 Nov 17 - 09:48 AM

Don?t use any Windows programmes Vic so that won?t work for me, sadly. Was typing directly into box on my iPad.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 06 Nov 17 - 10:31 AM

I have no knowledge of working with iPads or any Apple products - but there must be a simple text based method of entering your posts. Try reading https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mail/format-text-mlhlp1219 and surely you will find the right application that will suit your purposes..... but I am not the person to ask.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Nov 17 - 10:53 AM

I wouldn't worry, Sue. We all know what you're intending to write. Most of us have multiple technical problems anyway.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 06 Nov 17 - 04:08 PM

Apropos England versus Ireland: one point that Steve R makes in the book is that some previous writers, lacking direct evidence in favour of some argument, adduce evidence from a different time or place. Such evidence may be valid but needs to be taken with care.

What I've always loved about Ireland, ever since my first visit there, is that it's just like England except when it isn't.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 06 Nov 17 - 04:24 PM

I am surprised that Steve Gardham has not made reference to his own writings on the subject of Broadsides and Folk Sings, etc.

I am also behind the times, because I have had the book "Wanton Seed" for some time - and I did not myself discover this until today - in Steve's own Introduction to the new 2015 publication - the following link...Tradsong.org : Where's that song from...

http://www.tradsong.org/Where_that_song.pdf

I think it adds to the debate.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Nov 17 - 04:50 PM

Thanks for posting that, Tim.
It was 6 years ago and my short term memory is not what it was. My views haven't changed much since I gave that presentation, but I have another in a couple of weeks which looks at the recycling of previous ballads by the broadside poets which led to drastically different ballads in some cases. For people like Steve and me who regularly classify ballads this can be a minefield when ballads have obviously been rewritten using bits and pieces of other ballads. At what point are they the same ballad or a different ballad? Not an easy question to answer. Hopefully some answers will come out at the Broadside day presentations and discussions in Sheffield.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Nov 17 - 05:07 PM

Looks fascinating, Vic. have a great time. I'm sure you will.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 17 - 03:58 AM

2Thanks for posting that, Tim."
Thanks indeed Tim - interesting indeed
It calls into question Steve's claim that his percentage refers only to the material collected by Sharp et al - it goes back far beyond that to suggest that all our folk songs originated in print
Interestingly, the article does not include the claim made on a previous thread that Child was coming around to revising his view on broadside "dunghills" - a pretty essential piece of information for those wishing to prove that the folk didn't make folk songs, I would have thought!
As Steve says, Child did rely on broadsides as a source, but he had the good grace to attribute those songs as "popular" - of the people

It cannot be repeated enough that our knowledge of folk song does not precede the beginning of the twentieth century, so anything before that has to be based on speculation and common sense based on what little we do know

It seems beyond reason to attribute our folk songs to Urban based bad writers of doggerel who would have had to be skilled in folklore, social history and rural practices to create the love songs, work songs, sea and soldiers songs dealing with hardships brought about by the enclosures, the devastating effects of the Industrial Revolution on ordinary lives, the effects of transportation, impressment..... and the vast panorama covered by folk composition
Bad writers are bad writers, nothing more

I was disturbed recently to discover that "Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America: The Interface between Print and Oral Traditions ed. by David Atkinson, Steve Roud" makes the same claims for Irish songs
This flies in the face of everything we have learned about Irish song making over the last forty years

As long as I have been involved in folksong that have been a little bang o brothers setting out to claim that the "folk" were incapable of having made the ballads
Now that disease has spread to our folk songs
Let's hope it dies as quick a death as previous such claims
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 17 - 04:06 AM

"that have been a little bang o brothers"
Damn
Should read "there has been a little band of brothers"
In fairness to Roud and Atkinson, I should say I have not fully read ""Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America"
the exorbitant price of ?38 paperback, ?85 hardback asking price will preclude even our local library from purchasing a copy
For elitist eyes only - obviously!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Sue Allan
Date: 07 Nov 17 - 02:25 PM

That sort of price sadly typical of academic publishers across the board I?m afraid Jim.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Sue Allan
Date: 07 Nov 17 - 02:46 PM

Reading back through your longer post, I was somewhat puzzled by your assertion that ?our knowledge of folk so g does not precede the beginning of the twentieth century?. What then of Baring-Gould?s collecting in the West Country, before him Chappell?s work, John Broadwood, Walter Scott?s informants and collector, and in the eighteenth century the songs collected by - albeit frequently ?improved? by as well - Robert Burns. Oh, and also John Clare in Northamptonshire, John Bell in the North-East. Are you dismissing all these?!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 17 - 02:51 PM

"That sort of price sadly typical of academic publishers across the board I?m afraid Jim."
For books about the music of the 'common People - Harry Cox would be spitting feathers, given his attitude to the wealthy - "THEM"
I've been collecting books for decades and have reluctantly paid that price for a nineteenth century gem - but for a modern publication!!
I think I paid ?30 per hardback volume, for the Greig Duncan collection at 500/600 pp each - at 306pp for Atkinson/Roud - at that price, that's just silly Sue
I'm not saying the authors have any control on the price - it's the philosophy behind it that gets up my nose
Think I'll wait till it's remaindered
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 17 - 02:57 PM

Meant to add - we have little information on the actual singers and the methodology of Baring Gould, Scott or Broadwood
Chappel didn't collect from live singers as far as I know - if he did, we have no knowledge of how or what he did with the originals
That came with the Sharp gang
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Nov 17 - 03:15 PM

Jim wrote -
It cannot be repeated enough that our knowledge of folk song does not precede the beginning of the twentieth century.

Outrageous - even by Jim's standards! Suggest you read pages 221 - 406 of the book under discussion for meticulously researched evidence of the state of folk song in England from the 16th to the 19th century.
Jim has also stated recently on Mudcat that he does not make pronouncements. In that case, I wonder what the above quotation is.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Nov 17 - 03:54 PM

What a timely point to mention another very important book hot off the press! Martin Graebe's excellent 'As I walked out: Sabine Baring-Gould and the search for the Folk Songs of Devon and Cornwall'. The bulk of his collecting was done from about 1888 to about 1900, but he had recorded a few songs in Yorkshire in the 1860s. He also went to great pains to document the lives of the people he recorded and built up a strong relationship with many of them. Like Steve's book this one won't break the bank.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Sue Allan
Date: 07 Nov 17 - 03:59 PM

Steve - in Facebook speak: *Like* ...sadly no button to do that on Mudcat!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Nov 17 - 04:06 PM

Steve - in Facebook speak: *Like* ...sadly no button to do that on Mudcat!



Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 17 - 05:53 PM

"Jim has also stated recently on Mudcat that he does not make pronouncements"
Tell me where it does Vic - not a pronouncement of mine
The clue is in the title of D K Wilgus book - 'Anglo American Folksong Scholarship since 1899
One of the few certainties from the singers we have to dat is Margaret Laidlaw's (James Hogg's mother's) admonishment of Scott for daring to put her ballads into print "'ye hae broken the charm noo, an' they'll never be sung mair'"
One lady who didn't rely on broadsides.
Even after Sharp, we knew nothing of what the singers thought
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Nov 17 - 03:40 AM

"221 - 406 of the book under discussion for meticulously researched evidence of the state of folk song in England from the 16th to the 19th century."
I've read this Vic - if you re-read it. Roud treats it as an Urban phenomenon and from the point of view of a town-based commercial enterprise
The songs he discusses are largely ones that did not pass into the singing tradition we are discussing here, but were created for town and city customers, full of Phillidas and Valentines rather the the folk's "Jimmys and Marys".
Charles Dibden was typical - a British composer, musician, dramatist, novelist and actor, with over 600 songs to his name who was nioted for his sea-songs but would probably have become seasick if he drank a glass of water

The traditional repertoire being discussed here is that of sailors, soldiers, land labourers and workers in rural industries such as textile work and mining - songs made by them and not about them.
There are snippets in passings about country singing in Roud and elsewhere, but by an large the songs have been regarded out of context, rather like butterfly collecting - objects in themselves rather than a part of the singers' lives - a social phenomena.

This argument has led me to revisit, Maud Karpeles's 'Cecil Sharp's Collection of English Folk Songs', and some of the contemporary collections
The thing that strikes me is how remarkably free they are of the stiltedly ham-fisted technique associated with the broadside hacks - not completely, but the ones that aren't stick out like so few sore thumbs.

It seems to me obvious that, rather than the folk taking from print, the opposite was the case - the hacks were borrowing ideas from sailors, embarking soldiers, countrymen coming to town to sell their produce and taking songs with dirt under their fingernails and turning them into the pap they ended up as on the presses.

We know country people made songs - we know the songs reflected fairly accurately country life and conditions - no 'sons of the soil' or jolly Jack tars' but real ploughboys, sea labourers and soldiers in the ranks - the voice of the people that they have always been regarded - up to recently (and by a few desk-jockeys).

A true approach to where our folk songs came from would be to gather together what contemporary information there is, including Baring Gould's writings, Sharps' diaries - anything else available - and compare it to the spurious (in my opinion) claims of literary origin and see which holds the most water - earliest publication dates mean nothing
I've often wondered if the BBC project recorded anything more than the songs - it would have been an ideal opportunity to gather information

We know that some of the motifs and references used in traditional song making go back to Shakespeare and Boccaccio, even as far as Homer, who was liberally borrowing from folk beliefs
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 08 Nov 17 - 06:40 AM

Tracing it back -

Jim wrote (03 Nov 17 - 04:44 AM)
It's why I don't make pronouncements and why I wish you didn't.

I replied (04 Nov 17 - 05:38 AM)
. but you do, Jim, you make them all the time and that is why you are challenged on them

Jim wrote (07 Nov 17 - 03:58 AM)
It cannot be repeated enough that our knowledge of folk song does not precede the beginning of the twentieth century.

Perhaps stupidly, I rose to the bait and challenged him (07 Nov 17 - 03:15 PM)
Outrageous......Jim has also stated recently on Mudcat that he does not make pronouncements. In that case, I wonder what the above quotation is.

Jim replies (07 Nov 17 - 05:53 PM
Tell me where it does Vic - not a pronouncement of mine.

What am I supposed to reply to that? Am I expected to repeat what I said above - Jim wrote (03 Nov 17 - 04:44 AM)
It's why I don't make pronouncements and why I wish you didn't.

Finally, and it really is finally as far as any attempts on my part to hold discussions with Jim, I read in his long bluster of 08 Nov 17 - 03:40 AM he says:-
A true approach to where our folk songs came from would be to gather together what contemporary information there is, including Baring Gould's writings....

Aaargh! But Jim, you have to us "our knowledge of folk song does not precede the beginning of the twentieth century." and Baring-Gould's contact with folk singers goes back to the 1860s!

I was actually thinking that Jim stating that we should "gather together what contemporary information" to inform our studies was a good thing. Yes, we are getting somewhere - that is exactly what we should be doing....... then he writes
We know that some of the motifs and references used in traditional song making go back to Shakespeare and Boccaccio, even as far as Homer, who was liberally borrowing from folk beliefs.
Can we look forward to Jim's exposition using "contemporary information" on what were "folk beliefs" around the late 8th or early 7th century BC?

I have received two PMs advising me not to try to reason with Jim, From here on that advice will be followed.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Nov 17 - 07:20 AM

"Baring-Gould's contact with folk singers goes back to the 1860s!"
Baring Gould's work has only just become available for public consideration - his published song collections prior to the current book contain only notes to the songs
As excellent as they are, they do not touch on the songs in context to the communities they come from
As I said, our knowledge of that context stretches back to the beginning of the twentieth century, which is why Wilgus entitled his book as he did
Even Steve Gardham has agreed that this is how far back our knowledge goes and we can only speculate on who made the songs
It remains to be seen how much the Baring Gould Ms or the Sharp diaries - and all the other passing references add to the question
"I have received two PMs advising me not to try to reason with Jim,"
And I have a log, arrogant and abusive PM from one of the protagonists here - wasn't it you who once told me that it was unethical to use PS in these arguments?
PMs are for those who don't have the bottle to state their beliefs openly (talking behind ones back, in other words)
Not something I puut a lot of trust in
Shame on you Vic, using something you have yourself condemned - tsk-tsk!
Perhaps you should follow your own advice
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Nov 17 - 09:16 AM

"advising me not to try to reason with Jim"
Your "reasoning" appears to refer to capitulation to non-argument

My case is simple
We don't know who made the folk songs, therefore we have to work with what information we have and use our common sense
I have pointed out that the quality of the output of the broadside writers does not match up to that of our folk songs
The knowledge contained in our folk songs is hardly that you would expect from a bench bound, urban based broadside hacks.
I have proved to my own satisfaction that rural working people were more than capable of making songs, having done so throughout the 19th century - in Britain and particularly in Ireland.
I have pointed out over and over again that researchers such as Child, Burns, Sharp, Isaac Walton - even broadside producers themselves, regarded these songs as products of the countryside, not the town.
Child dismissed broadsides as products of the "dunghill" at the time the trade was at its height, Sharp wrote a long dissertation explaining his contemptuous attitude to broadsides.

The whole idea that the vast majority of our folksongs started life as broadsides is a 21st century one which overrides previous beliefs that 'the folk' created their songs
Steve's case has vacillated from 'all our songs' when he described MacColl's comments at the end of 'The Song Carriers" as "romantic nonsense", to his sometimes present situation of 'only those collected by Sharp, et al.'
The article of Steve's put up up by Tim suggests that he has not moved from "all folk songs" - The Song Carrier's' comment disparaged as "romantic nonsense' included the entire repertoire, from 'The Frog and The Mouse' - the first folk song ever mentioned in print, right through to an Irish song composed during WW2.
The article mentions 18th century 'Pleasure Gardens' and theatres, as being the source of our folk songs
What's it to be - the entire repertoire or just those collected in the 20th century - he can't have it both ways?

If I am being "unreasonable", as Vic and his supporters from the shadows, have accused me of being, what arguments have I missed, or what have I got wrong?
It seems to me that all I am guilty of is refusing to take the opinions of a handful of desk-bound academics on trust
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 08 Nov 17 - 11:21 AM

Jim wrote:

"The broadside output runs contrary to the traditional repertoire in style and in quality - most of the published broadside collections are crammed full of unsingable songs"

This is true for a lot of them; Harry Boardman used to have me create songs out of 19th broadsides for his radio broadcasts and, if not literally unsingable, a lot of them were pretty bloody awful.

But then there's no reason that a print original should have had to be singable in the first place. Apologies for going back to 'The Wild Rover', but it's the one I know most about. The original ballad by Thomas Lanfiere, 'The Good-fellow's Resolution', is indeed wordy and moralistic - like many similar ballads of its day, composed by Lanfiere and others - although verses 1, 8 and 9 clearly belong to the song as we know it. You wouldn't look at that text and think it was the work of an unlettered toper of the lower classes. But what happened to it next - probably around 1800 - was clearly a conscious edit rather than some kind of oral processing, since in the course of cutting the song down to five verses stanzas have been deliberately cut-and-pasted, split, rejoined and boiled down. Thereafter there is a trail of 19th century broadsides each looking a bit more like the song as collected in oral tradition. So, even though the original was arguably 'unsingable', it nonetheless formed the basis for something that became highly singable.

Something similar seems to have happened with Child 243 ('The Demon Lover'), in which seven verses from the middle section of a 32 verse original 'A Warning for Married Women' - were cut out and used as the basis for a new ballad.

However, if you look at Child 286 ('The Sweet Trinity' / 'Golden Vanity' etc) The 17th century London broadside 'Sir Walter Raleigh Sailing in the Low-lands' is almost word-for-word) the same as oral versions collected in Appalachia by Cecil Sharp (apart from Sir Walter's part in the drama), and seems to have gone into oral tradition more or less unedited, then remained more or less unaltered for 200+ years.

Re Sharp's diaries:

I've spent a lot of time with his Appalachian diaries (I'm not aware that he kept one when he was collecting in England) and they don't really provide answers. Where he asked a singer about their source, the answer was usually a senior family member. He saw no printed broadsides, though he did observe one or two handwritten 'ballets'. Some of the songs he collected have texts almost identical to those in 19th century songsters, but the majority do not. The most popular ballads noted by Sharp from mountain repertoire are mostly those known to have existed in print in the 17th or early 18th century (Barbara Allen, Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender, House Carpenter etc), which fits with the notion that 18th century migrants brought them over, either on paper or in their heads. Of course the fact that most of them were in print by the 17th century does not necessarily mean that the migrants learned them directly from broadsides, but it does tell us that they were definitely around in England at the appropriate time, and suggests that they arrived with the settlers rather than being learned by later generations in America.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Nov 17 - 12:32 PM

Couple of assumptions there Brian
I question the claim that the broadside version of the Demon Lover is definitely the first - the story is quite popular as ain international tale (can't remember the Stith Thomson number, but we have it in one of your published collections)
It might well have been an original composition, but it could just as likely have been created from either a tale or existing song)
Same with the Golden Vanity - was the broadside definitely the original?
I'm not prepared to argue the case for individual songs; I fully accept that either might be the case
What disturbs me is the definitive and all- embracing nature of the claims and the implications of what they imply
Can over a century of scholarship really have been so wrong?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 08 Nov 17 - 01:21 PM

"I question the claim that the broadside version of the Demon Lover is definitely the first - the story is quite popular as ain international tale"

I did wonder at one point whether the seven familiar verses from 'A Warning for Married Women' might have been part of an earlier undetected version around which Laurence Price erected a massive scaffolding of unneccessary verbiage, but there's no evidence for that.

'Hind Horn' is one that did exist as a medieval romance, and harks in one respect back to the Odyssey. But that kind of reworking of an older tale suggests to me a poet's hand (just as Shakespeare rehashed older plots) more than anything.

'Golden Vanity - was the broadside definitely the original?'

I don't know - I just used it as an example of an older broadside that reads very much like the sung versions.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Nov 17 - 02:47 PM

"I don't know -"
Neither do I
"'Hind Horn' is one that did exist as a medieval romance"
And was also found in Europe
In the other hand, it also shares its motifs both with folk tales and at least one ballad, Lord Bateman - lover returning in disguise demanding the fulfilment of a promise
When we firsts recorded singers in Clare we hit a rich seam of 'big' storytellers, particularly i the Burren area of North Clare
The first story we recorded was about an hour long and started with the 'Gawain and the Green Knight' 'year and a day' motif and ended with the lover returning in disguise on her lover's wedding day claiming her promise of marriage.
The teller's nearest neighbour gave us a magnificent version of 'Lord Bateman' which ended with exactly the same motif.
You really do need a crowbar to separate songs and stories, especially in areas like this.
The area as a whole was once the stamping ground of Seamus Delargy, the founder of The Irish Folklore Society - some of the finest tales collected in Ireland were taken from there, from both singers and storytellers.
The non-literate Travellers sang the big ballads because they liked long stories - we are the beneficiaries of that good taste
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 08 Nov 17 - 03:11 PM

Fascinating, Jim.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Nov 17 - 07:16 PM

Fascinating histories, Brian, esp. that of "The Wild Rover."

I know a lot less than I thought.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Nov 17 - 03:11 AM

"I know a lot less than I thought."
We all do L
What pissess me off about these arguments is how far away from the dream of the early days we have drifted.
I was part of a scene that included nights of ballad evenings, themed, poetry and song performances, calls from the club platform for volunteers to take part in fishing expeditions to uncover children's songs in local schools, workshops to help aspiring singers....
We had our own magazines and record labels and a wealth of programmes on every aspect of folk song and music under the sun, freely available on the radio....
Now we're reduced to arguing whether the composer of 'The Cat's Meat Man' might also have written 'Lord Gregory'!!

Even if we want to keep up with current research we have to consider re-mortgaging the house to buy the literature!
As for magnificent productions like MacColl's, 'Song Carriers' and Lloyd's 'Songs of the People' - you can't even give 'em away to modern 'folk' enthusiasts' who appear to believe that Bob Geldof is a folk performer and composer
Did we really manage to make such a ****-up of the folk revival?

I remember Pat and I taking Kerry Traveller Mikeen McCarthy to a local children's literature festival in Deptford, South-East London, some time in the early 80s.
Mikeen was a singer, storyteller tinsmith, caravan builder, horse dealer, street singer and 'ballad seller'.... - you name it, he did it.
He sat in front of an audience of mainly pre-teen schoolchildren and sang, told stories and talked about fairy lore, pishogues, fairs and markets, tinsmithing, thatching, gladdering, life on the roads of rural Ireland..... for well over an hour and a half.
The teachers had carefully arranged the chairs in lines with Mikeen sitting formally at the front - a big gap between him and them.
Gradually they abandoned the chairs, slid across the floor on their bums and finally formed a tight circle of rapt faces around Mikeen's feet, completely engrossed in what he had to say.

Where have all those flowers gone, I wonder?
Him Carroll

Subject: Lyr Add: THE MERCHANT AND THE FIDDLER'S WIFE
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Nov 17 - 05:33 AM

To continue this 'chicken or egg?' song/story theme
Below is a story we recorded from a retired Irish building worker we met in Deptford in the 1970s; as far as I know, the song never entered to oral tradition, if such a turgid piece was ever sung.
Mikey Kelleher was originally from Quilty, the next village from here Clare, a small coastal fishing village; he moved to England and in the 1940s and never returned home
The village was renowned for stories like these' basically jokes, often without punch lines
Mikey gave us dozens of these 'yarns' including a story version of 'The Bishop of Canterbury' (Child 45) and a convoluted tale of a young woman presenting a mouse in a matchbox to a former lover who she had promised her maidenhead to, as substitute for her sexual parts
MacColl traced this to the writings of Spanish playwright, Rojas (1465/73)
The area Mikey came from was totally devoid of literature such as this; as far as the songs are concerned, its overwhelming literary influence would be the 'ballads' sold by non-literate Travellers who would go to a printer, recite songs from their own oral repertoire and sell them at the fairs and markets; this continued right up to the 1950s, when the last 'ballad' found as 'The Bar With No Stout', a parody of one of the latest pop songs.
The point I am trying to make is that to consign our traditional repertoire to the broadsides seems to me an exercise in the facile by desk-bound researchers who simply haven't done the math
The link reall is far more complicated than that.
Jim Carroll

The Fiddler's wife
There was two old walkers and they wanted to go across to America and the hadn't enough money
So she went down to the captain and she was a lovely piece, and he said, "Oh, I'll be all right there"
She asked him to now would he take here across
"All right", he said, himself and herself and the man went in and he was playing the old fiddle, you see.
They had travelled away, of course, and she didn't like to refuse him, you know, in case he wouldn't let her off, you know.
She carries on with him and he went up to the old boy and, "I'll bet you this ship" he said, "and cargo, against your fiddle", he said, "That I'll have her before I land".
The old boy bet the fiddle with him anyway; and up they goes, he called them in.
The old boy was frettin', he knew she was inside.

"Hold tight my love", he says, "hold tight", (he was singing a song)   
For just a half an hour
Hol tight my love, hold tight
And the ship and cargo will be ours

She said:

"You're late my love, you're late my love," she said
He has me by the middle,
"I',m on my back, we're havin' a craic,
And you have lost your old fiddle"   

The Merchant and the Fidler's Wife.
From 'D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, (Vol 5 pp77-80) (1719)
It was a Rich Merchant Man,
That had both Ship and all;
And he would cross the salt Seas,
Tho' his cunning it was but small.

The Fidler and his Wife,
They being nigh at hand ;
Would needs go sail along with him,
From Dover unto Scotland.

The Fidler's Wife look'd brisk,
Which made the Merchant smile ;
He made no doubt to bring it about,
The Fidler to beguile.

Is this thy Wife the Merchant said,
She looks like an honest Spouse;
Ay that she is, the Fidler said,
That ever trod on Shoes.

Thy Confidence is very great,
The Merchant then did say;
If thou a Wager darest to bet,
I'll tell thee what I will lay'.

I'll lay my Ship against thy Fiddle,
And all my Venture too;
So Peggy may gang along with me,
My Cabin for to View.

If she continues one Hour with me,
Thy true and constant Wife ;
Then shalt thou have my Ship and be,
A Merchant all thy Life.

The Fidler was content,
He Danc'd and Leap'd for joy ;
And twang'd his Fiddle in merriment,
For Peggy he thought was Coy.

Then Peggy she went along,
His Cabin for to View ;
And after her the Merchant-Man,
Did follow, we found it true.

When they were once together,
The Fidler was afraid ;
For he crep'd near in pitious fear,
And thus to Peggy he said.

Hold out, sweet Peggy hold out,
For the space of two half Hours;
If thou hold out, I make no doubt,
But the Ship and Goods are ours.

In troth, sweet Robin, I cannot,
He hath got me about the Middle ;
He's lusty and strong, and hath laid me along,
O Robin thou'st lost thy Fiddle.

If I have lost my Fiddle,
Then am I a Man undone ;
My Fiddle whereon I so often play'd,
Away I needs must run.

O stay the Merchant said,
And thou shalt keep thy place;
And thou shalt have thy Fiddle again,
But Peggy shall carry the Case.

Poor Robin hearing that,
He look'd with a Merry-chear;
His wife she was pleas'd, and the Merchant was eas'd,
And jolly and brisk they were.

The Fidler he was mad,
But valu'd it not a Fig;
Then Peggy unto her Husband said,
Kind Robin play us a Jigg.

Then he took up his Fiddle,
And merrily he did play ;
The Scottish Jigg and the Hornpipe,
And eke the Irish Hey.

It was but in vain to grieve,
The Deed it was done and past;
Poor Robin was bom to carry the Horn,
For Peggy could not be Chast.

Then Fidlers all beware,
Your Wives are kind you see ;
And he that's made for the Fidling Trade,
Must never a Merchant be.

For Peggy she knew right well,
Although she was but a Woman ;
That Gamesters Drink, and Fidlers Wives,
They are ever Free and Common.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 10 Nov 17 - 07:49 AM

If we printed all these messages in a book, it'd be as long as Steve Roud's 750 page tome!
Derek

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Nov 17 - 08:09 AM

"If we printed all these messages in a book, it'd be as long as Steve Roud's 750 page tome!"
And maybe the two Steves might learn from them
Waddya think Derek?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Nov 17 - 08:40 AM

Just checked again
The only reported sighting of Mkey's story as a song is an unpublished version from Newfoundland
Memorial University Folklore Archive (MUNFLA) (St. John's, Newfoundland)"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 10 Nov 17 - 11:10 AM

Very interesting account of 'The Fiddler's Wife', thanks Jim.

I have to say I find it sad that this debate has got so polarised, especially since some of the harshest words here have been exchanged by people with very similar enthusiasms. I'm sure you know, Jim, that Vic Smith has spent a lot of time with traditional singers from Sheila Stewart to Bob Copper, and that Steve Gardham has himself collected many songs in the field. These are not people who wish to destroy the notion of traditional song just for the sake of iconoclasm. They, and I, and others here, would enjoy listening to Mikeen McCarthy, or Walter Pardon, just as much as you. For me, the pleasure of hearing a recording of Phil Tanner or Sam Larner sing a version of 'Henry Martin' is completely unaffected by whether the song came to them via (or originated on) a broadside - I just marvel at the artistry of the performance. And there is still a hunger for traditional song out there in the wider 'folk' world, even though some of the younger enthusiasts may have heard traditional singers only through recordings. Do not despair.

I could go on, but that'll do for now.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Nov 17 - 12:11 PM

If I despaired I wouldn't bother arguing Brian
I too respect the work of those you mention and am tired of these discussions ending up in cat-fights, but I believe traditional songs to be important enough to get things right - it's been gotten wrong so often before.
For me, one of the most fundamental things has been whether singers were also composers, as I believe they were.
I too got enormous pleasure from listening to Sam, Harry, Walter, et al, and from singing the songs (I sill do), but taken as a whole, the tradition is far wider than that,
The overturning of an entire belief, over a century's research seems so important a step as not to be taken lightly and certainly without examining all the facts and implications
I can't see any other way other than thrash it out - sorry
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 11 Nov 17 - 08:13 AM

There's a review of Steve's book (remember that? It's in the subject line...) in today's Guardian. Support the newspaper by buying a copy .... or alternatively read it here, with quite a number of comments.
Guardian review of Folk Song in England

Derek

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Nov 17 - 08:44 AM

" This isn?t to deny that oral transmission was key in disseminating folk songs around a community in which few people could read, but the fact remains that the material was just as likely to have first slipped into the village on a piece of paper rather than on the tip of someone?s tongue."
I hope the authors and their support are happy to see the credit for making these songs gradually being eased away from working people 'the folk' and handed over to notoriously bad poets - without a shred of proof of who actually made them.
Based on the amount of evidence they have presented to back up their claims, i find it utterly irresponsible
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 03:58 AM

I'm reluctant to let this slip out of sight without a final word on my position on this subject, so here goes
I have yet to read Roud's book from cover to cover, personal commitments have prevented me from doing so, but I will do in the near future
I do feel I have read enough to form an opinion on some of the subjects covered to have drawn some conclusions.

I'm not an academic, but I have always been an avid reader on folksong pretty well from the mid-sixties and have acquired a substantial library on the subject - fully read.
It seems to me based on that reading that one of the points of Roud's book turns one of my gained opinions on its head - that we can no longer believe folk song to be 'the voice of the people' it was previously believed to be, but that it was created by proven unskilled, desk bound urban hacks scribbling verse for money.
A pretty serious claim and one I'm not prepared to accept without full explanation or at least, minute examination on my part - I have no right to demand an explanation from anybody.

There has always been a tendency from some quarters to suggest that 'the folk' were not skilful enough to have written the ballads, mots clearly put in Phillips Barry's statement in 1939 that To put it in a single phrase, memory not invention is the function of the folk?.   
Now that attitude has spread to include to include virtually all our folk songs - a serious charge, and one too important to let though on the nod.

All our folk literature has, as far as I can make out, regarded that our folk songs were created by the agricultural working people - Child, Sharp, Lomax, Gummere, Wimberley....
Child dismissed the broadsides out of hand, Sharp wrote at length about their malign influence.
From the large number of broadside collections we have on our shelves here I think the quality of hack writing makes it nigh impossible that they could have been the authors of the songs found in collections like Sharp, Greig, Buchan, Child.... dry crumbly chalk compared to fine cheese.

When I have attempted to debate this with one of the main proponents of this argument I have been met with evasion, feeble excuses and often on-the-spot inventions - "English workers were too busy earning a living to make songs", ""hack" doesn't really mean bad writing", "broadside writers gained their knowledge of working practices by serving time at sea or working on the land", "Child was beginning to change his mind about broadsides"....
Examples of working people actually making songs were passed off as "the scribblings of retired people"

Our personal researches over thirty odd years, both in England and Ireland, comprised initially collecting songs, but eventually in interviewing our sources to see where they stood on their art.
In Ireland, we uncovered a large number of local songmakers making songs on any subject that caught their fancy, from local day-to-day experiences to national events viewed locally
That was swept aside by, "it was different in Ireland" - another excuse when you consider that Ireland was under English influence for eight centuries and her song repertoire is loaded with songs and particularly ballads that originated in England and Scotland.

In 1985. Dave Harket published 'Fakesong', a work largely setting our to undermine the work of early collectors by taking it out of context of the time it was carried out.
As the title makes clear, it questions the existence of folk song as a genuine workers culture.
It seems to me that setting out to show that our folk songs originated on the broadside presses is a further step along that road.
It is a serious stap and one that needs carful consideration
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: JHW
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 06:22 AM

'I have yet to read Roud's book from cover to cover'
Thank goodness I'm not alone, I've only read half an inch, its really hard work even to hold up!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 08:51 AM

The Guardian review mentioned by Derek Schofield also includes a cut-price offer for the book (£21.25).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 03:34 AM

" a cut-price offer for the book (?21.25)."
The Book Depository have it for ?18.63 - post free, which is a considerable saving for a book this size
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 04:06 AM

I've only read half an inch, its really hard work even to hold up!

I bought the Kindle edition - and really enjoyed being able to pick it up at any stage and read a chapter or two. Got through it relatively quickly and found it both informative and enjoyable. An Irish perspective would be rather different, methinks - but that's to be expected.

Regards

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 05:20 AM

"An Irish perspective would be rather different, methinks - but that's to be expected."
The only major difference between England and Ireland is that the Irish tradition lasted far longer as a living entity, where even in Sharp's time singing was on its last legs - a constant comment by Sharp and his contemporaries
Britain and Ireland shared a large number of traditional songs - many of the Irish versions of ballads had disappeared from the repertoires elsewhere in the English speaking world.
Mid twentieth century rural Ireland presented a picture of what life must have been like half a a century earlier in Britain
The repertoires were different because the social situation they represented were different
I think the problem with Roud is that he has arbitrarily decided to re-define folk song (apparently without consulting anybody else working in the field)
I have constantly argued on the importance of definition and have been happy to point to the Roud index as a guide to what I mean - no longer the case.
Out of interest, I looked up one of Walter Pardon's songs, 'Put a Bit of Powder on it Father', composed by Harry Castling & Fred Godfrey ? 1908.
It fits no existing definition of 'folk' I know of, yet Roud has assigned it a number, Roud No:10671, in his index attributed to Walter's singing of it
Walter was insistent that this and all songs of the same ilk were not
folk song and went to great lengths to explain why - but as always, the traditional singers' opinions carry no weight if they don't follow the academic's rule-book.
Vic Smith's quoting him as saying "A traditional folk song is a song sung by a folk singer. What a folk singer sings is traditional songs" apparently wasn't a joke.
We recorded an Irish Traveller whose repertoire included Seven Gypsies and Edward, which, I would say makes him a "folk singer"
He sang for us 'Roses of Heidelberg' and 'You Will Remember Vienna'.
Can we now expect these to be assigned Roud numbers - if not, why not?
This I believe, not only debases folk song, but it makes nonsense of the English language when people can seriously use it irrespective of its meaning - Stanley Unwin rides again!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 06:21 AM

The only major difference between England and Ireland is that the Irish tradition lasted far longer as a living entity

Gotta love that "only" ! ;>)>

Regards

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 06:47 AM

Don't kow what differences there were in the the way the two traditions were made and transmitted Martin
The repertoires were different, sure, but rhe social circumstances in which they were created were almost identical
I'm referring to the English language tradition of course - the Gaeilge was totally different, I'll give you
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 08:46 AM

Sharp and his contemporaries found an English folk song culture which was very much alive in melodic invention - the tunes they wrote down were very different from anything you could have found in print in Chappell's books. And that process continued much longer in North America.

I get the impression that the English-language Irish song culture was pretty much dead as far as melodic invention went at the same time, and hasn't shown any signs of coming back to life since. Jim never mentions tunes at all - when he finds interesting current material in rural Ireland, it's all about verbal content. So I guess they just rehash a small fixed repertoire of commonplace tunes.

What does Roud say about the evolution of melodies?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 09:24 AM

"when he finds interesting current material in rural Ireland, it's all about verbal content"
Every single singer we interviewed on the subject regarded themselves as storytellers whose tales came with tunes.
This includes Walter Pardon.
The older generation of singers confirmed that over and over again with their narrative approach to their songs
This is what Tom Lenihan said on the subject

Tom Lenihan talking about singing. 2m 31s
J C        What?s the word you used Tom, this afternoon; ?blas? * what??
T L        The blas, that?s what the old people used to use; if you didn?t put the blas in the song.
The same as that now the?..as we?ll say ?Michael Hayes?, ?The Fox Chase?:
I am a bold and undaunted fox that never was before on tramp,
My rent, rates and taxes I was willing for to pay,
I lived as happy as King Saul, and loved my neighbours great and small,
I had no animosity for either friend nor foe.
You have to draw out the words and put the blas in the song. If you had the same as the Swedish couple:
Now I am a bold and undaunted fox that never was before on tramp.
The blas isn?t in that, in any bit of it. You see now, the blas is the drawing out of the words and the music of it.
J C        What do you think you?re passing on with a song Tom; is it a good tune, is it a good story, or nice poetry or what?
T L        It is some story I?m passing on with the song all the time. In the composition that was done that time, or the poets that was in it that time, they had the real stuff to compose their songs; they had some story in it.
As I tell you about ?The Christmas Letter?, they had some story, but in today?s poets, there is no story but the one thing over and over and over again, you see. But that time they had the real story for to start off the song. And the same as the song I?m after singing there, ?The Fair Maiden In Her Father?s garden?, well, that happened sometime surely; the lover came back and she didn?t know him of course, but yet he knew her and there he was, and that happened for certain. ?Michael Hayes? happened. ?The Christmas Letter? as I say, all them old traditional stuff; that old mother that got the letter for Christmas from her family; all them things happened.
It was right tradition down along; it was a story or something that happened.

*Blas (Irish) = relish; taste; good accent.

Tom went on at great length about how you had to be careful to maintain the narrative sense of the songs and nor over-ornament
Virtually all singers, bad health excepting, pitched their singing around speaking tones, never broke up words and verbally put the punctuation where it belonged
The Irish language songs were different - a display of technique rather than storytelling, but there are far fewer narrative songs in that repertoire
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 08 Dec 17 - 09:04 AM

As long ago as 05 Sep 17 - 12:07 PM, I posted a link to the first published review which appeared in a rather unlikely place - in The Economist. I commented on the review that it was a factual account and a precis of the contents rather than any statement about the value of the book or a comparison with anything that has been published in the past.
Steve Gardham reacted to this in a rather wise way writing, As you say, Vic, a fair precis, but no critique. Part of the problem we face is there are not many people about who are truly qualified to criticise what it has to say. Where were going to find a person with such qualifications? Well, I think that this person has been found!
Here is the lengthy review published in the Folk Music Journal (Volume 11 * Number 3 * 2018 - pages 127-130).
I ought to point out that in separate conversations with both author and reviewer that both have expressed strong mutual admiration for the work that the other has completed and that they have both been members of the Editorial Board of the FMJ, Britain's foremost academic folk music journal for many years. I do not feel that this in any way invalidates the review:-

Folk Song in England

Steve Roud. London: Faber and Faber, 2017. 764 pp. Bibliog. Index. ISI5N 978-0-571-30971-9. ?25.00 hardback, ?14.99 ebook.

This is the most significant, important, and interesting book on English folk song published in my lifetime. The book is well presented, well organized, and written in a clear and accessible style. Some themes recur in the book, but I never feel this is wasteful. I like Roud's writing style, which is very down to earth, and he has a knack of throwing in pithy comments which are both arresting and get to the heart of the point he is making. Julia Bishop contributes two excellent chapters on the musical aspects of folk song, avowedly not Roud's own area of expertise. Anyone with the slightest interest in the subject should buy a copy immediately, read it at leisure, absorbing its wisdom and reflecting on its contents. Do not let the size put you off - it offers a rich and fascinating body of material that can be returned to again and again.
Let me preface the rest of the review by saying that any disagreements I have with Roud are of meagre significance when balanced against the book's virtues, for they are many. In terms of the broad thrust of the book I am totally with Roud, who has done the folk song research community a great service by pulling together a lot of the ideas and critical points that have been debated over the last few decades. Nor can even a long review compass the richness of his book, so my comments are selective.
Discussing Sharp's 1907 Some Conclusions, Roud comments, 'we must guard against easy assumptions' (p. 444). This is something Roud studiously observes. He is scrupulous in finding and considering evidence and generally coming to well-reasoned conclusions. After an introduction and an introductory chapter, the book is organized in three parts which deal with the history of scholarship and collecting, the ways in which folk song is part of a wider musical world from which it derives .and which contributes material, and a final part that considers how folk song lives in different musical contexts. The book constitutes a very good history of the folk song movement in this country, asks profound questions about the nature of folk song and contributes a whole range of interesting insights.
Unlike some writers who have tried to move away from the term 'folk song' because of its problems with definition and ideological baggage, Roud embraces but radically redefines it. Central to the book is the notion that folk song is not a particular genre but a practice. "It is not the origin of a song that makes it 'folk', but what the 'folk' do with it", he remarks (p.23). For some, wedded to older notions, Roud may seem iconoclastic; to those who have kept pace with changing approaches to the subject, he provides a timely account of where the centrality of the study of traditional song in this country is now located. For Roud, 'the social context of traditional singing is the key to understanding its nature, but is also precisely the component which has often been neglected in past discussions of the subject' (p. 4). To him, it is 'the process through which songs pass, in the brains and voices of ordinary people, which stamps them as "folk". Therefore, songs that the common people have adopted as their own, regardless of origin, constitute in some way or another their collective voice and are "folk songs" (p. 22).
Roud is not interested in condemning the collectors of the past for their shortcomings, though he is critically aware of them; rather, he assesses their strengths and weaknesses without judging them in an ahistorical way. Early in the book he writes, 'they were not interested in documenting the whole range of songs sung by working people, nor were they particularly concerned with the social context of that singing, or the lives and opinions of the singers. But we are' (p. 7). 'The early collectors set us on the wrong track by stressing origin as the main definitional characteristic of folk song, but we now have serious reservations about this approach' (p. 21). '[T]he collectors were so selective that the picture of "folk song" they left us is extremely partial' (p. 23). It is this partiality that Roud strives to correct.
His account of the history of collecting and scholarship comes up to the third quarter of the twentieth century. It is an informative and lively account and I will focus on it in this review. Generally, Roud deals fairly with significant figures in the history of the gathering of English folk song. I was amused by his description of Joseph Ritson as 'the original Mr Angry', but he gives a good appreciation of his contribution to scrupulous editing. At times Roud can get exasperated with some more recent writers: 'Unfortunately, it seems to be de rigueur to take a side-swipe at the early folk-song collectors and to castigate them for not providing what we now wish to know' (p. 530). He describes Harker's work as 'facile bourgeois bashing' (p. 177). Early on he writes, 'we do not hold with the facile notion that the men and women featured in this book operated as a group and worked to expropriate the culture of the working class for their own class purposes, and we believe that the evidence does not support this interpretation of events' (p. 45). What he most resents is the lost opportunity as such negativity 'became the new orthodoxy, and the early collectors came under fire from all sides' (p. 8). This orthodoxy 'is only now showing signs of losing its grip' (p. 177).
I have much sympathy with this assessment, having had barely digested Harker fed back to me by academic colleagues looking for a reason to write off folk song studies. Nevertheless, I think it is a shame that, perhaps so put off by Harker's style and manner, Roud cannot see the good analysis and pioneering nature of some of his work. It is true that later in the book Roud writes appreciatively of Harker's extensive work on Tyneside song. But it should be remembered that Harker was one of the first to deal critically with some of A. L. Lloyd's 'editorial tinkerings and sleights of hand' (Roud's words, p. 21), and to deliver an iconoclastic blast against the almost religious awe in which Cecil Sharp was held in many quarters. Apart from some contemporary critics of Sharp, the only people I know of to have previously attempted any significant (though not extensive) critique of Sharp were those gathered around the magazine Ethnic in the late 1950s, notably Mervyn Plunkett and Reg Hall. The circulation numbers of Ethnic were tiny, but its influence on thought on the subject among a few people was profound. I could be wrong, but I think the influence of these activists was an important element in Roud's intellectual make-up.
Compared to his treatment of Harker, Roud is much kinder to Chris Bearman, who (in the context of criticizing the Grainger biographer John Bird) is said to have led the charge against such myth-making, and in the process swung the pendulum a little too far in the other direction' (p. 145). I think this is rather gentle: Bearman was not beyond making some myths of his own. It is sad that we will never know how Bearman would have reviewed this book, but it is interesting to think about it!
A. L. Lloyd's 1967 book is described as 'highly readable, genuinely inspiring, and admirably fulfilled its purpose as an introduction for beginners', and Roud recognizes that 'those who finally get to the stage of expertise required to offer a valid criticism have invariably got there because of that earlier work' (p. 180). He acknowledges the rising tide of criticism against Lloyd and with a convincing demonstration comes to the view that Lloyd 'is too willing to extrapolate from little or no evidence, which is where the journalist and the romantic take over from the scholar' (p. 181). As someone deeply indebted to, but also critical of Lloyd, I feel Rood pulls off the difficult task of appreciation and necessary criticism very well.
Rood approaches the idea of overlapping multiple musical traditions when he writes, 'there will be more than one tradition within most communities, which can be seen as the individual threads in a woven fabric. Any one person will belong to several groupings, and many allegiances will change over time' (p. 35). This is a fruitful idea, but one that seriously challenges ideas of authenticity, the 'otherness' of folk music, and what being traditional means, as does the whole thrust of Rood?s work.
There is much else I could discuss - unevenness in the ways class is discussed in the book, Rood?s interesting views on folk revivalism, the inevitable emphases and seeming gaps that will exist in any account of the subject, but I must respect editorial limits. Rood really supplies that 'measured and insightful assessment of the history of our field' (p. 177) that he craved in the past but found absent. His achievement is to have written a sort of alternative history of music which is very different from almost everything that has come before. Generally speaking, it is the openness of his approach that I find particularly admirable. Unlike many previous writers on the subject, he asks the questions and considers the evidence before he comes up with answers, and the answers are themselves sometimes quite provisional in nature. There are many passages in the book where he delivers excellent assessments of areas of debate: for example, on Grainger's relationship to the Folk-Song Society, or the nature and quality of Alfred Williams's work.
This is a large book, but no space is wasted. There is some cross-referencing, but this multifaceted subject is dealt with in enough detail to explore different and often fascinating aspects. Readers are guided towards deepening their understanding of the subject through further reading. If I were still teaching university courses on folk music I have no doubt I would make it a set text. I would take a whole academic year over studying it and allow time for students to investigate the primary and secondary material to which Roud refers. Students would be greatly enriched by the experience and emerge with enhanced critical abilities and a good grounding and understanding of the subject. Each individual who delves deeply into a field develops a unique understanding and appreciation of that field; we should be grateful that Roud has shared his with us, for it is rich and enriching. I cannot see the book being matched or surpassed in the foreseeable future.
Vic Gammon
Hexham

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 08 Dec 17 - 09:08 AM

I still have not finished reading Folk Song In England - being out of the country for over a month hasn't helped but my instinctive feeling is that this book is best read in small doses, a chapter at the time, to allow the brain time to absorb the implications before moving on to read and digest another aspect.

The day after reading the review by Vic Gammon which I posted above, I read this passage (pages 442 ? 444) which seem to encapsulate very much of the attitude and approach that Steve Roud brings to his book: -

It has been reliably claimed that 90 to 95 per cent of the items at Victorian and Edwardian collectors noted as 'folk songs' had appeared on broadsides in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This in itself no solid indicator of a direct link between print and oral tradition, but coupled with examples of direct testimony from singers about the quality of the songs from broadsides and songbooks, and the growing number of studies using internal evidence, the trend is abundantly clear.
Most of the folk-song collectors were scathing about the quality of the: broadside songs but were well aware of the fact that many of their singers had definitely gathered their material from print. Lucy Broadwood, for example, stated, 'The words of many country ballads are derived. directly or indirectly, from broadsides and Alfred Williams:-
. The songs were mainly obtained at the fairs. These were attended by the ballad-singers, who stood in the market-place and sang the new tunes and pieces, and at the same time sold the broadsides at a penny each. The most famous ballad-singers in the Thames Valley in recent times were a man and woman, who travelled together, and each of whom had but one eye. They sang at all the local fairs, and the man sold the sheets, frequently wetting his thumb with his lips to detach a sheet from the bundle and hand it to a customer in the midst of the singing.
This is not to argue that all singers learntall their songs from print - far from it. Henry Burstow, the singer from Horsham, Sussex, gives direct evidence on this question in his Reminiscences of Horsham (1911). After writing of learning songs from his parents and other people he knew or met, continues:-
The remainder I learnt from ballad sheets I bought as they were being hawked about at the fairs, and at other times from other printed matter. I remember, when quite a boy, buying for my mother of a pedlar, as he sang in the street, the old ballad 'Just Before the Battle Mother'. This was her favourite song.
We have less direct evidence for the earlier centuries, but it is clear the manuscripts which are analysed in earlier chapters that people regularly copied songs from broadsides into their own notebooks.
Two things are now abundantly clear. Firstly, once printing had been invented, there was never again a pure 'oral' tradition, but oral and print were: intimately interwoven. Secondly, the songs that the ordinary people turned into 'traditional' or 'folk' songs were normally written by outsiders and reached them first in printed form.
For these reasons alone it would be essential for us to fully understand the genre, but a close knowledge of the broadside and chapbook trade is also important for more practical reasons. Whatever the characteristics of an 'oral tradition' may be, its undeniable failing for historical enquiry is its almost complete lack of a datable evidence trail, and the temptation this offers for wishful speculation on the part of commentators is enormous.
A song collected from a shepherd or a dairymaid in 1903 might have been knocking around the village for 200 years, or they might have learnt in the previous week, and without this information we have no basis on which to assess or investigate the workings of 'the tradition'.
As the accumulated evidence mounts up, it seems increasingly that the broadside texts were indeed the originals of many songs, because they were written specifically for that medium, and we therefore have a welcome opportunity to get to grips with questions of what really happened to songs when they entered a local tradition. If we know how they started and how they ended up, we can at least start to investigate what happened in between.
Supporters of 'oral tradition' are often understandably wary of such comparative work, because it is so easily couched in terms designed to prove the degenerative and unreliable nature of 'oral tradition', but used sensitively it could actually demonstrate what is built into many a definition of 'folk song' ? that transmission within a healthy tradition is a positive force and, by selection and variation, results in 'better' songs. Or it could simply reveal the essentially conservative nature of the singers? attitudes to song texts and the fundamental fidelity of their memories.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Dec 17 - 09:21 AM

Thanks for that Viv (hope you enjoyed your trip)
I've been doing a fair amount of research on Roud's 'redefinition' of folk song of late and it appears to be based on what 'the folk' listened to rather than something they participated in the creation of
It seems to me that good research on something that is long defunct is based on extending past research rather than turning it on its head and kicking it out of the window, which is, I feel, what he has done.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jon Dudley
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 05:01 AM

Steve's book has just fallen on my face as I lost my grip on this weighty tome (me - lazily semi recumbent and reading in the Sussex winter sunshine). I'm about one third of the way through and so far finding it fascinating. Much musical stuff goes way above my head of course but there's tons to stimulate the grey matter. Steve reminds us, and we've known for years that 'The Shepherd Adonis' clearly written by someone with more than a smattering of education, transmogrified into one of our favourites 'Shepherd of The Downs' and mysteriously gained a final verse - that's what makes the whole damned thing so intriguing. Unless there were a plethora of 'Peasant Poets' like John Clare knocking about the place I'm inclined to believe that your average farm labourer or industrial worker was not responsible for a lot of original composition, not because he or she didn't have the imagination or intelligence, but because illiteracy was pretty common. There again Steve tells us that we shouldn't underestimate just how literate people were back then...oh dear a lot of my pre-conceived notions are flapping quietly out of the window.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 05:25 AM

" I'm inclined to believe that your average farm labourer or industrial worker was not responsible for a lot of original composition, not because he or she didn't have the imagination or intelligence, but because illiteracy was pretty common."
I intend to say a bit more on this, but I'm inclined to agree with James Hogg's mother, Margaret Laidlaw, who was part of a song-making tradition, when she warmed that putting her songs into print would ruin them
‘They were made for singing an’ no for reading; but ye ha’e broken the charm now, an’ they’ll never be sung mair.’
Roud has confined his comments to the material gathered in largely Southern England at the beginning of the 20th century when the oral tradition was well into its death throes, but I refuse to believe that rural English workers, even at that time, were any less creative than their brothers and sisters in Ireland and Scotland, who were busily making songs tht reflected their lives, experiences and feelings.
I menat to thank Vic fort re-penin this thread - saved me the trouble
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 06:31 AM

Jon wrote:-
"I'm inclined to believe that your average farm labourer or industrial worker was not responsible for a lot of original composition, not because he or she didn't have the imagination or intelligence, but because illiteracy was pretty common. "

That's what I would suspect also, but the thing about Steve's writing in this book is that anything that anyone is "inclined to believe" is inadmissible to Steve unless there is firm historical evidence to support each statement. It calls for an entirely different, more disciplined way of thinking and challenges us to re-examine some core beliefs. Your final phrase "pre-conceived notions are flapping quietly out of the window." sums this up perfectly.

Incidently, do you share my difficulty in squaring Steve Roud, the clear, challenging and original thinker that emerges in the pages of this book with Steve Roud, the genial, gentle humourist and good listener that we meet in Sussex Traditions management meetings?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 07:41 AM

""pre-conceived notions are flapping quietly out of the window." sums this up perfectly. "
Steve and Steve Gardahm's claims, challenge the preconceived notions of Child, Sharp, Maidment, Bronson and virtually every researcher who has ever put pen to paper on the subjet over the last couple of centuries, including those who were working while Britain still had a thriving oral tradition and a prosperous broadside industry.
Unless more evidence than both the Steve's have put forward to date than hss been forthcoming so far, I certainly am not prepared to accept what has been put forward so far, simply because it does not make logical sense.
I still remember the feeling of wanting to find out more I came away with from Bert Lloyd's 'Folk Songs of England' - the enthusiasm generated still remains a part of my life half a century later
I came away from Roud's book in despair - "how could we all have got it so wrong for so long?" - or I would have done if I had taken the claims seriously.
For me, it was the same effect I felt when I read Harker's 'Folksong', though, luckily, then there were enough people around to question Harker's claims and reject them
I think it was Vic who put up the Guardian review - I was immediately impressed with how quickly one of the spokesmen for elitist Art Establishment leapt on the suggestion the 'The Folk' didn't make their 'Folk Songs' - "real" artists have always been uneasy that amateurs could produce what they make their living at - and the idea that illiterate or semi-literate peasants coul write poems and make songs.... welll 'who do these people think they are'
I feel that Roud's book would have been better named, 'English Pop Songs', because basically, that's what it was, with all the differing genres lumped together under the 'Folk' umbrella.
I sincerely hope that these claims do not do the damage to folk song scholarship that similar ones have done to the Folk Song Revival - we will know that they have when 'I Don't Like Mondays' is given a Roud number (given Roud's re-definition - why not?)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 08:18 AM

"Harker's 'Folksong'"
Fakesong' of course
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 11:17 AM

"...when 'I Don't Like Mondays' is given a Roud number (given Roud's re-definition - why not?)"

For one thing, Jim, Roud regards folk song as a historical phenomenon, and makes it clear that the folk revival is outside his field of interest.

For another, even if you accept that the revival repertoire constitutes a tradition of itself, 'I Don't Like Mondays' would be a very weak candidate for canonization. I've never heard it sung from the floor in all the years I've been going to clubs and song sessions, and if the much-respected but famously eclectic Dave Burland hadn't started performing it several decades ago, it would never have come up in these discussions.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 11:59 AM

Maybe I should have said Hank Williams !
I know Mary Delaney sang some of his, though she refused to sing any of her C and W songs for us as she said they weren't old and they were different from her "daddy's" songs
One Traveller we met grew up knowing Seven Gypsies and Lord Randal - he sang us 'Roses of Heidelberg' and 'You Will Remember Vienna'
Whence "everything a traditional singer sings is a folk song' in these cases?
This 'definition' becomes ludicrous when you examine it closely
" I've never heard it sung from the floor in all the years I've been going to clubs and song sessions,"
In those recent arguments Brian; it was argued that because Dave Burland sang it at a club it merited the title 'folk'
The problem with all this is, of course, tat once an individual or group of individuals unilaterally take it upon themselves to re-define a term that has been around for as long as 'folk' has, they open the door to anybody wishing to do the same
Then the term becomes meaningless and any chance of consensus and communication disappears.
I don't think you knew Walter, but we had long sessions of talk with him where he explains why some of his songs are 'folk' and others are not.
He, like Mary, refused to sing his Victorian songs and early pop songs; "I don't know why people keep asking me for them old things"; yet his version of 'Put a Bit of Powder on it Father' now proudly bears a Roud number.
Walter would have been Mortified, but as far as I'm concerned, he holds a place of honour next to Child, Sharp et-al as having ""pre-conceived notions" that are "flapping quietly out of the window."
I've never spoken to Steve Roud for any length of time, but I have met with disdain, condescension and insults elsewhere when I have challenged some of these ideas - from a major proponent o them - doesn't auger well for a good, flexible discussion on the subject.
One of Steve's co-authors once old Pat and I that all our ideas on the singing of Irish Travellers was "wrong, because she had studied the subject at college"
When we wrote the article on Walter for Tom Munnelly Festschrift, we entitled it "A Simple Countryman!!) in remembrance of the time when we had been told by a well know researcher that that Walter" must have been got at" because of his expressed views on folk songs.
Dangerously elitist stuff, as far as I'm concerned.
Arbitrarily re-defining folk song smacks of the same attitude, in my opinion
If the theories propounded in Roud's book are taken seriously, it marks the end rather than the beginning of intelligent discussion.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 01:08 PM

"I don't think you knew Walter, but we had long sessions of talk with him where he explains why some of his songs are 'folk' and others are not.

He, like Mary, refused to sing his Victorian songs and early pop songs; "I don't know why people keep asking me for them old things"; yet his version of 'Put a Bit of Powder on it Father' now proudly bears a Roud number."

I didn't know Walter, though I was lucky enough to hear him sing more than once. I don't doubt he, like other singers, could tell the difference between an older and a newer song and express a preference. But I can't see how Steve Roud could not have given 'A Bit of Powder' a number without setting himself up as arbiter of which of Walter's songs were 'folk' and which were not.

Even Cecil Sharp noted down songs that he knew were originally commercial products, even if he didn't usually publish them.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 01:31 PM

"Even Cecil Sharp noted down songs that he knew were originally commercial products,"
I have no problem with the fact that a number of roadsides and stage songs passed into the tradition, bt the suggestion that has ranged fro 93 to 100 percent it beyond the pale as far as Im concerned
Ironically, non-literate Travellers were responsible for putting many on to ballad sheets.
The oral tradition is an incredibly complex subject which has been componded by the fact that nobody really bothered to ask the singers anything much beyond their names and where they got their songs - little different than butterfly collecting
"'A Bit of Powder'"
it's a composed stage song, just as the two pieces I mentioned earlier were light opera
Different source, different sound, different function
What would have happened if Phil Tanner had sung Verdi arias as many South Welsh miners choirs did - would they merit Roud numbers?
This "anything a traditional singer sings" redefinition is a new kid on the block
We have an agreed definition, flawed as it might be, is as good as any, though that was a compromise to incorporate traditions of different nations.
I'm aware it needs changing, but any changes need to be agreed by all concerned otherwise we lose our base of understanding
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 11 Dec 17 - 07:20 AM

I have followed the cutlass play in this thread with fascination. Very instructive at more than one level. But to turn, briefly, to the book itself, I have just read Vic Gammon's review in the Folk music Journal. He says 'This is the most important and interesting book on English folk song published in my life time'. And '[I]t is rich and enriching. I cannot see [it] being matched or surpassed in the foreseeable future'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Dec 17 - 07:46 AM

I cannot see [it] being matched or surpassed in the foreseeable future'.
Depressing thought-
Neither can I Billy, if it is taken passively and not discussed fully
No good quoting favourable quotes unless you address the contradictions that the book raises.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 11 Dec 17 - 11:37 AM

Well Jim, I’m just an infant in this field and I wouldn’t presume to ‘address the contradictions that the book raises’. If it does raise contradictions, they have been examined in detail and at considerable length by yourself and others in this thread. What impressed me in reading Roud’s own words was the respect he had for the opinions of others, insisting on examining the available evidence before reaching his own (often tentative) conclusions. And he always draws attention to uncertainties caused by gaps in the historical record which may never be filled.

Roud’s approach strikes me as honest and refreshing — and Gammon’s evaluation is surely fully justified.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 11 Dec 17 - 11:39 AM

Sorry about the question marks. There must be some way of teaching Mudcat to handle quotes and apostrophes.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Dec 17 - 12:37 PM

"What impressed me in reading Roud?s own words was the respect he had for the opinions of others, "
Funny you should say that Billy
Anybody who can arbitrarily discard a century or so's research and unilaterally re-define the term folk-song' without consultation doesn't show a great deal of respect in my opinion
I would say, that these are main quibbles with a somewhat large and otherwise extremely educational work, but they are pretty important ones
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Dec 17 - 12:59 PM

"There must be some way of teaching Mudcat to handle quotes and apostrophes."
It appears to be something we have to learn to live with for the time being
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 06:14 AM

There seems to be an element of "damned if you do and damned if you don't". The early collectors have been criticised for being highly selective and only recording those songs which they considered to be 'proper' folk songs. Later collectors saw the importance of trying record a singer's entire repertoire without putting value judgements on the material. The purpose of the Roud Index, if I understand correctly, is to identify songs found in the oral tradition. That necessarily includes songs which which had clearly only recently entered the oral tradition from the stage. However even those often show variations between different singers - at what point do these slight variations become sufficient for them to have undergone the transformation required to become a 'folk song'?

As for them serving a different purpose, whilst Walter Pardon apparently saw a difference between different parts of his repertoire, I wonder whether the same was true of his audience? I suspect for them the purpose of his songs, whether folk songs or not, was simply to provide entertainment on a Saturday night in the pub.

As Jim correctly says, the oral tradition is an incredibly complex subject. Traditional singers performed material from many different sources, sometimes only to satisfy their audience but in other cases because they genuinely liked the songs. It appears to me that definitions should be used for guidance rather than to exclude. I am sure that most scholars are able to make appropriate distinctions depending on what aspects of the tradition they are studying.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 06:24 AM

The review of this book in fRoots magazine appears on page 65 of the December 2017 issue. In the penultimate sentence of his review, Steve Hunt reaches the same conclusion as Dr. Vic Gammon (above) does in the first sentence of his -

Folk Song In England
Steve Roud Faber & Faber (ISBN 978-0-571-30971-9)
Pete Seeger, in an interview with The New Republic, once recalled his father saying: "The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. And you can't lay your hand on it. All you can do is circle around and point, and say, 'It's in there somewhere'." English folk song is a well-documented subject, yet the truth about its origins, transmission, environment and mechanics often appear contradictorily elu?sive. Originally published by Faber & Faber in 1967, the paperback edition of AL Lloyd's Folk Song In England carried this Melody Maker quote on its back cover. "It is unlikely during your lifetime any book on folk music half so important as this will be published." The arrival, 50 years later, of an identically-titled book from the self-same publisher anticipates something epochal - a book that exists not just to expand previous knowledge but to supplant accepted truths.
With fRoots' resident academics all previously engaged to author lengthy critiques for learned vernacular music publications like Folk Music Review or Metal Hammer, the task of appraising this book has somehow befallen me - a (perhaps) typical folk Joe Soap whose previous study falls well short of extensive research in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, but extends a fair way beyond fleeting Mudcat Cafe visits to confirm the continued absence of singing horses.
Steve Roud is the founder of the Roud Folksong Index (started in 1970 and now standing at 250,000 entries) and co-editor of The New Penguin Book Of English Folk Songs. Folk Song In England, like The Streams Of Lovely Nancy, divides in three parts: "Chart?ing The History Of Folk Study"; "Folk Song In The Wider Musical World" and "Folk Song In Its Natural Habitats", with two chapters (the ones most directly concerned with musical theory) by Julia Bishop. Happily, Roud doesn't view himself as 'an academic' either (he apparently prefers to be thought 'scholarly') so despite the book's daunting scale, it's far more accessible than one might expect or fear. Of course, it's not an airport novel. A typical passage (for those shallow types who like to get straight to the pulse-quickening stuff) reads: "As a rule of thumb, we can suggest three broad divisions characterised by the way the notion of sex is introduced into the song: inference; euphemism; and explicit naming of actions and parts. These three categories can be expanded into seven levels..."
It's that very ability to present complex subjects in easily-digestible, bite-sized pieces that makes Folk Song In England so indispensable. Roud describes his work as "primarily an exercise in evidence-gathering." Whilst that may appear a self-deprecatingly modest assessment, his brilliance is attributable to a long and peerless devotion to the librarian skills of cataloguing, indexing and cross-referencing. Steve Roud has read every one of the publications indexed in this book's 31 page bibliography and for that I thank him most sincerely. In so doing he has enabled me to exponentially expand my understanding of the process of tradition by reading just one.
I'll refrain from calling Folk Song In England "definitive" on the basis that Steve Roud - a man whose entire working life has been driven by the conviction that there is always more to discover, would be appalled by the claim. The plain truth is that there won't be a better or more important book abut English folk song in any of our lifetimes. And you can stick that in your bramble patch and point at it.
www.faber.co.uk
Stephen Hunt

Incidently, on that same page as this review is my review of As I Walked Out: Sabine Baring-Gould And The Search For The Folk Songs Of Devon And Cornwall Martin Graebe Signal (ISBN 978-1-909930-53-7)
My final sentence of my review reads This volume will stand alongside Steve Roud's as major studies of traditional song.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 06:39 AM

Whilst agreeing with the vast majority of what Howard Jones says in his thoughtful post, could I amplify one point? - that songs recently entered the oral tradition from a variety of sources, the stage being only one of them and comment on one other - whilst I take the point that he makes about an audience's reaction to different aspects of singers' repertoires, I don't think that Walter Pardon was ever much of a pub singer.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 07:04 AM

Once again a positive review without a single attempt to discuss the problems that the claims of this book raises Vic
What underwhelms me about tis discussion is the total absence of any evidence to reservations I have made - an attempt to pass them through on the nod, without debate.
Apart from these, I have no major problem with the book.

Simply put, they are:
Our folk song repertoire is made up overwhelmingly of rural songs and songs concerning occupations such as seagoing and soldiering; they contain many small details of rural life, trades, rural vernacular speech.... knowledge that is not ready available to the outsider.
These songs are so universal and timeless in their makeup, that wherever they may have originally been made, as them move they were taken up and accepted as genuine representations of life and experience - a process that often took place over centuries.
The detail that went into their construction gives them the appearance of having made by the people themselves to express their own lives and emotions.

They express large chunks of our social history with a partisan eye - sailors describing life at sea, soldiers fighting wars abroad, followed by huge armies of camp followers, the effects of the land-seizing enclosures on the rural population, forced marriage in order to better the lot of social climbing families at a time when the nobility was being deposed by the rising tradespeople....

All this is represented generously in our folk songs in such a skilful way that it would take an outsider with the genius of Dickens, or Hardy or Steinbeck to create what are in fact miniature works of art from the point of view of the 'ordinary' people.
We are asked to accept that 90 to 100% of these songs were created by desk-bound, urban-based, notoriously bad poets "hacks", working in conveyor belt conditions for money.
Bring all the recommendations you like (Steve Gardham has already resorted to that one); for me, turning research history on ist head and dismissing the opinions of Child Sharp, Maidment and virtually every scholar that has laid pen to paper on the subject needs much more of a discussion than that   

The only way the claimants of the 'first in print' is by a spectacular and Unilateral exercise in repetition by moving the goalposts in order to include pop songs of the past, music hall compositions, Victorian Parlour ballads - mostly with known composers.
These bear no relation whatever to the folk songs I have been listening to for the last half century
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 08:10 AM

"repetition"
Damn spellcheck - should read "redefinition"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 09:29 AM

Certainly some songs were written specifically for broadsides, by a range of writers some of whom can only be called "hacks", some of whom had greater skills. And certainly some were written for the stage or the pleasure gardens and then copied for broadsides. And certainly some were made by individuals whom we might identify as "folk". I think the disagreements are only about the relative numbers.

Given that situation, a few examples that fall clearly into one or other category won't prove anything about the proportions. Nevertheless I would be interested to see Jim cite some examples of songs that he believes embody in their words evidence of having been made by the "folk", not ones such as he has already cited about events in Ireland but from the classic late 19th and early 20th century collections.

Taking as an example songs about shepherds, ploughboys or milkmaids, it does seem to me that they mostly paint an idealised version of country life, calculated to appeal to a middle-class urban audience, rather than reflecting the hard reality for most of the people engaged in rural labour.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 09:52 AM

Will do so later Richard, but I suggest that, if you have it, work your way through the published Sharp/Karpeles collection - plenty of examples there
Harry Cox once sang Betsy the Serving Maid to Alan Lomax and spat out at the end of it, "and that's what they used to think about us" - he found the song convincing
He went into a long diatribe about the seizure of public land when he sand Van Diemen's Land.
Has anybody ever worked out why broadside hacks should take up the cudgels on behalf of criminal poachers or cases of social misalliance?
Damned if I can work it out - they would have to have been social reformers
He same with complaints about seagoing conditions.
If you read Hugill's 'Sailortown' he presents areas frequented by silors ashore as no-go areas, yet we have all these 'landlubber-made' songs    (supposedly) about sailors seducing well-heeled townswomen and getting the better of boardinghouse-keepers, publicans and tradesmen - marvelous examples of "one for our side!"
Why should townies write songs in praise of people who were generally mistrusted and feared?
The same es for the garrison towns where militaery men were regarded the same by the civvies (except in wartime, when they became expendable heroes)
A simple test Richard, just see how a traditional song 'fits the mouth' and is still easy to relate to centuries after it was composed and compare it to the general output of the broadside hacks
Chalk and cheese for me
Jim Carroll

Subject: Lyr Add: THE MOWING MATCH
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 10:29 AM

Richard
This is one of the best examples of a rural-made folk-song using vernacular speech and trade terms I have ever come across
It was recorded by MacColl and Joan Littlewood some time in the 1940s (I think) for a radio programme they made called ?The Ballad Hunter?
Seamus Ennis recorded a 6 verse version of it from around the same area for the BBC in 1952 - in both cases it was sung to the tune 'The Nutting Girl'

From the BBC index.
"Singer: Becket Whitehead. 1.52    Delph, nr. Oldham, Yorkshire. 24.5.52 (S.E.)"
Jim Carroll

THE MOWING MATCH
1    Come all you jolly sporting men
Who love good ale to quaff,
I'll tell you of a moving match
Took place at Brindley Croft.

2    There war Kirby up at Tree-end Clough
And a lad from t' lower-end,
And what those two lads did that day,
Their fame'll never end.

3    Now, Kirkby wur a Tunstead man,
Frae t'houses up i' t' wood,
Among then top-end movers
There war not one so good.

4    And of a' these lads i' Friezeland,
And chaps that moved right weel,
There war one ca'd Tom o' Fearny Lee,
?T could make ?em come to heel.

5    They came up out of Friezeland,
Wi' scythes 'bout shoulder height,
The Lanky lad he carried t'sway,
He could all the movers fight.

6    But Kirkby he stepped up and said,
"Tha munna bother me,
For if that does, I'll tan thy hide,
This day I'll let thi see."

7    There were Bill o' Breadstrup, Cowtail,
Delph-Johnny and Singing Tom,
Small Benny and Bold Bowman,
Frae't lower-end did come.

8    There war many an owd trail-hunter,
And many a real owd un,
And t'finest lads at wrestling
For fifty miles around.

9    Free Grange and Castle-Shaw they come,
Horse-whipper lads so strong,
Wi' necks as red as fighting cocks,
And backs as broad's as long.

1O    An? all these short-head starters.
An' gamblers an' all,
And all those privily wives
They were sitting in a row.

11    Then Krkby's wife spoke up in front,
"Now Jack, my lad," said she;
"If that gets licked wi' t'lower-end,
Tha'll bide no more wi' me."

12    Then Bandy Jack o' Waterside,
Be held the starting gun,
"Come on," he said, "you bold young lads,
It?s time to start the fun."

13    T' lower-end lad was up on 'tleft,
And Kirkby down on t'right,
Their scythes were held dipped into t'grass,
A good and manly sight.

14    Then Bandy Jack o' Waterside,
He fired the starting gun,
And off these mighty mowers went,
T'battle had begun.

15    Wi' flashing scythes these two stout lads
Went chargin' up the field,
Each stroke laid low two yards o' grass,
And neither one would yield.

16    Stroke for stroke they both advanced,
Until the turning-row,
Then Kirkby made a wider sweep
An' t'crowd all shouted, "Go!"

17    T' sweat wur glistening on their backs
And running in t'lads eyes,
But neither one'd mop his face
For fear he'd lose the prize.

18    And when t'owd clocker shouted "Time!"
They both were well-nigh done,
T'crowd wur roaring fit to burst
To see which one had won.

19   Then Bandy lack o' Waterside,
And Gibby from Bleak-Hey,
They both agreed that t'Lower-end lad,
Had won the match that day.

2O    But Kirkby wur not satisfied
About his measurement,
So for Harry o' Thurston-Clough
Two willing lads were seat.

21    And Barry wi' his measuring rod,
He knelt down there i' t'field,
And soon he said t'Lower-end lad
To Kirkby'd have to yield.

22    T'Lower-end lad had cut more length,
But Kirkby'd cut more grass;
A mighty cheer rose up from
Every Friezeland lad and lass.

23    So Kirkby won the mowing-match,
And that concludes my tale,
So new we'll toast good sportsmen all.
In a glass of Friezeland ale.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 03:33 PM

"from the classic late 19th and early 20th century collections". Not pieces by local writers (Jack o' Racker) that had very limited currency then, Richard?

Cracking folksong of course written in 1842, like many another 'Friezeland Ale' etc., in the Saddleworth area. Ammon Wrigley did a great job in writing songs and bringing together local dialect pieces.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 17 - 02:39 AM

"Incidently, do you share my difficulty in squaring Steve Roud, the clear, challenging and original thinker that emerges in the pages of this book with Steve Roud, the genial, gentle humourist and good listener that we meet in Sussex Traditions management meetings?"

...said Vic Smith...and yes I most certainly do!

What a debate! What foxes me are the classical references, the 'Goddess Diana's' and the 'Bright Phoebe's' and how they entered the unlettered lexicon and imagery of the classes to whom we are constantly referring. Or do they only apply to the 'few' songs written/printed by professionals' and picked up and changed through the oral tradition?It is interesting that Jim should have chosen to reproduce a song of such length and factual accuracy to demonstrate the ability within the labouring class to compose material - Bob Copper collected one such from Frank (Mush) Bond in Hampshire, 'The Dummer Sheeners Song'. Amongst the many singers Bob recorded, Frank was extraordinarily well read. He wrote extensively and quoted freely from his prodigious memory and as Bob says he would draw from this store rather than plagiarise when composing erudite works hardly-ever-to-be-read. You can read about him in Bob's 'Songs and Southern Breezes'. But he was the exception rather than the rule.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jon Dudley
Date: 13 Dec 17 - 02:50 AM

Sorry should have checked in as Jon Dudley for the last piece...

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Dec 17 - 03:17 AM

"But he was the exception rather than the rule."
Precisely, Jon. The exact point I keep making.

On a slightly different note I'm sure you are fully aware, some of the songs in your own family repertoire are glee songs from the 19th century glee clubs, the classic examples being 'Spring Glee' and 'Dame Durden', both of which I have sung in the past directly from your family repertoire.

Also songs like 'Warlike Seamen' were originally written by the captain involved in the battle, but Phil was a member of the landed gentry. How his song came to be in the repertoires of many people and was printed in greatly differing forms on broadsides is anyone's guess.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Dec 17 - 04:07 AM

The fact that English worker dialect poets like Ridley, Samuel Lackock, "Joseph Skipsey, John Axon and Samuel Bamford could continue to create the masterpieces they did without caricaturing their class as the broadside products did is proof enough that working people possessed the same ability and desire to represent their lives as the Irish working people did by producing locally made songs in their thousands right up[ to the death of the tradition - certainly not the exception.
The case was the same for England.

"In the Victorian period, galvanized by the Chartist movement from the 1830s to the 1850s, working-class poets increasingly identified their literary work with working-class politics. As scholar Peter Scheckner points out, "Chartist poems were read every week by hundreds of thousands of active Chartist workers and supporters throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; the ideas and commitment behind these works were translated month by month into political action." The Chartist movement is represented in the exhibit by the work of Gerald Massey and Ebenezer Jones, both of whom also worked for the Chartist press."

Not all these songs were good and not all of them passed into an oral tradition, but they were produced out of a desire to have a voice and not for money, as the broadsides were.
Nor were they as universally bad as the broadsides were.
It is totally artificial to exclude what was happening in Ireland
Sharp and his collegues were carrying out what amounts to 'a study in a dying culture' when working people were moving rapidly from being active participants in their culture to being passive recipients.
What was happening in Ireland represented a healthy creative folk culture right up to at least the mid 1940s
I have no argument with Roud in general, but I find the almost single-handed attempt to re-define folk song breathtakingly arrogant and to use that definition to dismiss the beliefs of those whose work we owe our undertang to out of hand, without qualifying that disimissal (unless you accept Steve Gradham's "romantic nonsense" and adequate qualification) even moreso
Jim Carrol
Ji
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jon Dudley
Date: 13 Dec 17 - 04:17 AM

"On a slightly different note I'm sure you are fully aware, some of the songs in your own family repertoire are glee songs from the 19th century glee clubs, the classic examples being 'Spring Glee' and 'Dame Durden', both of which I have sung in the past directly from your family repertoire."

Absolutely Steve and we normally introduce them as such.

Although it's a fascinating study to conjecture where and how the songs came about, we are equally interested in how and why the ones in our repertoire came to be chosen, cherished and loved quite so much. We feel a distinct and almost visceral connection with previous generations when singing them and by thinking about why they chose those particular songs - it certainly helps inform us about their characters more than say a photograph would....I dunno, I ain't no scholar.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Dec 17 - 03:18 PM

Jon, you are as much a scholar as anyone else on this forum and we welcome your input. There is as you must know an enormous amount of respect and gratitude to you and your family for preserving and more importantly keeping alive this tradition and these songs.


JC
Nobody on any of these threads has made any attempt whatsoever to exclude (or deny or downplay) what was happening in Ireland and it is ridiculous to make such a suggestion!!!! In fact many of your adversaries have gone out of their way to praise your work and all you can do is call them names.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 04:12 AM

"what was happening in Ireland and it is ridiculous to make such a suggestion!!!!"
You couldn't possibly deny what has hppened in Ireland if you wanted to - in the field of collecting, Tom Munnelly's work ranks internationally
There has been a concentrated effort to exclude what has happened in Ireland to arriving at an intelligent understanding of how the singing tradition worked, claiming it to be somehow "different" - your own argument.
It most certainly was not and it provides us with the most recent picture (apart from the Travelling communities) of a living oral English-language tradition.
We are never gong to know for sure who made our songs but any reasonable assessment of what might have happened will have to be made by taking everything we have to hand otherwise 'made for profit by bad poets' re-defining crowd will have been given a free hand
I'm not prepared to let that happen
There have always been people around who have advocated that working people were not able or not willing to give voice to their experiences - folk song has been the stumbling block to this claim up to now
Now the knockers are queueing up to leap on the idea
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 05:49 AM

Can someone remind Jim of the title of the book under discussion.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jon Dudley
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 06:02 AM

That's kind of you Steve, although we are but a single link in a very long chain.

Seems that we're no nearer getting at the truth in terms of authorship.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 06:07 AM

Folk song in England, do you mean
Aren't there any Irish people living in England then?
The two traditions are inseparably connected, socially, politically, artistically and by language.
The Irish tradition is full of songs that probably originated in Britain - there were more Child ballads extant in the latter half of the twentieth century in Ireland than there were in Britain - and in a far better condition.
I repeat from above:
I attended a talk given by Peter Cook once where he discussed the richness of the oral tradition in Aberdeenshire, particularly in relation to the Greig collection
He projected a 19th century map of the area onto a screen and then superimposed a plan of all the railways, roads and canals being worked on at the time"
THe workers on those railways, roads and canals in the mid 19th century were Irish, and Cook's conclusion was that one of the reasons for the great richness of the New Deer song tradition was the Irish influence.
Irish, English and Scots Travellers were freely moving songs about Britain without even having access to literacy.
One of the great feature's of America's Library of Congress collection is that it it totally aware of foreign influences in its native traditions - Britain maintains its Brexit -like approach towards English song
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 06:23 AM

Steve Gardham wrote:-
"in the Saddleworth area. Ammon Wrigley did a great job in writing songs and bringing together local dialect pieces."

In Chapter 18, "Nowt as Queer as Folk: Dialect and Local Songs", Roud makes a special case for Lancashire. On page 569, he writes, "There was certainly a strong tradition of local dialect songs in Lancashire going back to at least the eighteenth century."
Elsewhere he writes that the county was not one that was satisfactorily investigated by the Victorian and Edwardian collectors but that he finds evidence of much local pride and a sense of ownership in their dialect songs as well as poems. On that same page he writes:-

Dialect poets rarely tackled the subjects that regular poets did, but concentrated on everyday lives of the common people of their area or the commonplace sights and sounds of their home places. They were very often comic and a common devise was the invention of a local 'character' through whose eyes the scenes and situations coild be described.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 06:32 AM

I had not checked the text scan properly from my previous post. It is always tempting to accept the text scan when it is usually more than 99% accurate but in the three lines in italics above -
"devise" = "device"
and
"coild" = could"

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 08:42 AM

> produced out of a desire to have a voice and not for money, as the broadsides were.

Undoubtedly true, but of no significance to subsequent singers of those very songs (i.e., "tradition").

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 08:48 AM

THese poets represented a small number that managed to capture public attention - the same prevailed in Ireland when poets like Tómas Hayes published poems (referred to as "songs") which had largely been styled on local singing styles), two of which passed into the local styles (see 'Farewell to Miltown Malbay' and 'Nora Daly' on the Clare County Library, Carroll/Mackenzie website)
Along with Hayes's compositions there were hundreds of anonymous songs which passed into the local tradition and survived into the mid 20th century (see above website; The Bobbed Hair, The Leon, Mac and Shanahan (2 songs) The West Clare Railway, Dudley Lee the Blackleg, Thew Rineen Ambush..... and many others
This appears to describe what was happening all over Ireland
All these are still regarded as 'traditional' locally and archived as such by the local cultural group.
They would have been ignored by Sharp and his colleagues or maybe not even sung as the word "old" did not apply to what was being asked for.
We know that hundreds of songs were being made during the Reform and Chartist campaign; the political newspapers ran a 'Sam Henry' like column gathering them in
It is inconceivable that this wasn't also the case during the Luddite, Swing, Rebeccaite, Merthyr disturbances, but to sing them publicly would be to run the risk of imprisonment or transportation.
John Holloway's Oxford Book of Local verse indicates that song-making was common throughout England.
There is no reason to believe that our poaching songs and others involving transportation were not local responses to the most extreme examples of public land seizures that were taking place in the 19th century.
The Clearances in Scotland produced their own repertoire of songs, composers like Maire Ruadh were known, but many songs remained anonymous
The point of all is that, far from having to rely on private enterprise for songs, humanity seems to have been natural songmakers with a need to record their experiences and feelings in verse.
My favourite summing up was given to a 95 year old small-farmer a few years ago, when he told us, "in those days, if a man farted in church, somebody made a song about it" (worth repeating as often as it is needed as far as I'm concerned.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 01:41 PM

Sigh!
I don't remember anyone denying the existence of local songs and song-makers, some of which lasted long enough in oral tradition to be called folk songs. I gave examples from my own collecting and no doubt other field workers could come up with plenty of examples. Very few of these, for one reason or another, made it into the national corpus.

The point is, the corpus under discussion (as we have repeatedly written) was that body of material noted down in c1890 to c1920 mainly in southern England, by the likes of Sharp, Gardiner, Baring Gould, Kidson, Broadwood, the Hammond brothers, Butterworth and Vaughan Williams and a few others. It has been shown that of that corpus 89% had its earliest manifestation in some form of urban commercial enterprize. Those (unlike JC) who have studied for many years the relationship between many examples of oral tradition and commercially produced ballads are of the opinion that the likely figure to have originated in this way would be closer to 95%.

To state that conditions in mid-20th century Ireland were the same as in rural Britain c1800 is a ludicrous statement, but we've been through all of this before ad nauseam.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 02:13 PM

"Sigh!"
And you were doing so wellPlease don't start patronising me again Steve - it really doesn't help
"I don't remember anyone denying the existence of local songs and song-makers,"
You dismissed them Steve

Subject: RE: 'Historical' Ballads
From: Steve Gardham - PM
Date: 14 Apr 11 - 05:45 PM
As for farmers writing songs, I have plenty of examples of these myself, but they very seldom get the chance to enter oral tradition. In fact none of the ones I recorded were ever sung by anyone else but the writer.

Elsewhere you said they were too busy earning a living to make folk songs - happy to dig that out as well if it helps
"To state that conditions in mid-20th century Ireland were the same as in rural Britain c1800"
I didn't say the conditions were the same - a said that regarding the culture, the sitution was the same - both had every reason to make songs reflecting their lives - in fact, the harder the conditions, the more reason to complain about them in song, as was shown by the number made following the famine
If you haven't already, I suggest you get hold to Terry Moylan's The Indignant Muse and see how many were wade during the mass emigrations, the evictions, the land wars and the fight for national independence - 700 pages worth
The English agricultural worker must have been very nesh to be silenced by hard work
The corpus you are talking about were covered time when the tradition was dying and Mrs Laidlaw's prophesy was being fulfilled.
We don't have a cle about how far they go back apart from those dealing with historical events
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 02:40 PM

There are plenty of clues if you actually study the material, who wrote them, stylistic clues, as well as the many that are based on historical events.

****Elsewhere you said they were too busy earning a living to make folk songs****Not quite what I said, but fairly close. The vast majority of the rural population in the early 19th century lived in abject conditions one step above slavery and there are multiple reasons why they would not have had the inclination to make their own songs, particularly protest songs. Those that did have the creative urge and there were probably enough very rarely came into contact with a printer, and that is obviously how the majority of the national corpus songs were spread around the country, whilst also allowing for migratory workers.

****The corpus you are talking about were covered time when the tradition was dying**** And this is relevant because? I don't remember anyone stating otherwise.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 03:14 PM

"There are plenty of clues if you actually study the material, who wrote them, stylistic clues,"
There are plenty of stylish indication, particularly the use of vernacular and familiarity with subject matter (all of which you have attempted to explain away rather than give rational reasons for) to suggest that they come from the people they represent.
The overall stile of broadside writers is that of clumsyiness - doggrell.
Taking that period as representative of the tradition is like describing a footballars skills after he has retired with a leg injury - it represents nothing
"I don't remember anyone stating otherwise."
Aren't you one of those who has re-defined folk song to include everything a traditional singer sings - Roud is
The conditions of rural England were certainly no worse than those of Ireland - in the period you are talking about a million had been wiped out by famine, another million endured enforced emigration, those that stayed at home faced eviction, land wars, two major uprisings - not to metion comscription into other people's wars.... the riches period for Irish song-making - not despite the conditions but because of them
What te hell have printes got to do with it - songs were made to be sung, not to be sold - that has always been the case
That seems to be a concept you are unable to grasp
One of the great oversimplifications if the idea that these songs were mede simply as entertainment and they were works of the imagination - they most certainly were neither
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 14 Dec 17 - 06:57 PM

I think a Bell rings in Jim's house when anyone writes to this thread - particularly if it is not within his view of Folk Music.....

Ding Dong Bell............

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 06:11 AM

"I think a Bell rings in Jim's house when anyone writes to this thread "
It's a pity the houses of more 'folk enthusiasts' aren't fitted with bells time
I continue to be appalled at the lack of response to an important (in my opinion) unilateral rethink of (in my opinion) to be an important art form
Thank you for not caring
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 06:44 AM

I have hesitated to enter this argument because I'm not a scholar or a collector, and neither have I yet read the book (it's on my Christmas list). Instinctively I agree with Jim that the 'folk' themselves must surely have been capable of creating their own songs - besides Jim's own experience in Ireland, it just seems to me incredible to think that they would not have included creative people in their number. We have only to look around us today to see how many creative people come from working-class backgrounds, so why should it have been any different a century or more ago? Especially when the lack of social mobility offered fewer opportunities for talented people to escape from the lives they were born into. Neither literacy nor education are needed to create songs, simply an instinctive grasp of one's own language. I don't buy the argument that life was too hard to be creative - boring, monotonous, repetitive work is an ideal opportunity for a creative mind to distract itself, and they were not short of subject matter.

Nevertheless it appears incontrovertible that a significant number of songs can be traced back to printed sources, and whilst there may be disagreement over the proportion this is something which should be capable of being quantified fairly accurately given sufficient research. However I don't think that matters much - it is the process of transformation which turns it into a folk song, not the original source. I don't think this undermines the idea of what is 'folk song' or deny the creativity of those singers who shaped it into the form in which it was eventually collected.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 06:52 AM

Howard Jones gives what seems to me a very fair summary -- despite having not yet read the book. But I would add one comment. The transmission from the printed form(s) (which were surely in most cases the forms which achieved wide distribution, whether or not one of them was the original) to the collected versions was in most cases via only a few steps of transmission, in the course of which the variation went in more than one direction, but often in the direction of degeneration rather than refinement.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 07:38 AM

"Nevertheless it appears incontrovertible that a significant number of songs can be traced back to printed sources"
Thanks for that rational summing up Howard
The only point I disagree with is the one above
Unless you can prove without question that no oral versions existed before the printed ones, none can be confirmed to have originated on broadsides or elsewhere.
I have no problems that some probably did, it's the enormity of the claim I find impossible to accept
MacColl's Song Carriers statement started this argument between Steve and I:
"some of them undoubtedly were born on the broadside presses. Some have the marvellous perfection of stones shaped by the sea's movement. Others are as brash as a cup-final crowd. They were made by professional bards and by unknown poets at the plough-stilts and the handloom."
I have always accepted that without question, just as I have been aware of how many folk songs appeared on broadsides since my friend, Bob Thomson, first described his researches back in 1970
Steve Gardam swept MacColl's statement aside somewhat contemptuously as naivety, and here we are.
There really is not much room for discussion with an attitude that is as dismissive of the ideas of other people as that
I've always thought that the best way to understand the folksong enigma is by bringing all the information we have together along with all previous reseach and arriving at an educated guess based on the sum total.
What has happened here is a rejection of major previous research of the best of our scholars and an arbitrary redefinition
We are no longer discussing the mame music
RTim talks about "my view of Folk Music" - I have chosen to take the view argued by the shelf loads of researchers which stretch back to the 1850s to the present day.
We know that an orally composed tradition dates back as far as the 8th century when The venerable Bede described:
"cattlemen passing around a harp and singing 'vain and idle songs'."
Maybe the Rev was a 'starry-eyed romantic too!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 07:41 AM

The larger point is not that the unlettered created songs, but that they very enthusiastically adopted commercial songs that were written *for* them.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 07:58 AM

Does it have to be an either-or? Lighter?
Popular music created commercially has long been with us - that tells us nothing about whether people chose to reflect their own thoughts and experiences for themselves in song, which is what I believe folk song to be about
If they didn't the folk has been relegated to having no traceable voice in their own existence - as serious as that
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 08:07 AM

In reply to Richard Mellish, it has to be acknowledged that the folk process can work both ways, and that in some cases we have ended up with mere fragments, whether through poor editing of the story, mishearing or misunderstanding, or simple forgetfulness. However it does strike me that in many cases the printed sources are over-long, over-elaborate, and excessively flowery in their use of language. I imagine a longer song appeared better value for money when broadsides were being sold. Tastes change, but I wonder whether they were ever regularly sung in full or whether most singers chose to edit them down for performance, even when working from the printed version. The folk versions usually seem to reduce the story and simplify the language - whether that is degeneration or refinement seems to me entirely a matter of taste.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 08:43 AM

Regarding the use of printed sources Howar, we invariably found that they were regarded rather ambivalently - few learned them fully, rather, they fortified already songs by borrowing verses.
Some treated them with mistrust, even disdain.
A typical example of this was when recorded an hour-long story from a local storyteller which we later found in a book, Patrick Kennedy's 'Fireside Romances'
When we asked the storyteller whether he knew about it, he replied- "Yes, but Kennedy has it all wrong - them fellers always do"
That reflected the attitude of several singers.
The over-riding attitude was to treat the written word as sacrosanct and unalterable
The whole question of literacy is a complicated one in itself.
When Victoria came to the throne Education was for the wealth only, it was passed on to the poor by the Ragged Schools run by volunary teachers anxious that they should be able to learn to read the bible.
A third of the population were regarded as literate, largely the Urban better off - hardly any of the labouring poor could read and none could write.
It has been suggested that people bought broadsides and had the songs read to them, so we have poor people "living in abject conditions one step above slavery" who "would not have had the inclination to make their own songs", yet were happy enough to spend what they had on these song sheets and find the time it would take to be taught them by the few who could read.
If they didn't like the versions they had bought, they would then take the time to edit out the bits they didn't like.
In Ireland, which has a large number of songs probably originating in England, they had the added problem that in many rural areas, the first language was Irish, with many hardly able to speak English, let alone read it.
Yet still, in the mid seventies, fifty Child Ballads were still extant in the repertoires of country singers
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 08:44 AM

It is rather incongruous that this thread should divide so clearly into pro- and anti- what Steve Roud has written in this book when the book itself is so full of the likes of "on the other hand...", "another way of interpreting this data might be...", "It could be argued that...." etc. He bends over backwards to give a balanced interpretation.
Over and over he tries to move the emphasis from the origin of folk song (which is full of pitfalls as this thread and many other discussions show) to its development and changes during transmission once it has become widely sung enough to enter the oral tradition. For one thing, that gives a much stronger basis for a evidential approach which he totally endorses.
His clarion call is for further research and for researchers to concentrate on a factual, data based approach. He disapproves strongly of assumption without proof and regrets the lack of data in key areas and calls for more detailed study.
This should appeal to everyone who is interested to bring more focus and discipline in their thinking. To my mind, that is the most radical aspect of this book. I always read Howard Jones' posts here with interest - he seems to write a lot that is balanced and sensible, but in a recent post Howard wrote, "Instinctively I agree with Jim that the 'folk' themselves must surely have been capable of creating their own songs..." and then he constructs his arguments to support this. I'm sure that I would have fully endorsed such statements in the past but after reading this book, I have a voice whispering in my ear, "...but instinct is no longer enough."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 10:04 AM

"He bends over backwards to give a balanced interpretation."
There's very little point in saying what Roud does unless you address what he has actually said Vic
"but instinct is no longer enough."
It never has been - common sense is what is going to produce something and the rejection of research carried out over centuries is hardly that
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 10:42 AM

I've been reading Folk Song in England. Here are some quotes – please read them carefully!

To take one example from hundreds, The dark-eyed sailor has repeatedly turned up in tradition in more or less identical shape.

Pretty surely it had a single author. If one day we find the author’s name – and it is not impossible, for all the collected versions derive ultimately from a Catnach broadside of the late 1830s – does The dark-eyed sailor at that moment cease to be a folk song?
Without question, however, the greatest influence of print on folk song comes from the broadsides.

Some specialists would try to keep the broadside ballads and songs entirely separate from the rest of folk song, and to consider them as a category apart. In fact the two kinds are as mixed as Psyche’s seeds, and probably the majority of our ‘folk songs proper’ appeared on stall leaflets at one time or another, in this version or that. The broadside-ballad maker as a rule was no artist, no poet, but a craftsman of sorts, a humble journalist in verse who, for a shilling, would turn out a ballad on a subject as readily as his cobbler cousin would sole a pair of shoes. He might provide a song based on news of actual events, small or large, local or international. Or he might invent a romantic story of love, crime, battle or trickery, and make the ballad out of that, like a present-day author of pulp magazine fiction. Or he might take a song already current in the countryside and refurbish it a little for publication.

Writers in the past have stressed so heavily that whatever folk song is or is not, it is essentially an oral affair whose intrinsic character derives from the peculiarities of mouth-to-ear-to-mouth transmission. Well that is only true in part. We see that in thousands, indeed millions, of instances the words of folk songs reached their singers by way of print.


Ah ... which copy of Folk Song in England have I been reading? All the quotes above are from Bert Lloyd's book, chapter 1.

Derek

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 10:43 AM

ignore the silly question marks!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 10:57 AM

Vic, I agree that instinct is a poor guide to scholarship, and perhaps I have chosen evidence to suit my arguments. There is little evidence anyway from the time we are talking about since the composers of such songs were not recorded, but it is not unreasonable to extrapolate from other more recent evidence. It appears quite extraordinary to me to suggest that the English working class in the nineteenth century were incapable of creating their own music and song. If that were truly the case they would surely be unique in the world. Even without evidence, there must surely be a strong presumption that at least some songs must have originated amongst the folk themselves. How widely they would have spread beyond their own community, and whether they were likely to survive to be collected, is a different matter.

There is obviously disagreement over what proportion of the folk song canon was created internally, so to speak, and which came from printed sources. The proportion in favour of the latter is clearly larger than some would like to admit. My question is, why should it matter? What makes them 'folk songs' is that they were meaningful to the people who valued them enough to pass them on, and in whose mouths they evolved and changed. Whether or not we know who wrote them, and whether that person was a ploughboy or a poet, seems to me to be entirely incidental, and irrelevant to the essence of a folk song.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 10:59 AM

****the rejection of research carried out over centuries is hardly that****

As modern historians will tell you there is a lot wrong with past scholarship. It can be extremely biased and is based upon nothing like the resources we have available to us nowadays with modern technology. With less bigotry and no hidden agenda modern historians can afford to be much more honest.

Child had limited resources, his preferences were weighted by his own elite background, and he also admitted that he was very unsure of the selections he was making. He also, despite his reservations regarding street lit., included a great deal of it.

Sharp had his own agenda which included ignoring the influence of broadsides even though he was well aware of it. Baring-Gould and Kidson were much more knowledgeable when it came to song backgrounds.

Personally I don't put much store in MacColl's scholarship, but I don't think he made many claims in this direction. He was a performer and actor primarily and only produced scholarly works near the end of his life. I certainly wouldn't go to his sleeve notes for accurate information, any more than I would Lloyd.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 11:04 AM

Derek, you sly fox.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 11:09 AM

Howard,
Who is suggesting that "the English working class in the nineteenth century were incapable of creating their own music and song"? Please read the previous postings more carefully. I don't see anyone suggesting this, least of all Steve. Of course some of our folk songs originated in this way. I can give you plenty of examples from my own collecting. For a variety of reasons very few made it into the national corpus of folk song.

I am in complete agreement with you and probably most of the people here. Why should it matter? It is the process that makes a folk song; origins are irrelevant to that. That is not a contentious issue.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 11:12 AM

Brilliant, Derek. Hero worship!!!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 11:34 AM

Well done Derek for going back and reading what Lloyd wrote.
I too went back and re-read parts of his book - but could not be bothered to extract quotes in the way you have - well done for that.

Although I am very interesting in the whole aspect of where songs came from, etc., and I should also add - I too have not read Steve's book (but I know the man) - However I am increasingly bored with the intransigence of certain correspondents.

No one is stopping them having their views - just don't keep telling us we are wrong, or that we don't care. Let us just agree to disagree and then keep singing the songs we love - whether or not they fit someones definition of a bloody folk song!

And support your local "Folk" song clubs.........

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 12:26 PM

"the English working class in the nineteenth century were incapable of creating their own music and song"?
I said "incapable or unwilling
"As modern historians will tell you there is a lot wrong with past scholarship. "
Down to the nitty-gritty - Child et al were wrong - why didn't you say that in the first place - it would have saved so much time?
"Personally I don't put much store in MacColl's scholarship, "
Personally, I don't put much store in yours Steve, but that's beside the point
MacColl never claimed to be a scholar - he mistrusted desk-bound academics, and I'm beginning to see why
Despite this, he did more work, on his own and with others, on analysing songs than anybody else in the revival, from the point of view of a singer who wanted to sing the songs.
Carthy's programme on the Critics Group was rather spitefully called "How Folk Songs Should Be Sung" - in fact it was the opposite
The Group examined the songs minutely to see what they actually said about the subjects they handled - one of the first questions we were encouraged to ask was, "what were the possible reasons this song was made in the first place?"
Over the nearly ten years existence of the Group, it produced some interesting answers and left those with a desire to find out more in those involved - far from the feeling of anger and depression Roud's book and your claims have produced in me.
MacColl's work with the Critics was recorded and survives for examination - let's hope it outlives the necrophobia that still surround everything MacColl ever did!
The result of Child's and Sharp's (apparently flawed) work survived up to the present day, despite close examination and constant acceptance and use
From them I got reasoned arguments and logical claims which stood the test of thirty odd years of our own field work.
From you I got contradictory excuses and arrogance.
I honestly don't know where you stand on folk song
You describe one of the finest Irish broken token songs as "a bloody awful song" because you are unable to grasp the context of terms generated by the Hedge School system
You offer as an excuse for the poor versifying of broadside hacks that the oral tradition cleaned up their songs, while at the same time denigrating that same oral tradition by comparing it to the work of "the lowest apprentices in the printers at the bottom of the market".
Your explanation of a poor version of "Higher Germany:

Subject: RE: Origin: High Germany
From: Steve Gardham - PM
Date: 18 Apr 12 - 02:46 PM
Its poor construction and inconsistency might suggest having come from oral tradition, but it could also be down to the fact that such jobs were given to the lowest apprentices in the printers at the bottom of the market. It's not possible to say whether it precedes or derives from 'High Germany'

You claim that Child was beginning to change his mind about broadsides.
You say that hard pressed, production line hacks studied newspapers to educate themselves on agricultural or nautical terms and equipment
You suggest that the same hacks served at sea, worked on the land, espoused social causes because secretly they were social reformers
You claom an anonymous 'school' of hacks who were capable of producing folk songs, despite their kind being justly regarded as notoriously bad poets....
These are not the result of good research or scholarship - they are hastily grabbed excuses to explain away problems you haven't considered.
I don't even know if you like folk song - you certainly give me the impression that you don't understand it.
Your approach to discussion is not co-operation but a quesdtion of "them and us"
from your talk:
"As they rightly say I can offer little proof of my findings and most of the evidence I have is circumstantial. On the other hand they can offer even less evidence to counter my opinions."
That is neither true, nor does it encourage mutual co-operation to seek the truth.
Your approach to being challenged has been one of resentment, talking down to, and occasionally open hostility
None of us have definitive answers, some of us appear to think we have.
Discarding the century or so's opinion and actual work of the people who were responsible for giving us what we have and what we know is hardly going to help
Child didn't know what he was talking about - must write that down!!!
Unbelievable - at so many levels
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 12:41 PM

Great thanks are due to Derek for doing the obvious thing and pointing us to a re-reading of the first chapter of Lloyd!
Having read in pages 26 - 36 what he says about the dominance of printed sources in English folk song, especially the paragraph on page 36 that starts:-

In Britain, print has been the normal condition for folk song texts since the sixteenth century.

It makes setting up a Lloyd v. Roud argument sound rather silly.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 12:46 PM

"Well done Derek for going back and reading what Lloyd wrote"
Did you miss the statement which was probably the truest thing anybody ever said about the definition of folk song?
"If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'.
Jim Caarroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 12:49 PM

These statements on folk songs appearing on broadsides are all a bit straw-mannish, by the way - nobody has ever suggested that they didn't -not in my presence anyway
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 01:11 PM

Hmmm. I find no Roud number for "The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife."

If the song never entered "tradition" before it was unearthed in 1951, was it a folk song? Is it now? Do we know if, in its day, it was ever sung as a song rather than merely recited as a poem? How many singers must there be before a song can be considered "traditional"?

Doesn't tradition imply some degree of popularity?

"Searching for Lambs" and "The Outlandish Knight," however, are well and widely attested as songs, with numerous folk variations.

So, if "tradition" is a criterion, what (other than wishful thinking) places "The Coal-owner" in the same category ("folk song" or "traditional song") as the other two?

Not being contentious. Just thinking aloud....

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 01:22 PM

Steve Gardham wrote -
"As modern historians will tell you there is a lot wrong with past scholarship. It can be extremely biased and is based upon nothing like the resources we have available to us nowadays with modern technology. With less bigotry and no hidden agenda modern historians can afford to be much more honest."

I'm afraid that my thoughts on this take me off-topic but ultimately I hope this has relevance to the fact that accepted history can be challenged and ultimately previously accepted norms changed.
Throughout my secondary education, one of my two favorite subjects was history. In my first term, I was taught by a Cambridge History graduate that following the Roman withdrawal from Britain and before the arrival of Anglo-Saxons and Vikings that England reverted to a condition that was similar to conditions that existed in the Iron Age. Much later I found claims of this nature existing in academic histories written in the 1930s. I was taught this in 1953 - and yet the discoveries at Sutton Hoo were made in 1939. The war held things up yet by 1950 those discoveries were revolutionising opinion about late 6th and early 7th century England. Yes, it was true that England reverted to being an unwritten society; yes it was true that England no longer minted coins but Sutton Hoo findings tells us of a society that had the highest artisanal skills, that society was highly structured and the coins found there showed us the East Anglians traded with Algiers, Egypt and Constantinople.

My history teacher was a lazy man. He was not keeping himself up to date with recent fact-changing findings. History had changed and i was being taught a lie.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 01:51 PM

I am suddenly struck with the similarity of the discussions here with other folk related discussions that have happened over the years.

I refer to whether Morris Dancing should be preformed by Women, and the more recent controversy of Backing Up in Border Morris - Historical arguments abound in both cases - but really, it nearly all blew over eventually, and no one was really right or wrong - everybody carried on with what they wanted to do...........

It's the "Carrying On" that is important; Isn't that what Tradition is about?

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 02:01 PM

>
It's the "Carrying On" that is important; isn't that what Tradition is about?

"Carrying on" with variations. Obviously.

So, without variations, with no known singers till the '50s, where does "The Coal-owner" fit in?

The point, if there is one, is that in practice the category of "folk" or even "traditional" song can expand or contract according to the preferences (I almost said "whim") of the speaker or writer.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 02:51 PM

Confirmation that Child didn't know what he was talking about then Vic
Why am I not surprised?
Research based on the denigration of the work of others such as those we are talking about here is beyond acceptance s far as I'm concerned
We mays as well all fold our tents and go home as whatever conclusion we come to here, like the 25 bus, there's bound to be another aspiring scholar along in a minute.
"Doesn't tradition imply some degree of popularity?"
Not really
"If the song never entered "tradition" before it was unearthed in 1951, was it a folk song? Is it now? "
"Seemingly it was made at the time of the 1844 Durham strike by a collier, William Hornsby of Shotton Moor"
We have unearthed several hundred songs, among Travellers and from West of Ireland singers, that bear all the hallmarks of tradition'
Serious work on collecting did not really get undeerway till the beginning of the 20th century, and collecting from miners half a century later when the NCB commissioned Lloyd and others to undertake the task
If you only collect one version you've more than likely missed any others
If you examine Roud's numbering system you fill find many which have appeared as single versions - including many of ours
The Travelling community was making songs like mad right up to the point their tradition disappeared in the mid seventies.
"Acceptence" rather than "popularity" is probably a safer term to use
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 03:20 PM

Once again the paraphrasing and misquoting and taking things out of context are coming out. At no point have I suggested that Child or Sharp or MacColl were totally wrong. Nobody is perfect and if we look at any scholar's work in previous eras we will find mistakes. As it happens I have enormous respect for all 3 as do most scholars. That does not mean they are beyond criticism. Next you'll be pulling out your old favourite, we mustn't speak ill of the dead!

JC, your adoration of these earlier scholars is tantamount to religious bigotry.

Vic, we keep coming back for more of this rubbish. I'm out.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 03:23 PM

"If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'.
Jim Caarroll,

Not if they are sung by football fans at their matches, and are altered by the singers at the time this makes them folk songs according to the 1954 definition.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 03:27 PM

Valley Floyd Road, oh mist rolling in from the Thames
my desire is always to be here at Valley Floyd Road
many miles have I travelled, many games have I seen
following Charlton my favourite team
many hours have I spent with the Covered End choir
singing Valley Floyd road my only desire."
an example of a folk song according to the 1954 Definition

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 03:41 PM

Okay, just one more, 500.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 06:12 PM

Jim Carrol described Samuel Laycock as an "English worker dialect poet"

His father was a handloom weaver. Samuuel came into the world when "Trade wur slack". He learned to read and write in part at Sunday school (though he did have a short time at day school). At nine years old he began work in a woollen mill at two shillings a week, working six in the morning until eight in the evening with brief breaks for meals. At eleven he got work as a power-loom weaver, and (says a biographer) his first effort at rhyming was written on a "cop ticket" and was addressed to a fellow operative.

Wind the clock on the the Cotton Famine when he began to write his Famine Songs. His biograper says "week by week they were published in the local papers and large numbers were issued as broad-sheet balads. Many of these were learnt by heart and sung by lads and lasses in the streets of the town"

Later he moved away from factory work, with mixed success.

So was he a "worker poet" and if so was he also a "broadside hack". Was he, like Ammon Wrigley before him, an exception and if so what is the evidence for that? Simply that there are not many similar accounts? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Was he an exception only in that he was succesful enough to be published and if so, is he no longer one of 'the folk'?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 15 Dec 17 - 06:36 PM

Jim wrote:
"Well done Derek for going back and reading what Lloyd wrote"
Did you miss the statement which was probably the truest thing anybody ever said about the definition of folk song?
"If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'.
Jim Caarroll

Indeed, that is one of my favourite quotes from his book, though not relevant here really. I quoted this passage only this year at one of the Traditional Song Forum meetings. Jim - you should come over to England to one of these meetings some time. Could be an interesting debate!

Derek

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Dec 17 - 04:19 PM

"is he no longer one of 'the folk'?" Ah now, that would be the 64,000 dollar question. To what extent and for how long were Burns, Clare, Hardy, perhaps even Shakespeare etc., 'one of the folk'?

To what extent is my singer/writer of songs about his own life as a farm labourer 'one of the folk'?

My own inclination would be to treat all of the broadside writers from about 1750 onwards as part of 'the folk'. BUT, in my own opinion it is impossible to say with any direct dividing line this person was part of 'the folk' and that person wasn't. There are though those miraculously talented people on Mudcat who can.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 02:34 AM

''22Did you miss the statement which was probably the truest thing anybody ever said about the definition of folk song?
"If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'.
Jim Caarroll
the above statement is nonsense, little boxes and the red flag are folk songs under certain circumstances, eg.. if they are sung by football crowds, the red flag also uses a traditional tune.
jim, is trying to define folk songs according to his agenda, a certain sound[ eg the use of the major key the dorian mode and the mixolydian mode.
'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'., are songs that i like, but whether i like them and whether jim carroll likes them does not make them folk songs acording to the 1954 definition,

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 02:37 AM

i am beginning to think that they are no longer folk songs but have become art songs, the seem to be preserved in aspic, rather like museum exhibits they are certainly not sung by many folk now and neither are they continuing to evolve, the outlandish knight is not sung by football crowds, either.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 04:30 AM

"Once again the paraphrasing and misquoting and taking things out of context are coming out. At no point have I suggested that Child or Sharp or MacColl were totally wrong."
As far as the main thrust of this argument is concerned - the origin of folk song, that is exactly what you have proposed - you present Child and all those who shared his view as "wrong" [15 Dec 17 - 10:59 AM] and Sharp as an agenda-driven distorter of facts [same posting]
In fairness to you, it is the only way you can get away with what you are claiming - that up to the present day they all got it wrong, either through ignorance or intent.
If that does not need discussion (without the patronising talking down to, if possible) nothing does
These people were drawing their conclusions at a time when the tradition was alive and the broadside trade was thriving.

"To what extent is my singer/writer of songs about his own life as a farm labourer 'one of the folk'? "
Burns was not just writing about his own life, he was making poems on whaat was happening all around him, as were all these poets -
That is what all folk song is anyway, not introspective musings but reportage of social history - and not done for money or fame but from the desire to share what was happening - all songs started with one or a small number of composers.
Go read what Maidment has to say about it (probably another starry-eyed romantic, in your book!)
Burns was fairly typical in his early poetry; first inspired by Betty Davison, a frequent visitor to his home who "had the largest collection in the county of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownie, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, ....... and other trumpery" - in other words, a master singer/storyteller of the time.
We were told of these by descendents - like the local man (father of one of our singers/storytellers), who would start his story on Monday night and carry it throughin episodes till the week-end
When you ran out of arguments in our earlier clashes, you resorted to telling me how many people agreed with you - I'm quite happy with the ones that share my view

Something from Vic I meant to take up earlier.
"I don't think that Walter Pardon was ever much of a pub singer."
Walter's family tradition was never centred on the pub, the only time he knew of his uncles singing away from the Harvest Suppers and family gatherings was when he was taken to North Walsham when his Uncle Billy attended Union meetings
The singing was done in the meeting room when it official proceedings were finished.
Sam Larner went to sing in the local, The Fisherman's Return, once a week and sang the same few songs each time - Butter and Cheese and Maid of Australia being two of them, yet Sam had a repertoire of something like sixty songs - probably more
Sam was recorded telling Parker and MacColl that "The real singing happened at home or at sea".
The bulk of our folk songs are narrative, often quite long and detailed - miss a couple of lines and you miss the sense of the song - pubs are not a sympathetic environment to these songs - they never have been.

The situation in Ireland bears this out - the venue for finding was where people got together in small groups to share songs, stories and local gossip - referred to as 'cuirds' (pro. "coors") over here
Elsewhere, it was done at gatherings in farmhouses, where they gathered to dance or, before the church destroyed them, 'the crossroads dances', but even these events limited the type of song that could be sung.
One musician/singer told us that even the music was ruined when it was taken into the pubs.
Travellers sang at the pubs in the fair, but again, the big songs were sung around the open fires on the sites.
I believe our folk songs, by their very nature, were made for small gatherings and not the pibs

The urban situation was of course different - there, the audiences were passive recipients rather than participants of their culture
A decline in our folk song tradition has now made that a permanent state of affairs.

"you should come over to England to one of these meetings some time."
Alternatively, you could make us all aware of what is taking place so we can make a full judgement - this needs to be an open debate, not one between a few obsessed officianados.
I know there are a few clubs in the UK who hold discussions on ballads - I would love to know what happens there (Can't afford the plane fare and I couldn't face O'Leary' cattle-like attitude to passengers).
This needs to be handled on the basis of sharing ideas, not the 'them and us' conflict that has been presentd
As Stephen fry is fond of saying "NOBODY KNOWS"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 04:32 AM

"i am beginning to think that they are no longer folk songs but have become art songs, "
That seems to be that thrust of the "composed for money" school of thought Dick
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 05:56 AM

I couldn't post this yesterday as Mudcat seemed to be down for most of the day, but yesterday the Jan/Feb 2018 issue (Nos. 415/416) of fRoots dropped through my letterbox. On pages 52 - 56 there is a long article called "Reality Rearranged" on Steve Roud. Actually, compared with most articles in that magazine it is more of a transcribed interview than most but that does mean that we hear more of Steve's voice than we otherwise would. There are lots of information and thoughts by Steve on his background, how this book came about and about the thinking behind and the construction of the Roud Index.
It was written by Jon Wilks who describe himself as a "novice" and is not a name that I know. Perhaps that is a good thing - a fresh mind coming to Steve's work and legacy. I be interested to read any comments on it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 06:24 AM

Suppose a scanned down version put up here would be out of the question Vic?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 09:34 AM

"Child had limited resources, his preferences were weighted by his own elite background, and he also admitted that he was very unsure of the selections he was making. He also, despite his reservations regarding street lit., included a great deal of it." (SG)

"you present Child and all those who shared his view as "wrong" [15 Dec 17 - 10:59}" (JC)

Why don't you address the comments actually made instead of putting your own spin on it as usual?

Sharp was partly driven by the idea of foreigners claiming the English had no music of their own (The country was swamped with German and Italian music at the time). He was trying to create this idea of Merry England where all the rural population were busily making this wonderful music, which to a certain extent was true, but in order to pursue his vision he needed to play down the influence of print. Broadwood, Baring-Gould, Kidson etc., were all very much aware of the influence of print, but Sharp very much dominated proceedings.

"I'm quite happy with the ones that share my view".(JC) Perhaps you could let us know who this includes.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 09:40 AM

I think it's time we got down to the nitty gritty. JC seems to have been calling for this. The songs themselves can tell us a lot. His main connection with English folksong seems to have been Walter. Here's the proposition, JC or a neutral body chooses 20 of Walter's folk songs (as opposed to the ones he rejected as folk songs) and we analyse them.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 09:58 AM

Before we embark on this, I ask JC politely and earnestly to apologise for referring to us as 'deskbound academics'. Not one person on this thread, and I know many of the contributors personally, could be described in this way. We are all heavily involved in the folk scene, organising, performing, etc., and are no more deskbound or academic than JC himself.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 10:24 AM

"Alternatively, you could make us all aware of what is taking place".(JC)

No problem. There are no closed doors. All meetings are open to allcomers and much of what we discuss is available on the TSF website which is where I presume you found my article based on one of the presentations some years ago. Martin Graebe the secretary frequently offers to send recordings of what has transpired out to members. Last time I looked JC was a member.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 11:48 AM

" I ask JC politely and earnestly to apologise for referring to us as 'deskbound academics'"
I apologise without hesitation to those who aren't deskbound academics who thought I was referring to them - I wasn't - just to those who are
Now maybe we could have an apology for the starry-eyed naivete bit

Child elitist as well as ignorant - gets better and better.
Child regarded the material he was assembling as having been originated from the people - hardly elitist
Now if he'd claimed it was produced by a music industry for money....!
""'m quite happy with the ones that share my view".(JC) Perhaps you could let us know who this includes."
I was thinking of Sharp, Chld and Maidment and just about every researcher before you drove your bulldozer through their beliefs

"His main connection with English folksong seems to have been Walter. Here's the proposition"
Oh dear - not this again
We certainly spent more time with Walter than most other singers, some time with the few left in Winterton, but we have met and talked to others down the years
Walter was far more intelligent than most people inside and outside the revival, I ever met - he had no problem in sorting out what was a folk song and what was not, and gave usw tapes full of his way of thinking
But apart from this I spent a total of nearly forty years as an active singer and listener, during which time I helped put together a large archive of traditional singers, largely Englis, both singing and, when availale, talking about their songs - these include quite a lot from Harry Cox and particularly Sam Larner, who the hated and ignorant MacColl bothered to record when others didn't give two ***** what traditional singers had to say.

Our work with singers in Ireland and among travellers, one with a recently departed tradition, the other with one that was still warm and pulsating, was one of opinion gathering.
We gathered enough from them to realise that there is no discernable difference between the two national singing practices - if you wanted to know how a living and healthy tradition worked, that's where you went to find out.

It is beyond me why Roud chose to leave out the thoughtful side of the revival - MacColl, Lloyd, Parker, George Deacon, Vic Gammon, Bob Thomson, Roy Palmer Rory Greig.... and many others were all part of the revival club scene and it shows in their input
The nearly ten years work put in by the Critics Group of analysing and discussing the songs and how they worked, for singers and for communities, is unrivalled - much still available in recorded form for those who learn to get over their necrophobia
They treated the songs like living entities to be relived and understood, not butterflies in a box

I have no intention in entering into another cul-de-sac where you try to prove something you have admitted you are unable to
I have a workable definition of folk song which doesn't include 'Put a Bit of Powder on it Father', I have been given no reason to move away from the basic points of the existing definition to include pop songs of the past, badly written broadsides that came off the presses stillborn, Music hall froth, Parlour Ballads, Pleasure Gardens.
I don't have the respect you seem to have for Charles Rice's songs and glees (which owe more to Handel than they do Folk), sung by middle class gentlemen as described clearly in Laurence SeSenelick's 'Tavern Singing in Early Victorian London' - interesting to those who follow that sort of thing but nothing to do with folk song 'The Songs of the People'.

My point remains - we don't know for certain who made our folk songs 'even though the 'Songs of the People' that has always been accepted, gives us a strong clue.
Tracing them back to printed sources and comparing them to the remains of a moribund tradition tells us nothing - equivalent to taking the pule of a corpse to assess its life achievements
Here's one for you - tell us how appallingly bad poets could have made such timeless gems (without the excuses this time)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 11:55 AM

By the way, when I was referring to the NSF letting us know what was happeing, I meant in order that we could all discuss it rather than to have it sent as confirmed opinions
A public forum such as this seems ideal
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Tootler
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 01:28 PM

It is beyond me why Roud left,out of the thoughtful side of the revival...

This quote from the book says what he was concerned with:

"So, this is a book of social history, covering folk song in England from the sixteenth century to about 1950. It is not really concerned with the folk music which developed through the post-war Folk Revival, when everything changed dramatically nor is it about now, but about what used to be..."

So, his book is about folk music before the 1950s revival. Though he does include some quotes from revivalists, he was not concerned with them but who and what came before.

He also says early on that the definition of folk music he is using is basically the 1954 definition though he does suggest replacing the reference to Music Hall songs with one to commercial popular song generally which seems reasonable to me.

I do get the impression, Jim Carroll that you've not properly read his book but have skimmed through and selected the bits that suited your agenda. Now, that may not be correct but surely in a book like this you need to be sure exactly what the author is concerned with, what he has said he is discussing. Without that, you cannot fairly criticise him.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 01:39 PM

I'm talking about the people I mentioned who were involved in researching singing and songs not their singing
Bert Lloyd was probably the foremost figure with a foot in both camps
My arguments here are largely addressed to Steve Gardham, who appears to have instigated this theory
Ihave read Roud's book fairly quickly, and belive it deserves to be re-rad as often as it takes to absorb all he has to say,
In the main, I am extremely impressed with most of it, but it is these major points get up my nose
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 02:04 PM

"Here's one for you - tell us how appallingly bad poets could have made such timeless gems (without the excuses this time)"(JC)

That's one of the points I was going to address before you dismissed my suggestion out of hand.

You seem only able to deal with extremes. I repeat, your beliefs are remarkably similar to the worshipping of gods. Nobody in their right minds could dismiss Child's monumental work which has not been surpassed in 130 years. That doesn't mean he got everything right. I can give you lots of examples. Have you actually read all of his headnotes, every version of every ballad, everything that he wrote and was written about him? I have nigh on. Perhaps you'd like to comment on the headnotes to Child 20, or why he chose to give 2 completely different ballads the same number, or why he included so many broadside ballads, some as his A versions, why very few of the Robin Hood ballads have any evidence of oral tradition, I could go on. His work still stands as an enormous monument to his endeavour, but he isn't a god!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 02:12 PM

"Now maybe we could have an apology for the starry-eyed naivete bit"

You have a very short memory, JC. I apologised humbly for this directly to you at the time both in an email and on Mudcat and you acknowledged that.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 02:19 PM

Vic Gammon, Roy Palmer, Ruairidh Greig.

You mention the work of these people quite rightly. Have you read any of Vic's work on broadsides? BTW his review of FSE is a few postings above this one if you'd care to read it. Roy both used and wrote about the influence of broadsides in his many books. In fact he was something of an expert on the Birmingham printed ballads. I wonder if these people thought that all broadside ballads were a load of rubbish.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 02:21 PM

we do not know if the composers of broadsheets had as their sole motive composing for the sake of money, unless steve gardham has been holding seances and communicating with those who are no longer wth us

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 02:22 PM

You see what I had in mind was, we could take each of Walter's songs and place it alongside the broadside it came from and sort out the bits that Walter left out that were rubbish. That would be an interesting exercise.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 02:33 PM

Hi Dick,
Can you show me where anyone has said the sole motive was for the sake of money? I'm certain there were other motives, but they DID get paid, usually a shilling by about 1800, which was quite a lot of money. Seances, hmmm, for fun maybe!

If you want to know about 19th century ballad writers try the works of Henry Mayhew such as 'London Labour and London Poor', or his 'Characters'. He didn't just write about the ballad writers, he actually wrote some of the ballads. You might also try Hindley's books on Catnach and the ballad writers mentioned in there, and more recently the books of James Hepburn who dedicated one of his books to John Morgan, one of the most prolific ballad writers. That okay for you, Dick?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 02:42 PM

"You see what I had in mind was, we could take each of Walter's songs and place it alongside the broadside it came from and sort out the bits that Walter left out that were rubbish. "
Walter left nothing out
He was not really a singer as such - he was present when the family sang at Harvest Suppres and home gatherings - tto young to remember the former, during th latter he was allocated 'Dark Eyed Sailor' because "Nobody else wanted that"
When he returned from the army, his uncles had died so he decided to put the family repertoire down in a notebook, so he visited all the elders and wrote them down as they remembered them - he memorised the tuns on his melodeon
He didn't sing publicly until he was recoded by Bill Leader.
Over the thirty years he had remembered virtually all of them and where he hadn't got full ones he asked around for missing verses.
He divided all his songs into genres, as did most singers we recorded
It's these genres I wish to discuss, not individual songs
Walter can be regarded as a collector with no connection to other singers or researchers as much as he was a singer.
"broadsheets had as their sole motive composing for the sake of money,"
Sorry Dick - broadside writing was an urban-based commercial occupation constructed on conveyor-belt lines - the songs were churned out simply to make money
They didn't even have the merits of the Irish "ballads" which were sold around the fairs (I seem to remember you sent me one about a footballer)
The Travellers who sold them were illiterate and recited them to printers straight from memory - a sort of printed oral tradition
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 02:52 PM

"I wonder if these people thought that all broadside ballads were a load of rubbish."
I have enough of them here without having to consult anybody before finding their quality-
My particular favourite is Ashton's 'Real Sailor Songs' - which got as near to a folks'l as ever Charles Dibden did
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 03:18 PM

Ah, Ashton's Real Sailor Songs
On a quick count 30 folk songs, 6 of them Child Ballads. Would you like a list?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 04:21 PM

The concluding three paragraphs of Bert Lloyd's very full and thorough introduction to John Foreman's superbly produced publication of Ashton's Real Sailor Songs would be well worth quoting here:-

Ashton's collection is a splendid example of those "curiosities' that fascinated amateurs of popular literature and street epic in the nineteenth century and whose attraction has by no means faded yet. Sea-doggish Captain Whall was rather scornful of sailor song collections that "smell of the British Museum, much labour has been spent in hunting amongst old records, ballad sheets, and suchlike, and much musty stuff unearthed, which may be some value to the historian, but most of which is clean forgotten". In this respect, Ashton's choice cannot be found innocent. Most of the songs here have passed into oblivion, and it is usually easy to see why; many were little sung, and some probably not sung at all (for the appearance of a song on a broadside is no guarantee that it was ever performed). Still, a proportion of the songs in his volume found durable favour in the mouths of men before the mast.

In a way it is ironic that, more than the battle songs or the (usually more authentic) ballads of disaster at sea, the love lyrics and narratives of amorous encounter ashore are the central part of the seamen's repertory, and the part that lasted best among singers. The songs of separation and absence, the ballad in which the girl learns that her lover is lost at sea, or the sailor finds that his sweetheart is fickle, seem to hold immortal attractions. It has been remarked (by G. Malcolm Laws) that "these romantic and sentimental ballads fail to reflect the proverbial stoicism of seafaring men's loved ones. And yet by expressing the emotions caused by such tragedies, the balladists have struck chords of response among the folk, especially those who know the sea."

Perhaps in the long run these are the most real sailor songs of all, for in a way that is often tender and always elliptical they have within them a recognition of sadness and a longing for a better life, and even more than the outright songs of complaint the best of them accord with the view of "Jack Nastyface" who wrote at the end of his vivid account of lower-deck life as he had experienced it: "In contemplating the varied scene of so motley a profession as that of a sailor, there is much to be thought on with pleasure and much with a bitter anguish and disgust . . . Great Britain can truly boast her hearts of oak, the floating sinews of her existence; and if she could but once rub out those stains of wanton and torturing punishment, so often unnecessarily resorted to, and abandon the unnatural and uncivilised custom of impressment, then, and not till then can her navy be said to have got to the truck of perfection."
A.L Lloyd
Greenwich
Spring 1973

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Dec 17 - 07:14 PM

On a quick revisit, most of the songs in the collection are as unsingable as is the vast majority of the broadside repertoire
As with all song collections, the proof of the pudding....
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 02:21 AM

If you want to know about 19th century ballad writers try the works of Henry Mayhew such as 'London Labour and London Poor'
i have read it , pleae stop assuming that i have not read certain books.
Jim, you do not know that every broadsheet was composed purely for making money, my experience tell me that song writers do not ALWAYS compose purely for money.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 03:27 AM

"London Labour and London Poor"
Read it Dick, and his 'Characters' and 'Underworld', and E.P.THompson's 'Unknown Mayhew' - all remarkable classics and all on our shelves, constantly referred to.
I suggest if you want to know about the broadside trade you read Leslie Shepherd's 'The Broadside Ballad', or his 'History of Street Literature' or his biography of James Pitts, or Hindley's of Catnach... all well worth reading on the subject
Broadside writing was an Urban occupation; I have no doubt that some of the writers were proud of what they wrote, but they did it for pay.
What you are suggesting is equivalent to claiming that the workers at Cowley or Halewood did what they did because they loved cars.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 03:31 AM

"John Pitts'. of course
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 08:05 AM

"On a quick revisit, most of the songs in the collection are as unsingable as is the vast majority of the broadside repertoire
As with all song collections, the proof of the pudding..."(JC)

Why bother revisiting however quickly? No-one is contesting the FACT that the vast majority of stuff that appeared on broadsides is as you say it is. But there was obviously enough in there to please some members of the population, enough for it to have gone into oral tradition. Hundreds of thousands of songs of all descriptions and origins were printed on broadsides, so a couple of thousand that made it into oral tradition is just a drop in the ocean. As with most sectors of life, just by the law of averages some of the material will be better than others.

Why are you posting info that everybody is aware of?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 08:19 AM

for feckj sake i have read those books, and i disagree , not every broadside writer was writing SOLELY for the purpose of money. of course they were trying to sell Broadsheets BUT SOME OF THEM LIKE ALL COMPOSERS TOOK PLEASURE IN TRYING TO DO PRODUCE GOOD ARTISTIC COMPOSITIONS.
that is my opinion, your opinion is different but that does not make either of us right, nor does the opinion of any of the authors that we have both read, any more correct, they had their own opinion and were also trying to sell books., that does not make their opinions gospel, any more that the opinions of historians who try to sell their books and who frequently have conflicting opiniona about different aspects of history.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 08:43 AM

" enough for it to have gone into oral tradition."
And, as you said yourself, to come from the oral tradition, I would guess far more than you claim
Popularity didn't make a thing "good" - we are served by a pop industry that relies on the fact that what it produces today will almost certainly have disappeared in six months time, to be replaced by something similar - and so ad infinitum
You said in your talk that the process was two-way yet you still talk about "a couple of thousand that made it into oral tradition" when you haven't a clue how many did, as uoi have also said.
The published broadside collections are bad because they are bad - doggrell and unsingable in the main
Even the versions of traditional songs as included in Holloway and Blacking have an awkwardness about them that is generally not present in the traditional repertoire
The excuse is that the oral tradition has knocked the corners off them yet you have compared the oral tradition with the work of "the lowest apprentices in the printers at the bottom of the market"
I really don't understand where you are coming from and am left with the impression that you don't either and haven't either - you seem to be riding one horse travelling in one direction.
The outstanding thing about our folk songs is that they have dirt under their fingernails and rope burns on their back - they smell of horse-shit, cordite and tar.
You accuse me of being a romantic and you attempt to reduce my arguments to teh 'Merrie England' and 'shepherdesses and swains' level, yet your 'Jolly Jack Tars, and Colin and Phoebe' are urban based caricatures of the lives of labouring country people, soldiers and sailors.
Sharp's collectors were carrying out a rescue mission to save was was left of a moribund culture, yet even so, the material they collected stands head and shoulders above Ashton and Hindley's doggerel pap.
I find your denigration of Child Sharp and the rest of his generation, at best, ungenerous, and academically unacceptable
It smacks of Dave Harker at his most vitriolic
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 09:47 AM

Steve
Something you have yet to address is the wide reaching implications of your claim - and not just about song

Date: 23 Apr 12 - 02:46 PM
My statement
"The same goes for 'folk' tales, customs, beliefs, dances, music, lore, painting.... it is their common origin which identifies them all as "folk art""
Your response
Sorry, Jim, this is just not true, except one would presume with folk painting, much of the rest originated in high art! Or certainly higher than the common folk, sophisticated sources in other words. Dances in particular."
You would have us that working people in the past left no evidence of creative ability with the exception of stone-age cave painting
A serious charge to make
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 10:29 AM

Come on Steve, you have had this on your mind for five and a half years now.... surely you must have had time to think of an answer by now!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jon Dudley
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 11:14 AM

Surely this is the thread that keeps on giving....;-)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 11:25 AM

"surely you must have had time to think of an answer by now!"

I would, Vic, if I knew what the question was!

JC, those researchers reasonably up-to-date with current research will no doubt recognise that my approach to Sharp, Child and any others is a balanced one (unlike yours). You totally ignore my references to my admiration for their work which far outbalances any criticism.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 11:47 AM

"I would, Vic, if I knew what the question was!"
I know what the questtion was - Vic appears to know what the question was
I tend to think that it's a case of your not knowing what the answer is - don't you?
"You totally ignore my references to my admiration for their work which far outbalances any criticism."
You have described Child as elitist and Sharp as an agenda driven charlatan
Fundamentalist stuff
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 11:57 AM

Meant to add that I have become used to MacColl continuing to receive a posthumous kicking but these are new kids on the block - and so many of them!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 01:08 PM

MacColl, who mentioned him, who has been posthumpously kicking him.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 01:53 PM

'his preferences were weighted by his own elite background'. (SG referring to some of Child's attitudes to the ballads, many of which I happen to agree with) He was from a middle-class background. His friends were mostly poets and dignitaries of the Boston elite. He was Professor of English at Harvard. His previous work included a 30-vol critical edition of 'The English Poets'.Don't you think that colours some of his choices?
BTW I certainly wouldn't use the word 'elitist' to describe him in general. You can if you want. As I keep saying and will continue to say his work in our field has never been surpassed but that doesn't mean we have to worship him like a god and it doesn't mean he was beyond making errors.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 02:01 PM

'elitist' 'charlatan'. Your words, JC. Either quote me directly or not at all.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 02:59 PM

"Either quote"
You just have, but here goes
"Child had limited resources, his preferences were weighted by his own elite background,"
You didn't use the word elitist, but describing his work as such was as good as
This, as far as I am concerned makes Sharp agenda driven charlatan
17 Dec 17 - 09:34 AM
And this makes him a dishonest charlatan
Put 'e together and what have you got
Bippety, boppety boo (to quote Walt Disney)
If I have overstated my analysis, how would you describe your attitude
At best ignorant of the work they were involved in and shifty with their motives
I have little time for people who base their work on the denigration of others
You've lready confirmed that this is your attitude to these people
"JC, those researchers reasonably up-to-date with current research will no doubt recognise that my approach to Sharp, Child and any others is a balanced one (unlike yours). You totally ignore my references to my admiration for their work which far outbalances any criticism."
This denial is just another tack
"His previous work included a 30-vol critical edition of 'The English Poets'
Don't you think that colours some of his choices?"
So, to add to his failings, he was incapable of distinguishing one discipline from the other - wonder why he attributed one to art poets and the other to the people?
Did you never learn the lesson, "when in a hole, stop digging" Steve?
Now - about all those folk disciplines that were dependent on a higher art (apart from folk art)?
If it doesn't leave working people devoid of a voice other than to repeat a script someone else has written, where does it leave them
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 03:24 PM

"The same goes for 'folk' tales, customs, beliefs, dances, music, lore, painting.... it is their common origin which identifies them all as "folk art""(JC)

The words I objected to were 'common origin' and 'all'

"much of the rest originated in high art! Or certainly higher than the common folk, sophisticated sources in other words. Dances in particular." (SG) Note the words 'much of'.

So leaving 'working people devoid of a voice' are your words, not mine.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 03:27 PM

Your twisting of other people's words is legendary. You put your own spin on everything. You missed your vocation. You should have been a politician. I repeat, quote me accurately or not at all!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 04:19 PM

!The words I objected to were 'common origin' and 'all'"
And teh woirds I objected to were:
"much of the rest originated in high art! Or certainly higher than the common folk, sophisticated sources in other words. Dances in particular."
which you have refused to respond to and are now creating an excuse in order to avoid
Are you saying this is no longer your position, if you are not, answer my question and explain yourself
"So leaving 'working people devoid of a voice' are your words, not mine."
I don't care what words I chose - that is the unavoidable conclusion of your claim
I think you've painted yourself into a corner, don't you?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 04:34 PM

Subject: RE: 'Historical' Ballads
From: Steve Gardham - PM
Date: 19 Apr 11 - 05:14 PM
"You're now changing my 95% into 100%, Jim."
Jim Carroll
Just wondered if you've changed your mind about this
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Dec 17 - 05:17 PM

'I think you've painted yourself into a corner, don't you?'(JC)

Not at all. I stick by my opinion, not your spin on it. I have in the past studied all aspects of folklore.



'Just wondered if you've changed your mind about this'(JC)

Again, not at all. Remember the 89%?

95% is still very much my opinion based on years of grubbing through Professor Child's dunghills and comparing the equivalents with those found in oral tradition.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 04:45 AM

"Not at all. I stick by my opinion, not your spin on it."
You do so by refusing to address any of the flaws in your argument and by denigrating the work of over a century
The only thing I have got for certain from you is that you don't handle opposition to your ideas well, you, no doubt witll interpret that as "not suffering fools"
That seems to be the way you work
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 05:14 AM

jim, would have been a fine politician,he has principles which is more than most of the self seeking politicians of today have. i would vote for him to be prime minister

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 06:20 AM

Meanwhile, back at Folk Song In England by Steve Roud which is the subject of this thread, though it has not been referred to in the last 45 posts. Here is another on-line review on the book. It is another that is factual rather than analytical, but as has been pointed out, there are few with the background, experience or skill to give a detailed in-depth assessment of the book's implications.
Read it at - http://www.folkradio.co.uk/2017/08/folk-song-in-england-by-steve-roud/

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 06:28 AM

Here's another on the Spiral Earth website - rather better written than the previous one, but as a regular reader of that website, it is usually the quality of the writing rather than the opinions that grab me - though it is best when interesting opinions and good writing are combined -
http://www.spiralearth.co.uk/folk-song-england-steve-roud/

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 07:07 AM

Here is a third and it is the one that I like least of all the reviews that I have read. It is interesting in that it is written from someone from outside the small pond of traditional music enthusiasts; someone from the big waters of mainstream music. Cally Callomon started off as the drummer and songwriter for 70s punk band The Bears and 80s indie band The Tea Set. He has many other associations with the music industry - Art director, sleeve designer, manager. record label boss, A&R man and so on.
It is not that it is badly written, it isn't, but there is a streak of pretentiousness running through it that irks me. The names that are dropped, in alphabetical order, are - Beethoven, Bob Dylan, Fairport Convention, Elton John, Van Gogh, Vivaldi, Rob Young - you can get a fair idea of the review from those names.
For all that, the review is not without merit. He claims to have spent three weeks reading the book and I can believe it. He does offer some outsider's analysis which if not particularly well informed, still makes valid and relevant points.

It is on the Caught By The River website at -
http://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2017/09/09/folk-song-in-england-steve-roud-cally-callomon/

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 07:27 AM

"though it has not been referred to in the last 45 posts."
Hardly irrelevant to the discussion that has gone on here, though, for accuracy's sake, it was referred to 23 posts ago, but who’s counting?
"Spiral Earth"
More unqualified praise, largely deserved, without touching on the problems that both Roud's and Steve Gardham's claims raise regarding whether the folk made their folk songs - obviously a point to be ignored, here and elsewhere.
In the end, these claims actually boil down to suggestion that there is no such things as 'folk song' and that they are all basically part of the pop songs of the past.
Not worth debating, of course!!
Throughout this argument I have had a nagging feeling of deja vu, so out of curiosity, I re-read Dave Harker's section on Child in his 'Fakelore' and was immediately struck with the though; "so this is where this is all coming from" - the doubt cast on the authenticity of folk songs, the denigration of past collectors.... it's all here.
Harker adopted the attitude of making a hit-list of collectors and attempting to destroy their work, their credibility and, in some cases, their characters.
As much as I was disturbed by the behavior of David Bearman at the time, I was with him 100% on this scurrilous behaviour
Bearman's attitude was echoed elsewhere throughout the folk world at the time; so much so that I heard Harker say one in Sheffield that he refused to speak in public because of the hostile reception his claims were getting.
And here we go again - same script, different actors, and this time apparently, a willingness to let this behaviour pass though on the nod.
The times they certainly are a-changing
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,guest jim carroll admirer
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 08:07 AM

Jim Carroll for prime minister

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 08:08 AM

Thanks for the links to the reviews. I am going to get this book and it is the 'Caught By The River' review that most re-assures me that I will actually read properly it rather than pick at it. In particular the reviewer's "Roud ... ... sets us on a wider excursion into a history all of its own, social, economic, political and artistic." and also his highlighting Roud's mention of "definitional expansion"

Neither of those get much priority in the other reviews or in the discussion here.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 09:30 AM

In the end, these claims actually boil down to suggestion that there is no such things as 'folk song'(JC) Absolute poppycock!

My research on fakesong predates Harker's book by quite a number of years, so wrong again! I too was a big critic of the book because of its political spin, (much like yours) but that was the major criticism of reviewers and CHRIS Bearman's critique was solely on what Dave had to say about Sharp. Unfortunately the excellent research carried out was overshadowed by the politics and the criticisms of Sharp, and Chris's stink kicked up. Most researchers who are left actually think that Dave & Chris were at opposite ends of a spectrum and both had their own agendas.

More anon.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 10:34 AM

Vic,
Many thanks for the 3 reviews. I actually enjoyed reading them all and found nothing to disagree with. In fact I haven't yet seen a bad review and don't think I'm likely to. The last one, the River one, I found excellent, particularly coming from someone with a wide grasp of the background of other genres. I loved the phrase 'hideous songbirds of the spoilt-boys-in-pain found on the internet today.'

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 11:35 AM

"My research on fakesong predates Harker's book by quite a number of years, so wrong again!"
Your research may predate it but your conclusions and your derogation of other researchers very much postdate it.
"Absolute poppycock!"
Really?
If you pich in every genre of song and if anybody can arbitrarily and unilaterally redefine it as takes their fancy, we have nothing left.
"because of its political spin, (much like yours) "
There you go again - anybody who contradicts you has an agenda
You really are something else Steve !
My conclusions were drawn from reading and practice and eventually from going and asking the remaining practitioners what they thought.
No doubt you'll come up with an 'agenda' for Mikeen, Tom Lenihan and Walter Pardon if this drags on long enough
You really don't like it up you, do you?
Your tendency to substitute personal insults for honest responses puts you in line for a place of honour on the B.S. threads
You have my arguments Steve - the crappy hacks, the ability of working people to make songs, the use of vernacular and trade terms, the identification of 'the folk' with the contents of their songs, and the total recognition by them as their own.
After a few feeble and contradictory on-the-spot excuses, you have now resorted to wild haymaker-swings at everybody who gets in your way.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 12:29 PM

No matter how you spin it it still doesn't make sense.

"You really don't like it up you, do you?"(JC) You really think your inane insults get to me? What makes you think that? The only evidence of that is that I'm still here.

"Your tendency to substitute personal insults for honest responses puts you in line for a place of honour on the B.S. threads."(JC) That's the funniest thing I've read in ages. Tell that to the many people you have insulted on Mudcat.

'Personal insults'. BTW I'm really holding back on those.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 12:33 PM

I have not grainsulted you here, neither

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 12:39 PM

?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 12:54 PM

Whoops
I have not gratuitously insulted you or anybody else on this forum - I tend to try and give as good as I get, you are case in point
Without any former rancour, even argument, you responded a point I put up by sweeping it aside as starry-eyed romanticism - that is when I first encountered your technique in dealing with something you didn't agree with
There followed a period of arrogant condescension and, when you found yourself unable to aoid the points I was making, a list of feeble excuses like "hack didn't really mean bad", or seagoing and farm-working hacks, or hard pressed broadside writers taking time out to study newspapers to familiarise themselves with vernacular terms or trade practices or nautical and farm equipment - all on past threads.
Then we had Child changing his mind about broadsides and realising they were not that bad after all.....
Finally, you insisted we take our differences off line where your poured vitriolic abuse and adequate displayed you ignorance and sometimes antipathy of folk songs.
This isn't scholarship Steve; it's the agenda driving that you accuse Sharp of - you appear to need working people never to have made songs - and you accuse me of having a political agenda!!
I am not surprised you find Harker's research excellent
Harker compiled a hit list of every researcher he could lay hands on, denigrated their work and insulted them as individuals - you seem to have learned well from his technique
I feel somewhat flattered to be included in your similar list along with Child and Sharp
I invite you once again to respond to my points - if you do, I have possibly been put on the right path, if you don't, you have made my point for me
Win-win as far as I'm concerned
Is this really how you think a serious researcher behaves?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 01:41 PM

Oh dear! As I said before and I will repeat as often as necessary, quote me accurately or not at all. All of the above bar one have been twisted and spun or taken well out of context. Some of the above points are actually the opposite of what I have said.

'Win-win' The game continues!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 02:32 PM

'Win-win' The game continues!
More like 'lose-lose' as clashing personalities start to overwhelm reasoned argument.
Just a few more comments of this nature and Joe Offer will be hovering with his mighty axe. You are both members; why not resort to Private Messages?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 02:46 PM

Fair enough
You refuse to respond on the grounds that it might harm your case
That'll do nicely - nobody can claim I haven't tried
At least it helps he decide where I should take my arguments from here
The niche thing about these forums is that once said, things stay said for the world and his brother to decide for themselves
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 02:57 PM

"The niche thing about these forums is that once said, things stay said for the world and his brother to decide for themselves". That works both ways.

To be honest I'm surprised Joe hasn't come along a lot earlier.

PMs, we've tried that. I'm surprised you didn't hear the explosions. Besides I can't imagine Jim being suppressed in that way. He likes his audience too much.

The only reason I've been tagging along is this is the best publicity for our case we've ever had. Thanks, Jim!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 02:59 PM

" likes his audience too much."
For Christ's sake Steve - is there no end to your childish and defensive personal abuse
Grow up, will you
Never mind - more for future use
Jim Carrol

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 03:08 PM

'childish and defensive personal abuse' as opposed to 'geriatric and aggressive personal abuse.@

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 03:12 PM

By the way, folks, this is really all friendly banter. A merry Christmas to all our contributors! Jim, have a good Christmas and see you in the New Year if we haven't been shut down by then.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 03:57 PM

Maybe the time has come to end this thread - and at the same time remind JIm C. that Steve Roud has written and had the book published - if you don't like the contents - get your own published...........

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 04:12 PM

Can I remind you all that Jim has seemingly not published anything on the origins and evolution of folk song and this forum is seemingly his only outlet. Please try to be a little more tolerant.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 05:16 PM

"Maybe the time has come to end this thread - and at the same time remind JIm C. that Steve Roud has written and had the book published - if you don't like the contents - get your own published...........

Tim Radford '
What a ridiculous comment, it is not necessary to have a book published to enable a person to hve an opinion.
Ihave had disagreements with Jim, but on this occasion Ithink he haa destroyed Steves arguments comprehensively.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 05:36 PM

I'm sure Jim will be delighted with that endorsement!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 07:26 PM

"'geriatric and aggressive personal abuse."
Ageist as well"
Everything I have said here has been directly related to what you have claimed - every single thing
There has been no personal abuse unless you believe my describing your be "childish " after your uncontrolled outbursts of temper
I have put my case as articulately and as clearly as I can and have asked you to respond - you refuse to do so
You have tainted and destroyed your own arguments with your behaviour here - far more than I could ever have dreamed of doing
If others wish to take these discussions further, I am happy to do so
"Can I remind you all that Jim has seemingly not published anything on the origins and evolution of folk song"
And now you reduce the discussion to a pathetic pissing competition.
"Please try to be a little more tolerant."
And patronising to the last
This thread and statements you have made on and off forum will stand as a permanent monument to your scholarship as far as I am concerned and no doubt resurface in future discussions wherever they occur.
if you don't like the contents - get your own published...........
I am appalled that somebody I thought I respected should resort to reducing this to a pathetic level of elitism
Shame on you Tim - I do hope you take a long spoon to that particular dinner party
Sadly
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 07:51 PM

"I'm sure Jim will be delighted with that endorsement!"
Is there any reason I shouldn't be?
I assume the exclamation mark was a typo!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 08:56 PM

Amid the personalities and the insults here, actual ideas and insights sometimes raise their heads. Though an American, I read and enjoyed Roud's book soon after it was published. Now it's time for Jim Carroll to drag himself away from Mudcat mud fights and write his own book, drawing on his own experience and understanding. I would read that volume as fast as I could get it into my hands, and I expect it would be a welcome and valuable contribution.

The thread, however, has run its course. The debate will (and should) continue, but a scholarly argument laid out at book length would surely be a far more productive forum.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Dec 17 - 04:56 AM

"Now it's time for Jim Carroll to drag himself away from Mudcat mud fights and write his own book,"
I doubt if that's going to happen Jerome - Too late in life and too much left to do

Our life has been spent recording singers and assembling as much of what they had to say as we could lay hands from other sources as we have been able
One of the greatest gaps in out knowledge of folk song 'The Voice of the People' has been the opinions of 'the Folk' themselves - though the history of research they have been treated as opinionless sources of songs and the songs have been treated as out-of-context artefacts - entertainment and little else - a Voice of the people with no voice!
Any possible solution to the enigmas that have been fought over here lie in what little may have been gathered and locked away in archives, or lying in manuscripts and old tapes.
It is this gap that allows any self appointed 'expert' to make a name for themselves with their outlandish theories.
I can't believe that, throughout the BBC five year campaigns, nobody ever 'talked' to the contributors and asked their opinions on the treasure trove we took from them.
This whole business has smacked of academic 'ivory towerism' from the beginning - an undoubted unchallenged expert in his field (Steve Roud), turning a centuries-old accepted view of folk song on its head (apparently without discussion) and re-defining it to include material that was made to sell to the folk rather than having been made by them to reflect their lives and opinions - nobody, however respected and talented has a right to do that.
Folk academia has created cliques and factions - it has even invented its own impenetrable language that puts their opinions out of reach of those not 'in the know'
I've already given my opinion on the price one has to pay for some of the published works
If we (as a bunch of human beings - The People) want to know what the TSF is thinking, we have to go to the mountain, Mohammed-like - no way to share knowledge on the 'people's music'

Throughout this argument I have been subjected to being talked down to because I choose not to be one of the inner circles – not a new experience
One author/academic (mentioned here) once told us that what we had to say after thirty years work with Travellers was wrong because she had studied the subject in college.
We entitled our article on Walter Pardon 'A Simple Countryman?’ having been told by a noted researcher that Walter "must have been “got at” to hold the opinions he did, because 'he was - " simple countryman'.
Even here we have strange comments about him "not being much of a pub singer" - based on the erroneous view that our folk songs were centred around the pubs.
The discussion here smacks of academic elitism - those who have published and those who haven't, and who has said nice things about what they claim - I was once offered a list of qualified people “who agree with me”, by an exponent of the 'broadside origins' theory, in substitute for rational arguments – (now he has thrown in my age as a factor of what I have to say)
Here the number of 'nice' reviews by largely unknown (to me) reviewers of Roud's book has taken the place of detailed discussion.
Any sense we are ever going to make out of folk song is going to come from a co-operative and intelligent (and above all, friendly) analysis of the songs themselves and an assessment of all past research - not the arrogant and often personal 'Dave Harkerism' that has re-surfaced here (though even Harker made a number of points well worth consideration).

One of the warmest feelings of achievement I have ever experienced was when Clare County Library accepted our collection, appointed two librarians to work on it and allowed us to give back to the Clare people the songs they had given to us - that's what research should mainly be about.
SONGS
MUSIC
Even this is only a partial achievement - there are masses of interviews their resources wouldn't allow them to include
Limerick University have accepted the offer of our library for the use of the students at their 'IRISH WORLD ACADEMY of MUSIC and DANCE'
http://www.irishworldacademy.ie/
and are discussing the idea of setting up a website to do a similar job on the rest of our collection
Ironically, if what Walter Pardon had to say about his songs is ever to see the light of day, it will be through a West of Ireland academic institution as there doesn't seem to be an outlet in Britain any more.

The 'Voice of the People' has long been a muted and limited one - now it seems to have been all-but silenced by being lumped in with and overpowered by that of the Music industry.
Folk songs were a way 'the folk' entertained themselves, but they were much, much more than that – they were and are essential part of their/our oral history - there are no other significant examples of this because it was always thought that 'ordinary people' had nothing to say for themselves and needed spokesmen to speak for them

Far from this discussion being over, I don't think it has even begun
It will take place in the friendly, respectful manner it needs to be, if I have anything to do with it, if not here, somewhere where people are prepared to listen and share ideas and not fly kites or just stand by and bow to the kite runners
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 20 Dec 17 - 07:14 AM

The focus in this thread on the single issue of who did or didn't compose what we have come to call 'traditional songs' obscures the width and depth of this book. It is much more than a single issue work and has many implications. It does not set out to rubbish the achievements of earlier researchers and credits the scholars whose work built the foundations of folk song study. Roud does regret instances amongst the pioneers' work where he can produce evidence that they brought a preconceived agenda to their work or where he can point to assumptions made on insufficent evidence, eg, Sharp writing Some Conclusions.... a relatively short time after hearing a traditional song sung for the first time.
The attitude towards only using 'evidence' in historical research is now the norm amongst modern academics not just in folk song studies.
The research involved in Roud's book is meticulous and has been made over four decades of deep interest in the subject. It is part of a very wide interest and knowledge in a whole range of popular musics. I know that he was surprised recently to be asked to deliver a series of lectures on the history of rock music to London-based college of an American university. He told me that he was amazed how little knowledge the students had in an aspect of a subject that they were majoring in.
Throughout the book he bemoans the lack of solid information currently available and calls for more and deeper research on the subject. I defy anyone to provide anything in the book to challenge the rigorous discipline on his fact-based approach. The widespread praise and admiration expressed in the reviews that I and others have posted or linked to here is fully justified.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Dec 17 - 07:44 AM

"The focus in this thread on the single issue of who did or didn't compose what we have come to call 'traditional songs' obscures the width and depth of this book."
The width and depth of the book calls into question the subject matter - folk song - and whether it exists apart for other genres of song
Until that is sorted out, it makes it impossible to make a fair assessment of the book
If we are talking about the music of the people we have to know what part the people created in producing that music
Roud spends a fair amount of space discussing glees, which owe more to Hndel than they do to the people
Music Hall is where they went to passively be entertained rather than to express themselves
The London singing Taverns, raised by Roud and Gardham, were, according to authority, Selenick, the haunts of middle class gentlemen, the broadsides were town based while our folk songs are mainly the probable creations, certainly entertainments or the rural working people.
For me, the secondary problem with Roud's book is that it is an excellent work marred by irrelevant clutter that helps obscure the real subject.
For me, the book is a welcome addition as an essential reference work (with qualifications)
What it lacks, for me, is the proselytizing zeal of Lloyd's book (for all its faults)
It also lacks the love and warmth that helped put a lifetime's worth of petrol in my tank
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Dec 17 - 03:35 PM

"If we (as a bunch of human beings - The People) want to know what the TSF is thinking, we have to go to the mountain, Mohammed-like - no way to share knowledge on the 'people's music' "(JC)

"Alternatively, you could make us all aware of what is taking place".(JC)17 Dec 2017 9.58

No problem. There are no closed doors. All meetings are open to allcomers and much of what we discuss is available on the TSF website which is where I presume you found my article based on one of the presentations some years ago. Martin Graebe the secretary frequently offers to send recordings of what has transpired out to members. Last time I looked JC was a member. (SG)

But just to be clear and for the uninitiated:
20 years ago Steve Roud and a few others of us got together and decided it would be a wise move to bring together all those people, academic or independent who were interested in folk song research to avoid duplication, share ideas, and promote understanding in the subject. The Traditional Song Forum was formed with 3 or 4 meetings a year spread out all over the country. (Dublin and Edinburgh have already been included, but Sheffield and London tend to have been used most). The membership of researchers from all over the world has gradually built up and we currently have about 250 members. Many of our members have produced books, articles, reviews, websites, indexes during this period and many of these are produced in co-operation with each other. Quite a number of our members have contributed to this very thread before they were put off by my and Jim's rantings.

Our full day meetings consist of in the mornings TSF business and a round robin of present members' latest projects and discussion. The afternoon consists of 4 or 5 presentations mostly by members but sometimes invited guests as well. The evening is often taken up with a singaround at a local hostelry.

Now for the last 10 years both Steve and I and others have given presentations on the relationship between urban commercial song and oral tradition so the subject is by no means a new one. Everyone who is in the TSF who looks at the website and follows the detailed notes (and recordings) posted by our very able secretary/webmaster Martin Graebe, or who attends our meetings cannot fail to have been acquainted with the views expressed on the origins of the songs. Curiously I can't remember in those 10 years anyone opposing the facts and opinions we have presented.

JC, if I'm reading this aright and you are offering your front room for one of our meetings I'll see what I can do. Unfortunately my passport needs renewing, but I can get that sorted.

In short...all of the information is out there. First stop, try our website at Tradsong.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Dec 17 - 03:36 PM

I should add, that's apart from all the books, articles, reviews etc we have had published.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 20 Dec 17 - 04:11 PM

Steve wrote -
try our website at Tradsong.

There have been problems with this website as this statement at its old location makes clear:-

This website has now been replaced by a newer version which you can find at

www.tradsong.online

Most of the content of this site has been transferred to this new site and the URL tradsong.org will be transferred to the new site when this site is closed.

We look forward to seeing you at our new address.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Dec 17 - 04:26 PM

Thanks, Vic.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 05:11 AM

"JC, if I'm reading this aright and you are offering your front room for one of our meetings"
How on earth would that help get the activities of TSF to the general public Steve?
As about as reasonable as suggesting poor poets made our folk songs
What is wrong with putting your activities up on your website in one form or another as debating topics and invite people to participate?
From the "not available" notice I got from Vic's link, that might be a problem at present
Your change of definition would have been an ideal place to throw open such a debate
I've always found that the best way to share ideas is to go out to people and not expect them to come to you.
"uninitiated:"
Interesting choice of word!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 05:58 AM

Jim said "How on earth would that help get the activities of TSF to the general public Steve?"

It's surely only a minority of the general public who have any interest in folk song at all, and a minority of the minority who might have any interest in the activities of the TSF.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 06:18 AM

"It's surely only a minority of the general public who have any interest in folk song at all"
That is because that is the attitude we have done nothing about Richard
The greatest failure of the revival was that we failed to get over the importance of folk song, not just fo the general public but to the world in general
One of the greatest problems has been that the exponents of folk song have failed to take their art seriously enough to demand and raise minimum standards
Now that has extended to turning the clubs into 'anything goes' venues where you might or might not come away having heard a folk song
If we don't take our art seriously we can't expect anybody else to.
I think the claims being made here are likely to worsen and confuse things rather than clarify them
AS far as those already involved, if revolutionary views such as these have been discussed elsewhere, they should have been publicied throughout the folk movement (or what's left of it) rather than having it sprung on us a a fait accompli in a tome that only folkies are going to acquire
Folk song, as far as I am concerned is, or should be a national treasure
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 06:33 AM

The link that I cut'n'paste from the old Tradsong website above has the usual "www" in it. Further investigation showed me that this was not needed.
This one works in Sussex. I hope that it works elsewhere -

http://tradsong.online/

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 06:37 AM

Thanks Vic
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 09:44 AM

'How on earth would that help get the activities of TSF to the general public Steve?'(JC)
Sorry, Jim. I misunderstood your request. As for general public access, as I stated earlier, all of our meetings and activities are open to everyone. Unfortunately our funds won't stretch to a massive advertising campaign with TV adverts etc., and there is an element of truth in what Richard has to say. Can you imagine the general public wanting to leave their TVs, i-pads, pap music to listen to what we have to offer? We do our best by running free concerts on a regular basis with good quality artists and organising a largely free folk festival.

'What is wrong with putting your activities up on your website in one form or another as debating topics and invite people to participate?' (JC) What a good idea! Perhaps you'd like to suggest it on our mediated public forum, 'Tradsong'.

'Uninitiated' (SG). Yes, I see what you mean. Thanks for not putting too much spin on it. Of course newcomers must stand on one leg and recite Tamlin backwards whilst dancing a morris jig.

'The greatest failure of the revival was that we failed to get over the importance of folk song, not just for the general public but to the world in general.'(JC) I have a considerable measure of agreement here. The old fogies like you and me failed to attract younger members when we had the chance. Some of us buried our heads in the sand and didn't read the writing on the wall and others buggered off to other climes. Perhaps our adherence to '54' put a lot of them off. There has been a certain measure of success achieved, however, by making folk music a little more like the sort of music that IS popular, no matter how unpalatable that might be to us.

'If we don't take our art seriously we can't expect anybody else to'.(JC) Quite, but not moving on is preventing academia taking our subject seriously. Looking at it in romantic terms is not going to help our cause. We need to be realistic and honest.(IMO)
'
I think the claims being made here are likely to worsen and confuse things rather than clarify them' (JC) Confuse who? British researchers seem quite happy with the way things are going. If not they need to speak up.

'sprung on us'(JC) We've been discussing this for quite some time now. Vic reckons 5 years. I gave you plenty of warning.

'Folk song, as far as I am concerned is, or should be a national treasure'. (JC) Absolutely! Which is perhaps why in the last 15 years the BL has placed many audio collections online, the EFDSS has had hundreds of thousands of pounds for placing as many of the mss online, the Carpenter collection has been funded, etc.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 09:55 AM

That's apart from the many broadside collections placed online. Somebody must value them, even if they are doggerel dunghills as you claim!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 10:27 AM

"as I stated earlier, all of our meetings and activities are open to everyone. "
If they happen to live in the vicinity they take place
It doesn't take massive funding to alert people involved of what you are doing
A quick glance at the archive doesn't leave me to believe thare has been deep and widespread discussions on the turnaround in our understanding of what folk song is
The internet has opened up undreamed of opportunities to share ideas - no evidence this has happened, plenty of evidence ot the tearing up pf past scholarship and the denigration of our greatest scholars - that disturbs me deeply
How about the mountain coming to Mohammed fore a change?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 10:30 AM

"in the last 15 years the BL has placed many audio collections online, the EFDSS has had hundreds of thousands of pounds for placing as many of the mss online, the Carpenter collection has been funded, etc."

If we have failed in selling our music to the general public, then it is not for want of many of us trying, but the fashion has become for music to be presented in a glitzy showbiz way and classical, folk and jazz musicians find it difficult to go along with this. I hate what Parisian Afro-Beat has done to the way traditional African music is presented in Europe but I can see that poor immigrant musicians also want to carve a career for themselves to give them some sort of financial security. They cannot afford to do otherwise.
The job of the older enthusiasts now must be to make the performances that they enthuse over accessible in an attractive way on the internet. Fortunately, we already seem to be ahead of the game with what EFDSS and BL have done in England, ITMA in Ireland and Tobar an Dualchais in Scotland.
The latest trend is for archives of regional/area/county basis to be extended and brought to be the attention of local historians, teachers looking for aspects of their own locality for topics, librarians etc. Archives of County Clare Libraries and the Sussex Traditions project have already been mentioned in this thread, But pioneering local work was undertaken in South Yorkshire and much has been achieved in Devon by the Wren Project and in Gloucestershire. Pete Haywood was speaking to me about starting something similar for South-East Scotland and there are probably others that don't come to mind at the moment.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 10:57 AM

'tearing up of past scholarship and the denigration of our greatest scholars' (JC) This IS a gross exaggeration and I won't let it pass no matter how many times you spin it. Every time anyone mentions the failings of past scholars they go out of the way to state how overwhelmingly they respect the great bulk of their work. They are not gods or saints to be worshipped religiously. I don't know anyone who does not have the greatest respect and admiration for Professor Child's work. There are flaws which he acknowledged himself, but these pale into insignificance alongside the bulk of his work. This religious worship is the biggest thing preventing our research being taken seriously. It is a relief that seemingly only you are promoting this.

'If they happen to live in the vicinity they take place'(JC)
What had you in mind, Jim? We hold our meetings all over the country, and as I stated, we have been to Dublin and Edinburgh. We all have limitations on our time. Some of our members are still working. Others can't afford to go to every meeting, travelling round the country. A nice wish list but impractical.

'How about the mountain coming to Mohammed for a change?'(JC) Is Mohammed going to supply a room, refreshments and some travelling expenses? Otherwise we have to stick with the very generous people who offer the hospitality of their institutes and universities.

'It doesn't take massive funding to alert people involved of what you are doing'(JC). EFDSS website, Our own website, Mudcat, our own Forum, folk magazines. Perhaps you're volunteering to pay for an advert in the Sun, or the Irish Times. I'll send you a personal email if you like keeping you up-to-date as to where and when the meetings are.

As I stated, at a local level we go into schools and other institutions to spread the word, run free concerts, workshops and numerous other little ways of spreading the word. I'm sure you do all this in Ireland, but we are not sitting on our arses as you imply.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 11:15 AM

"Somebody must value them, even if they are doggerel dunghills as you claim!"
Meant to respond to this Steve
You may write this on a sheet of paper, wrap it around a brick and throw it through my window, if the fancy takes you but it doesn't alter one iota the fact that they are the doggerel dunghills Child described that Child described
Remind me of how many copies of The Birdie Song or Viva Espana were sold
Broadsides have their own value as 'Curiosities of Street Literature' as does the Tabloid Press - a gauge of the times as seen through the eyes of a hack
I spent years trawling the collections for singing material and found little; the Critics plundered what was available for their themed albums and found some, but criously, the ones they used soon disappeared from their repertoires because, like all pop songs, they were one dimensional and came with a shelf-life.
I have one in my repertoire which I have sung for half a century and which still pleases me because I worked hard on it to remove the sharp corners and the clumsy verse and a good friend put an excellent tune to it - I'm referring to 'The Ranter Parson and the Cunning Farmer's Wife'
There was enough in the original Madden broadside to suggest it might once have been part of the two-way traffic between tradition and broadside - country humour is very different that that of the big city.
I find it significant that the one collectd by Vaughan Williams in East Anglia is the only oral tradition version.
The broadside writers were poor poets the folk poets were not - they wrote (and sang) as they spoke
"it is not for want of many of us trying, "
I'm fully aware of that Vic, and those of you who still carry the banner have my deepest respect
It was the lack of respect for the songs and the failure to apply standards that killed the scene, not the lack of effort and enthusiasm of the work-horses.
I'm delighted that people like Pete and Paul Wilson are taking up the challenge, especially in areas with such a rich history, but we all need to get our act together and singing from the same hymn-sheet if we are going to get anywhere.
Thisrty odd years ago Irish music appeared to have no future and was referred to as 'diddly-di music' - now youngsters with skills challenging those of the greats are flooding onto the scene
The fact that a small number of people got together and built a foundation based on the older styles and music for what was a rapidly disappearing culture, has guaranteed a future of at least two generations for Irish traditional music
Tee youngsters can take the music wherever they wish (and they do) but there is now a home base to return to to remind them what it's all about
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 11:31 AM

We have AGREED with you and Professor Child on numerous occasions that the bulk of the material printed on broadsides is of no interest to folksong researchers except for comparison perhaps. But to taint the whole genre with this attitude is actually detrimental to our cause. To criticise the whole of any genre in this way is extremely prejudiced and contains not a vestige of scholarship. As I've stated on this thread before, by and large I agree with Child about the grubbing through mountains of this stuff. I've been there. The 'moderate jewel' reference I don't agree with, but that's a matter of opinion not fact. What is a fact is that Child included a whole section on ballads from broadsides mostly that show not a vestige of oral tradition.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 01:04 PM

“We have AGREED with you”
No you have not – you have gone around in circles, first thy were misjudges artists who were peorducing good songs (a constant theme with your claims that they must be good because so many people bought them) to a collaborative school of good ones, to hacks with enough time on their hands to research their songs in the newspapers, to seagoing and land-labouring hacks who had lived the conditions described in their songs, and now to “tainting the whole genre” presumably by my targeting a few bad ones
There is no consistency to your claims.
They were notoriously bad writers working under pressure to churn out their songs – and doesn’t their output show the conditions and the lack of skill
In comparison to the oral tradition, even in its dying years, it was conveyor belt work compared to the creations of craftspeople – or people just making songs on what was going on around them on a daily basis.
In order for deskbound townies to have produced our folksongs they would have had the imagination, writing skills and time displayed by Hardy, or Dickens or Melville, with the knowledge of a Wimberly, the psychological insight of a Freud and the knowledge of social history of Eystyn Evans or George Ewart Evans
The continuity of utterance of our folk songs, the uses of commonplaces and incremental repetition, et all, suggests a socially common source which would need a team of students working in unison to achieve – you have suggested that.
We’ve already discussed the familiarity and insider knowledge contained in our folk songs and got nowhere.
The “I know a folk song when I here one” definition is as reliable as any at one level to realise that hacks could not possible have made them
You need to approach and answer all these anomalies before yo can begin to make such claims as you have made.   
We have had an indication of a creative oral tradition totally independent of literary influences dating back one thousand two hundred years in these islands – what happened to it?
Why did Mrs Laidlaw do her conkers when Scott started writing her songs down if they came from print in the first place – was she as starry eyed naïve you claim Child and Maidment (and me) were to believe her songs came from her own people?
Child went to the Broadsides to dredge up every example of ballads he could – he chose them because of what they were – ballads, not because he believed they were good
He is to be admired for that – hope he wore protective clothing
Do I believe ‘Seventeen Come Sunday’ or ‘Banks of the Sweet Primroses’ came from the same school as the ‘Cat’s Meat Man’, or ‘Tarpauling Jacket’ or ‘Self Destruction of a Female by Throwing Herself of the Monument’?
I most certainly do not – why do you?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 01:41 PM

'We have AGREED with you'
I assume that's the 'Royal' we, by the way
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 02:10 PM

600?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 02:11 PM

If you're slipping back into sarcasm mode I'll ignore you.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 02:22 PM

Jim,
All of these points have been answered by other people on this very thread. Thanks for the publicity and have a happy Christmas!

BTW, just for the record, my inane sarcasm over the last 100 or so postings was solely to give you a bit of your own medicine, but water off a duck's back.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 02:37 PM

"All of these points have been answered by other people on this very thread."
No they have nooot - you gave a few feeble excuses but nobody else lowered themselves to join them - please do not suggest that they did
"inane sarcasm "
That is probably the most blatantly dishonest piece of back-pedalling anybody has ever attempted to explain their bad behaviour
Your anger and resentment at being challenged was palpable and it even spilled over into your PM
"If you're slipping back into sarcasm mode I'll ignore you."
So you have reserved "inane sarcasm" for your own use
Elitism rules OK
I think you've remained in the corner you painted yourself into for long enough - time to scramble out the window
"inane sarcasm" " - Oh, you've already decided to do that
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 03:01 PM

You do realise, of course, that if I took your "inane humour' excuse seriously (which I don't for one minute), it would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are totally incapable of taking this subject seriously - it displays contempt for the subject in had and for those involved in it
You might to try a defence of 'temporary insanity' - that's been known to work in situations like this
Think we're finished here, don't you
Don't lose too much sleep over Christmas
By the way
"other people"
You are the only one ever to offer excuses for you theory - sadly, everybody else has remained (somewhat bemused, no doubt) bystanders.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 04:21 PM

I think Jim has made his argument very convincingly Steve has not

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,CJ
Date: 21 Dec 17 - 07:00 PM

As ever, Dick.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 31 Dec 17 - 08:08 AM

Just when you all thought (hoped?) that discussion of what the "folk" did or didn't create had fizzled out, back I come with some quotations of what one of the early collectors thought. These are in the Folk Song Journal for 2016, my copy of which got buried in a heap when I was tidying up, and emerged only yesterday.

On page 29, in Alice Little's paper, are two quotations from Anne Gilchrist about the singer William Bolton (from Journal of the Folk-Song Society 2.4 and 5.2).

In 1906 she said that his singing "includes some interesting and suggestive examples of the way in which, at times, composed tunes of a century or two centuries ago have become simplified and translated, as it were, into the native musical dialect of the untutored singer".

But then 'in 1915, Gilchrist wrote of the same singer that, because on this occasion he had added some verses that were "less artless than the remainder of this genuine if doggerel production of some sailor bard, I have omitted them, in order to maintain its character." '

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 31 Dec 17 - 10:08 AM

Back on topic, I've just finished reading the book and thought it excellent. Very much recommended.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 31 Dec 17 - 10:36 AM

I've just started reading another of Steve's (along with David Atkinson) books of this year 'Street Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century'. Again he is very thorough in his research, using many contemporary accounts, but also very careful in allowing others to draw the conclusions. He is also quite critical of some earlier scholars who have sometimes made statements based on very little evidence. The book is a collection of papers and is published by Cambridge Scholars.

Haven't seen a review yet.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 31 Dec 17 - 11:38 AM

"Back on topic"
Was it ever off it?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 01 Jan 18 - 05:39 PM

The topic has certainly strayed from the book Folk Song in England to the nature of folk (and to some extent other kinds of) song in England (and to some extent Scotland and Ireland). But I think straying to that extent is reasonable and we have had some interesting discussion.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 05:09 AM

The book is based on an entirely new concept of folk music and requires that we reject the whole basis of our former understanding of the genre, summed up beautifully in the 'afyetrword'
"Onve we have jettisoned the idea that it is the origin which makes it folk"
If we can't discuss that change we have to accept it without challenge - I am not prepared to do that
For me, the main impressive aspect of the book is its size; it says little about the folk songs that have been studied over the last century or so, which end up being demoted to pop songs.
In attacking what he describes misleadingly as "Maxists", he makes his own stance a political one - from the right - the approach is a political one.
There are some stunning ommissions
The fact that he has chosen to include no full songs (the lack of a discography has already been mentioned), means that it is aimed at those who are already involved in the subject - it is a polemic rather than an analysis.
The singers that were are lucky to have come into contact with over that last half century or so are so badly represented as to be written out of the subject
Sam Larner - mentioned in passing, Walter Pardon, mentioned in passing.
Harry Cox is probably given the most attention, though he is not particulary well dealt with - one of the few songs with full texts is Harry's somewhat pastische, 'Colin and Phoebe' - representative of a poorly composed piece rather than a streamilned folk song
Phil Tanner is totally ignored - I know he was Welsh, but his repertoire of English folk songs makes him an important figure in the genre (unless you happen to nbe an extreme Little Englander)
Roud lists his intentions thus
While individual song histories are noted in passing , the book is more concerned with who sang what , where, when and how, rather than the songs themselves (Introduction p. 4)
Why not WHY the songs were sung?
There is a great deal of available recorded material of Harry, Sam and Walter talking about themselves and their songs, other than how they sand them - yet once again, the singers voice is omitted from the discussion, as it always has been.
Despite claims to the contrary, it has been our experience that singers compartmentalised their songs and music in the way everybody does.
The songs in the book are discussed out of the context they raise in their subject matter
What Roud describes as an agenda by other researchers, particularly Sharp, Lloyd, and MacColl, was an attempt to put the songs into a social context - here they are dealt with as a commercial product manufactured for the entertainment of the people
Roud (along with Steve Gardham here) has politicised the subject by privatising folk songs.
I hope we can discuss this without the former rancour and condescension - let's see
Jim Carroll


   
k

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 07:18 AM

Jim, I think you are being a bit dogmatic there.

Steve Roud doesn't assert for no reason that we can't categorise folk song in terms of its origin: he makes a lengthy and well argued case for this position. There is, he says, not enough evidence to support the idea that there is a large corpus of songs which originated within the singing tradition rather than in the music halls or pleasure gardens. That's not a political judgement, it's an empirical one.

He clearly feels motivated to defend the early folk song collectors from what he sees as the unfair and anachronistic criticisms levelled by people like David Harker. Not having read Harker I can't say whether Roud's presentation of his ideas is fair, but I would agree that we owe people like Baring-Gould and Sharp an immense debt, and that their work should not be written off just because it doesn't meet the ideals we would have if we were doing the same thing today. I don't think Roud comes across as right-wing in any way. Indeed at one point he makes a slightly waspish comment about right-wing thought historically not being intellectual.

As you say, the book is huge already. I can totally see why he didn't feel the need to extend it further by adding detailed discussion of individual songs, though I agree a discography would be nice.

I don't really understand your accusation that he deals with folk songs as "a commercial product manufactured for the entertainment of the people". Where there is evidence that folk songs originated in other musical contexts, he says so; and his discussion of the other musical milieus that were current from the 16th century onwards is fascinating and often eye-opening.

If I have a criticism it's that Roud is clearly not a musicologist, and so the chapters on the music by Julia Bishop feel a bit 'bolted on' rather than fully integrated into the book. There's no discussion for instance of the forms of music notation that have been available through the years, or how widespread musical literacy was.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 08:34 AM

" There is, he says, not enough evidence to support the idea that there is a large corpus of songs which originated within the singing tradition rather than in the music halls or pleasure gardens. "
He and Gardaham have also said that there is not enough evidence to indicate where the songs came from but have opted for the 'commercial' explanation based on the fact that most of them appeared in print
Without being able to examine the songs next to these conclusions it it impossible to move on - there are no texts enabling us to do so and no discography in order for those coming to the genre anew to test the validity of Roud's claims (conveniently maybe?).
If we haven't got the actual background information, we need to do so by examining the texts or the sung versions.
That's not dogmatism, it's common sense
A book on folksong that excludes forlsongs is nonsense - like Bronson's "when is a ballad not a ballad" conundrum - when it has no tune
Far from defending the collectors he undermines and eventually rejects the conclusions they arrived at
His is Harker's iron fist in a velvet glove.
"a commercial product manufactured for the entertainment of the people".
The evidence has been here from day one - Steve Gardahm said this in the early days of our arguments in more or less those words
He went on to equate folk song with the output of today's music industry.
The two Steve's biggest crime, as far as I'm concerned is that they are attempting to rob folk song of its uniqueness - Gardam has ecxtended that to tales, dance, music lore... leaving the people with only having ever actually artistically created cave-paintings and scrimshaw, and little else
How political is that?
As far as the music is concerned, that requires a discussion as to how the singers regarded it before you approach it in its own righT
Every single traditional singer we have asked has said that they regard their songs as narratives with tunes attached - the words were always more important than the tunes
Where the singers were unable to retain the tunes they selected one that fitted - the extent of choice they had depended on the health of the various local traditions.
The same with the texts - if they failed to remember a bit, they filled in the gap from their own imagination
David Buchan in 'The Ballad and the Folk' probably overstated it, bu he had it certainly partly right
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 09:30 AM

Well, this is why your stance seems to me dogmatic. The Steves are content to draw what limited conclusions they can from the available external evidence, and beyond that, they conclude that we don't have enough information to go on. In most cases there simply isn't any external evidence to decide whether a song pre-dates the oldest known printed version, and by how much, so they are content to leave the question there.

By contrast, you seem to be suggesting that in the absence of evidence, it's legitimate to simply assume an ancient and/or unique origin for folk songs that is distinct from printed sources. That is the step that strikes me as dogmatic.

I'm not quite sure why you think that Steve Roud's approach devalues folk song, or denies "the people" any creativity. It is certainly a travesty of his argument to say he thinks that folk song is "a commercial product manufactured for the entertainment of the people", as though there was a separate class of creators who simply imposed their output on the wider populace. Surely, all sorts of different people have been involved in the creation and transmission of different songs. Why do you feel the need to lump them together in crude classes like that? Why assume that there is a single mechanism behind the creation of folk song?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 09:50 AM

By contrast, you seem to be suggesting that in the absence of evidence, it's legitimate to simply assume an ancient and/or unique origin for folk songs that is distinct from printed sources. That is the step that strikes me as dogmatic.


Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 09:58 AM

"it's legitimate to simply assume an ancient and/or unique origin for folk songs that is distinct from printed sources. "
I assume nothing R
I believe that the only way to arrive at a conclusion lies in assessing what information we do have and bringing it together
The most important source has always been neglected - the singers themselves, but having said that, we do have a little from them and there is possibly more yet uncovered.
Roud and Gardham have discounted that information by turning the singers into customers rather than creative artists using their art to comment on their lives.
This is how Steve Gardham summed up folk songs in an earlier argument

Subject: RE: 'Historical' Ballads
From: Steve Gardham - PM
Date: 19 Apr 11 - 05:14 PM
"Yes, it certainly does place them on the same level as any pop songs churned out by today's music industry. They were the equivalent of POP songs when they hit the streets, and those that came out of the theatres and pleasure gardens and glee clubs and cellars in the towns were also pop songs. They only became folk songs when the folk started singing them. "
It really doesn't get more unequivocal that that - money rules OK
The two Steves views on this are inoperable, though Roud is far less arrogant and patronising in his declarations
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 10:03 AM

Incidentally, that quoted posting of Steve G's began
"You're now changing my 95% into 100%, Jim."
That wipes out the possibility that 'the folk' ever created a single folk song
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 10:19 AM

I think it is universally regretted that the early collectors did not gather more information about their singers, and I'm sure all Steves concerned would agree with that.

The little recorded info I know of suggest that the singers often had strong views as to how the material should be sung, but not that they saw themselves as creators or originators of that material, or even as consciously altering it.

As regards later singers, I'd love to see any evidence you have that bears on the origins of their material. Bob Copper's autobiography for instance does not suggest that he saw himself primarily as a "creative artist using art to comment on his life".

As I understand it there is a fairly large number of songs that have been collected from oral sources that can be definitely traced to origins in the music halls or pleasure gardens. Are you saying that those are therefore not folk songs? Does that not make the 'folk' status of any song precarious and contingent? That a folk song is only a folk song until we discover that it started life as a composed piece?

Many of the early collectors comment that they themselves had to filter out what they saw as genuine folk songs from material that they knew to have originated as composed songs -- they were all of a piece to the singers themselves.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 11:23 AM

10.03
Please make sure your postings make some sort of sense. How can we respond otherwise?

95% considered opinion based on a lifetime's research.
100%?????????????

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 11:27 AM

"but not that they saw themselves as creators or originators of that material, or even as consciously altering it.
Something we don't knw, but what we do know is that singers embraced the songs as theirs - Norfolk, The West Country, Yorkshire, Irish, Scots.... no matter where they originated
The sigers identified with the songs in the way no pop fan can ever do (even if they had time to, given the mayfly-length existence of most of their songs
Examine the songs (which Roud doesn't and doesn't allow us to) and you'll find that they embrace various aspects of the communities in which they were sung
The poaching songs, for instance, appear to be a direct product of the Poaching Wars that began in 1760 and didn't finish till the outbreak of World War One
These were the direct result of the ongoing seizures of land, the most avaricious of which took place from the late eighteenth and throughout the 19th centuries
The songs dealt with the effects of no longer being able to take game to feed poor families - an insider view of the times
The same with the transportation ballads - a reflection of the opposition to mechanisation of agriculture, the attempts to set up trades unions and the rise in poverty brought about by the Industrial Revolution.
Songs of socal misalliance and parental opposition are pictures of the centuries old practice of using daughters to improve the fortunes of ambitious families by marrying them off to wealthy landowners - one of the finest examples of this is to be foung in the ballad 'Tiftie's Annie'
Harry Cox had much to say about this aspect of the songs which is why I believe he and others were disgracefully ignored in Roud's book.
I never get tired of saying that I I wanted to know the details of historical events I would go to the history books - if I wanted to know how the people at the time felt about it, I would go to the folk songs
For me, MacColl's statement, which was dismissed as dewy-eyed romanticism by Steve Gardham, says everything that needs to be said about the origins of our folk songs
"Well, there they are, the songs of our people. Some of them have been centuries in the making, some of them undoubtedly were born on the broadside presses. Some have the marvellous perfection of stones shaped by the sea's movement. Others are as brash as a cup-final crowd. They were made by professional bards and by unknown poets at the plough-stilts and the handloom. They are tender, harsh,, passionate, ironical, simple, profound.... as varied, indeed, as the landscape of this island.
We are indebted to the Harry Coxes and Phil Tanners, to Colm Keane and Maggie MacDonagh, to Belle Stewart and Jessie Murray and to all the sweet and raucous unknown singers who have helped to carry our people's songs across the centuries"
There is nothing arrogant or dogmatic in that statement - on the contrary, it embraces all possibilities and it represents the views held by most researchers down the ages.
In order to have had the insight to have written our folk songs, outsiders like the broadside hacks would have needed to possess the skills of a Dickens, or a Steinbeck, or a Melville
As it was, they were no more than bad poets working to meet a deadline.
Someone mentioned 'instinct' earlier, not a reliable definitive way to define folk song, but it has to play a major part in what we do.
I've been around the scene long enough to think I can recognise a folk song when I hear one, even though I might not have heard it before.
I think I can recognise a broadside, or a music-hall song, or a Victorian Parlour ballad.... in the same way
What is being ignored in all of this is so could the older singers, though they may not have used the same terminology
The two constants of thirty years of collecting is that the singers believed their traditional songs to be realistic - they viewed them visually as something that might have happened
The other is that they regarded them as their own, not something they had purchased at a 19th century W. H. Smith
Walter Pardon filled several tapes of these opinions - he hardly got a mention in 'Folk Songs in England' (as seen by Steve Roud)
Pity
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 11:35 AM

"Subject: RE: 'Historical' Ballads
From: Steve Gardham - PM
Date: 19 Apr 11 - 05:14 PM "
"You're now changing my 95% into 100%, Jim."
By your own words, so shall ye be judged Steve
"lifetime's research"
You can repeat this as often as you like, just as you can and have told us who supports you, but unless you can make sense of your arguments, it doesn't matter how long you've been at it and who agrees with you - is still does not hold water.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 11:41 AM

"10.03"
???
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 12:10 PM

You are making a lot of sweeping generalisations there. No-one is denying that there are some songs that are ancient, or which appear to have originated outside any of the main commercial spheres; but the number of cases where there is actual evidence of this is very small, and that is the point that is at issue.

On what basis do you characterise the writers of broadsides as outsiders? They belonged to their times just as much as everyone else. I don't understand at all why you think they couldn't have written these songs, or at least the original texts from which the songs developed. Nor do I understand why you think a song must originate within the singing community in order to belong to that community. Nor why you think that 'realism' can only be achieved in this way. Surely it is just as plausible to suppose that of the thousands of new songs composed each year, a small number happened to possess the right attributes -- be that realism, singability, luck or whatever -- to ensure their survival within the singing community.

Also I think we need to be careful about drawing parallels with the singing tradition outside England. The existence or otherwise of a ballad tradition in Scotland (where Tiftie's Annie originates) doesn't allow us to make assumptions about what took place in Devon or Sussex.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 12:51 PM

I am making no generalisations whatever and I ma not talking about ancient songs
Our actual knowledge of what we know of the oral tradition is confined to what was collected by Sharp and heis colleges, and a little earlier from Baring Gould and even then, little was collected by way of information and    opinions of the singers (Roud points that out)
We have little else other than an examination of the contents of the songs - my points on the social contents are confined to the 19th century, when the songs that were collected then were possibly made.
Some features of the songs date back many centuries and remain unchanged, particularly the social misalliance and arranged marriage songs.
"On what basis do you characterise the writers of broadsides as outsiders?"
The folk songs we are dealing with are largely rural (a constant description of them ahs been "Country Songs", and those of small communities based around mining and textiles, alongside sea and military songs.   
Unless you are suggesting (as Steve Gardham has), that the hacks worked on the land or served at sea, etc., they were desk-bound, Urban based outsiders.
It is infinitely more sensible to think that the folk songs that reached the broadside presses were brought back in skeletal form by packmen, or gathered from visiting countrymen, or soldiers embarking for foreign service, or sailors in port.
Seven Dials was within pissing distance of Covent Garden, where farmers wiould come to sell their produce and Smithfield where country livestock would be brought for sale - the docks were well within walking distance
Yet we are told that it was the desk-jockeys who created the realistic pictures that the songs presented
Sure they did!!!
It really boils down to this
If you accept that 'ordinary' people were capable of making songs there is no reason on earth to suggest that they didn't create our folk songs
You need to remember that we are viewing the dying embers of a tradition, and a miniscule part of it at that, limited to where the collectors worked,
This is why I suggest we need to look elsewhere in these islands for other explanations
We worked in with Irish singers - the rural population lost their tradition in the 1950s, so our singers were a part of a living one - the Travellers had a creative oral tradition up to the point where they acquired portable televisions in the mid 1970s
We spent a great deal of time recording our singers talking about how songs worked within their communities
One of our most important findings was of the large repertoire of songs that had been made locally during the lifetimes of the singers - on every subject under the sun - on local railways, maritime disasters, emigration, evictions, land protests, national ist warfare, murders, drunken nights out... all operating side by side with centuries old ballads and songs and obviously having been used to make new songs
The Scots had a similar situation going for them, particularly in the bothies
Either the English people did the same ot they were far less creative and imaginative than their neighbors
You decide
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 02:08 PM

Hmmm.

Well, for one thing, I actually don't think that such internal evidence as there is supports your conclusion. At the very least the picture is much more complex than you make out.

If the songs sung in rural communites were made within those communities, why do they only rarely contain information that would be limited to those communities, such as detail about farming practices of the time? Why do so many of them present rural life as a pastoral idyll, rather than a never-ending cycle of backbreaking hard labour? Inasmuch as it's possible to extrapolate from the lyrical content of rural songs, an origin in the pleasure gardens actually seems more plausible for most of them than the idea that they were written to reflect the realities of life in rural communities. Because, as far as I know, many of them don't.

As far as I'm aware relatively little is known about the lives of most broadside writers. It's a massive presumption to assume that they were 'desk-bound urban outsiders'. I'm not even convinced that that is a category that can meaningfully be applied to anyone in the 19th Century. Was Dickens a 'desk-bound urban outsider'? Or Conrad?

No doubt there are some similarities between the English tradition and the Scots and Irish traditions, but there are also obvious differences. And again, I don't know that all the evidence supports your ideas. The ballad tradition in Scotland and Ireland is both oral and literary. Some well-known Scots ballads are of obscure origin, others were composed by well-known literary figures, some are disputed.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 03:02 PM

"I actually don't think that such internal evidence as there is supports your conclusion."
Why?
I've given you some examples - would you like some more?
"why do they only rarely contain information that would be limited to those communities, "
For the same reason they were missed in Ireland - collectors had a preconception of what a folk song was and went out to find songs that fitted what had gone before
THey sked for "old songs" yet the local songs didn't fit that description because many were recently made
Sharp actually wrote about not taking down local songs in some cases
Many of these songs, served as the folk voice for a short period and died when the memory of the events died
If you want some examples of Irish songs that were made locally try The Bobbed Hair or The Quilty Burning or The Leon or The Broadford Lads or Dudley Lee the Blackleg... or around a couple of dozen others HERE
This is one we missed putting up

That Cold Man by Night.   Martin Long, Tooreen, Inagh, Recorded July 1975 at Willie Clancy Summer School
The practice of young women being pressurised or even forced into arranged marriages of convenience to older men has inspired many songs throughout these islands; sometimes depicting the tragedy or resigned bitterness of the situation the woman finds herself in, but occasionally, as with this one, open defiance, with a touch of humour.
This appears to be a locally-made song; we have been unable to find another example of it outside Clare.
Particularly interesting is the description of the visit to the matchmaker (the “learned man”) and the celebratory ceremony to seal the ‘made match’.

I am a handsome comely maid; my age is scarce eighteen,
I am the only daughter of a farmer near Crusheen,
‘Tis married I intend to be before its winning daylight,
Oh, my father wants me to get wed to a cold man by night.

This man being old, as I am told, his years are sixty-four,
I really mean to slight him, for he being wed before,
His common shoes are always loose, and his clothes don’t fit him right,
Oh I don’t intend the wife to be of that cold man by night.

The very next day without delay they all rode into town,
To a learned man they quickly ran the contract to pin down;
Into an inn they did call in to whet their whistles nigh,
In hope that I would live and die with that cold man by night.

My father came, I did him blame and thus to him did say,
“Oh father dear, you acted queer in what you done today,
In the Shannon deep I’ll go and sleep, before the mornings light,
Before I’ll agree the wife to be of that cold man by night”.

“Oh daughter dear, don’t say no more, or be a foolish lass,
For he has a house and four good cows, and a sporting fine black ass,
He has a handsome feather bed where ye may rest by night,
So change your life and be the wife of that cold man by night”.

“Oh father dear, don’t say no more, for I’ll tell you the reason why,
Before I’ll agree the wife to be, I’d first lay down and die,
In the Shannon deep I’ll go and sleep before the mornings light,
Before I’ll consent to be content with that cold man by night.

My match is broke, without a joke, I’ll marry if I can,
Before (???) is over I’ll have a nice young man,
That will take me in his arms in a cold and frosty night,
And some other dame might do the same with that cold man by night.

It's a massive presumption to assume that they were 'desk-bound urban outsiders'"
It most certainly is not - it's a well documented fact, including in Hindleys Hindley in teh Catnach biography and Leslie Shepherd's books on the subject
Vic has described the pressure they worked under quite adequately
Beside the point anyway - they were hackneyed poets (Hacks) and their output is dry, brittle chalk to the rich-tasting cheese of folk poetry
If you want to spell out what differences have made Ireland capable of folk poetry and England incapable, please do
Alluding to them doesn't work in debates such as this
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 03:59 PM

"For the same reason they were missed in Ireland - collectors had a preconception of what a folk song was and went out to find songs that fitted what had gone before
THey sked for "old songs" yet the local songs didn't fit that description because many were recently made"

But we aren't talking about the songs that weren't collected, because we don't know about them! We're talking about the songs that *were* collected. For better or worse, that is all that we have left of the English oral tradition. That does include a number of songs that have indications of local manufacture -- 'Horkstow Grange' would be a good example perhaps. But those seem to be in a minority.

I am not convinced by the argument that the early collectors systematically overlooked 'recently made' songs, or that they only collected rural songs that expressed an Arcadian perspective and ignored anything that dealt with the harsh realities of life. They were certainly selective but in the main their aim was to rule out songs they already knew to be composed by people like Dibdin. And as for the singers, I don't recall Bob Copper talking about generating new songs in response to local events, but I don't know what, if anything, Pardon or Cox or Larner had to say on the matter.

I'm a bit baffled by this argument that the output of the 'broadside hacks' is intrinsically and completely different from what any other semi-educated person of the time might have written. Likewise the idea that they were all birds of a feather and not a disparate collection of individuals who probably came from a variety of different backgrounds.

Also, one minute you are suggesting that broadsides were written by cloth-eared hacks whose work is instantly distinguishable from genuine 'folk poetry', but the next minute you're arguing that those same hacks simply wrote down the 'realistic pictures' that were actually created by the rural folks who came to Covent Garden market. Both things can't be true, surely?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 05:23 PM

I wonder if Steve Gardham could help me out with this one -

I am currently working on a review of Vaughan Williams in Norfolk: Volume 2. This is a fascinating and very informative CD-Rom recently released on the 'Musical Traditions' label (MTCD255) and covers just about all aspects of this part of this important collection. Volume 2 covers The 1908-11 collection from the Broads & South.
It seems that Vaughan Williams collected 93 folk songs in this part of the county in these years. We know that VW was a stickler for going for what he saw as the genuine article. A quick glance through the very detailed Index suggests that 91 of them can be sourced to Broadside or Chapbook.

Does Steve think that he could work the percentage of the songs that were printed in this way for me?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 07:29 PM

That percentage would be somewhat higher than my 89% which is the percentage of the general corpus (English) that form the earliest extant version.

'sourced to Broadside or Chapbook'. By this do you mean a specific locally produced broadside or Chapbook or just broadside versions in general?

'desk-bound urban outsiders'.(JC) These are Jim's descriptions and no-one else's. Of course the broadside poets came from a wide variety of backgrounds. There was enormous migration from rural to urban, plus at the ends of the wars, soldiers and sailors cast onto the streets. It would have been logical for some of these with a little literacy to have turned their hands to writing ballads, again that's apart from all the material coming in from other commercial sources.
The idea that they were desk-bound is ludicrous.

JC keeps quoting Irish songs at us as if these are relevant to the corpus we are talking about. Let him give us an English example of a song in the corpus that couldn't have been written by an urban writer. (I've already offered to look in detail at Walter's repertoire)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: nickp
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 04:08 AM

Finished at last. 3 months of late night reading.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 04:21 AM

" These are Jim's descriptions and no-one else's."
Will yopu please stop doing this Steve; all writing on the broadside trade indicates that we know little about the broadside writers, which is largely what makes your claims so ludicrous
You have said this, Roud sys this, Shepherd says this, there is next to no information on the writers in Hindleys Catnach biography, or Shepherd's wor on Pitts
To state that "the broadside poets came from a wide variety of backgrounds" is invented nonsense and you know it - I've challenged you to provide proof before and you have failed to do so.
"Let him give us an English example of a song in the corpus that couldn't have been written by an urban writer."
I believe that rather quibble about individual songs and get bogged down as we did once before, it is far more profitable to place your shoddy broadside compositions next to say Banks of Sweet Primroses, or Maid of Australia, or even the few verses of Brigg Fair Grainger collected - or any of our classic folk songs and see how they compare in style and language.
You have alrweady made this difficult by claiming that up to 100% of them originated on the broadside presses (we have yet to receive an acknowledgement that you did claim that figure)
The idea that they were desk-bound is not ludicrous - you have already accepted this by suggesting they researched working practices and equipment and scanned newspapers for information for their compositions
The picture you have painted is of a full-time professional working for money
Vic rightly offered their working under intense pressure as an excuse for their bad poetry.
The picture Roud paints is that of a professional writer working under conveyor-belt like conditions.
If we wish to work out who wrote our folk songs, these are the last people you would go to as possibles.
I repeat and will continue to do so) - once you accept the idea that working people were able to write songs you have to accept that they probably wrote our folk songs
If you don't believe them capable, you need to say so so we know where they stand - time to put your cards on the table
You introduced politics into this discussion Steve - your attempt to dismiss working people as creators of anything, including folk tales, lore, dance, and music and present them as repeating parrots smacks of a political agends to me
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 04:23 AM

Meant to say - I'll respond to Rigby's interesting points later
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: r.padgett
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 04:36 AM

It perhaps would be a good idea for readers of this thread to buy the book and see what has been said rightly or wrongly and opinions expressed ~ therein to try to make sense of this argument ~ i won't express my thoughts here ~ but continue to follow ~ at a distance!

Ray

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 05:09 AM

Steve
Your own description of what we know about broadside hacks - from your talk

"Coming into the early nineteenth century, the Pitts/Catnach era, we have a massive burgeoning of cheap street literature and this is where most of what we now call folk song originated, in towns, written by broadside hacks. Some of these hacks may well have been born in rural settings or have been employed in some of the settings they describe, but most of them lived close to their buyers, the printers, in the towns and cities. Though we are talking here about commercial enterprise, the poets were paid a shilling and the sheets sold in the streets for a pittance, we are talking about the very bottom of the market as described in great detail by Henry Mayhew in London Labour and London Poor. Some of you may well feel this is low enough down the pecking order to be included in the folk process. Most of the hacks of course are anonymous."

Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 05:27 AM

Maid of Australia and Brigg Fair do both have the air of being made by individuals who were there (in the former case, the location almost certainly being the Hawkesbury River in Australia, not anywhere in England, though the name got changed to "Oxborough" when the song came to England). The encounters recounted could very well have happened exactly as described or they could be fantasies.

Banks of Sweet Primroses is an oddity. It is very stable in both text and tune across many collected versions, clearly showing how much the folk liked it; and yet, as Steve Roud points out in the notes in The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs "something of a mystery, as it always seems as if we do not have the full story. What has the man done to receive such an extreme and seemingly final rejection... ?"

And just who is saying what? It is presumably the girl who says "I'll go down ... where no man on earth shall e'er me find", but why make that declaration just then, after the encounter described in the song, rather than going down soon after whatever dirty deed the man did to her? And is it the male narrator who cheers himself up with the thought of a "sunshiny day"? (BTW, in my personal experience of weather in the London area it's more common for a sunshiny morning to be followed by overcast for the rest of the day.)

As I think I said somewhere up thread, it's easy to cite specific songs that were almost certainly written by "folk" in the countryside and others that were almost certainly written for the stage, the pleasure gardens, or directly for printing. The bone of contention is only the relative proportions among the collected corpus.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 05:40 AM

"the location almost certainly being the Hawkesbury River in Australia"
A moot point Richard
Prof. Bob Thomson researched the song and linked it to Oxborough Hall, on the banks of the Rover Ox, where there was once a settlement of returned Australian transportees.
The song is definitely very popular in East Anglia
I agree totally about it being composed from experience
I believe that Banks of Sweet Primroses, obviously an attampt tp present a failed love afair from both points of view, is a superb example of folk composition - largely the exuberance of a young man 'feeling his oats'   as we used to say in Liverpool, drawing a blank and resolving to look elsewhere - full of symbolic references rather than description
Way beyond the abilities of a desk-bound hack
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 06:46 AM

> Prof. Bob Thomson researched the song and linked it to Oxborough Hall, on the banks of the Rover Ox, where there was once a settlement of returned Australian transportees.

It is very plausible that one of them would either have brought the song to Norfolk, or even composed it there after coming back to England. But surely the event described, the encounter with the (native) "Maid of Australia" swimming in a river, was in Australia, not in Norfolk.

> I believe that Banks of Sweet Primroses, obviously an attampt tp present a failed love afair from both points of view, is a superb example of folk composition - largely the exuberance of a young man 'feeling his oats'   as we used to say in Liverpool, drawing a blank and resolving to look elsewhere - full of symbolic references rather than description
> Way beyond the abilities of a desk-bound hack

If "hack" means someone who only ever made poor verses, then fair enough. But your young man describing his (real or imaginary) encounter could equally well have been a countryman or a townie, he might have made part of his living by selling songs to broadside printers, and he might or might not have ever sung that particular one to his mates in a pub as well as getting it printed.

A song being made by someone who knew what (s)he was writing about (whether from personal experience or by hearing from others) and a song first seeing the light of day on a printed broadside are not mutually exclusive.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 07:10 AM

why describe people as hacks rather than writers, immediately there is a derogatory connotation, the standard of writing will invariable be of differing standard.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 07:25 AM

"But surely the event described, "
Of course it was Richard - I don't think Bob was arguing that from what I remember
He suggested that the name was taken from Oxborough Hall
Knowing his scholarship, I'm pretty sure he would have been aware of the Hawkesborough suggestion
"he might have made part of his living by selling songs to broadside printers,"
No problem with that either - that would make the songs as having originated elsewhere other than the broadside presses, which is what this argument is about
The folk songs for me have the feel of rural experience and knowledge - Im quite happy with the idea that many made their into print
I have suggested that the hacks plundered the living tradition for ideas and song plots and verse forms, but their own composition style makes them a very unlikely source for the number of folk songs being claimed to have ORIGINATED' on the broadside presses
This is where the Irish experience comes in
Up to the 1950s Ireland had a large trade in selling 'ballads' - song sheets sold around the fairs and markets in rural areas - the trade was exclusively carried out by non-literate Travellers who would take songs they knew, recite them over the counter to the printer who would then run them off for sale.
Many rural people learned songs which were technically from the oral tradition just as many of us started our repertoires on The Penguin Book of Folk Songs
We recorded information from a Traveller singer/storyteller who ha been involved in the trad along with hiss mother
He insisted that, to his knowledge none of the songs he sold had been written for the ballads but had come from songs he already knew.
He recounted how he would be asked for his father's songs - his father was a noted singer and storyteller - and would oblige by having the soings printed before he next visited the area.
He described how he would swap songs with Travellers involved in the trade from other areas.
Roud and Dave Atkinson have made similar claims of high percentages of folk songs originating as broadsides in the Street Literature book.
Personally I find the Irish oral tradition so complicated, not least the multilingual nature of the country at the time, that it would take years of careful study before anybody could possibly make this claim
As the buk of the Irish oral collections remained locked away in archives, with very few published examples (apart from Terry Moylan's magnificent book of political songs), such research would need to be Irish-based anyway
I doubt if Steve Roud and Dave Atkinson have made such a study in Ireland and have once again superficially based their opinions on the urban broadside trades
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 07:27 AM

"why describe people as hacks rather than writers, immediately there is a derogatory connotation"
Because they wer bad writers Dick - they even gave their name to tabloid journalists
THey have always been documented as "hacks"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 07:36 AM

Perhaps it's just me, but I don't think Maid of Australia is a good example of poetry of any sort. Taken alone, the words are doggerel, and full of exactly the sort of contrived rhymes that people sneer at in broadside poetry. There's also nothing in the song to indicate that the writer had ever been nearer Australia than Norwich. It reads much more like some sort of male wish-fulfilment fantasy than as a record of an actual event.

But in a sense that's the point, because the genius of folk song doesn't lie in its raw materials, whether they be broadsides or glees or whatever. It lies in the process by which crude poetry, moralising parlour songs or florid pleasure-garden compositions get *turned into* great and singable songs; and it lies in the unique style of performance with which singers delivered those songs. It's a red herring to complain that suggesting a broadside origin undermines the role of 'the people', because the origin isn't what does or does not make it good.

To give a slightly off-the-wall analogy, a few years back the Turner Prize was won by an installation called 'shedboatshed'. The artist started with a garden shed, dismantled it, built a boat from the pieces, sailed it down the Rhine to a museum and rebuilt the original shed. You may or may not think that art, but the question of who built the shed in the first place surely doesn't matter.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 08:19 AM

I hesitate to devote too much of this thread to one particular song, but I would like to pursue the origin of Maid of Australia a bit further.

> There's also nothing in the song to indicate that the writer had ever been nearer Australia than Norwich. It reads much more like some sort of male wish-fulfilment fantasy than as a record of an actual event.

For my money it could equally well be either.

What I can't buy is the idea of the action (real or imagined) taking place anywhere other than Australia. It is clearly the first (and probably the last) encounter between the narrator and the maid, so she isn't a "Maid of Australia" that a returned convict has brought back to England with him. And in at least one version she is swimming in "a stream in my native Australia".

Jim, can you please point me to where I can read Bob Thomson's work?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 08:44 AM

'Banks of the Sweet Primroses' is an example of a song which circulated on broadsides and stayed in the tradition largely unaltered. Jim suggests that its quality shows that it must have originated from the 'folk' and that the broadsides were simply publishing an existing song taken from a 'real' folk singer, rather than an original composition. It is an attractive idea, and he may well be right, but it is probably unprovable. However since obviously composed songs were taken up in large numbers by 'the folk' it suggests that this distinction was of little or no consequence to the singers themselves.

The weakness in Jim's argument is that it is circular - if a song is badly written this shows it must be by a hack, if it's good it must have come from 'the folk'.

To take another example which was discussed earlier, 'The Shepherd Adonis' in its original form bears all the hallmarks of a composed work - classical allusions, arcadian rural stereotypes, and over-flowery language all suggest its composer was no shepherd. Its transformation into 'Shepherd of the Downs' to me demonstrates the working-class creativity which Jim is so keen to defend. However, unless I am misunderstanding him, according to his interpretation its origin would appear to disqualify it as a proper folk song.

What this does seem to demonstrate is that 'the folk' favoured a particular style of song. Songs like 'Banks of the Sweet Primroses' which fitted this style could be adopted more or less unaltered. Others would be adapted and altered until they fitted into it - whether this show the 'folk process' or 'working class creativity' is a matter of terminology only.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 08:45 AM

"What I can't buy is the idea of the action (real or imagined) taking place anywhere other than Australia."
I agree with your analysis of the song Richard - it feels that way to me - it may be the work of a returned convict - it certainly doesn't feel like the work of a hack
I totally disagree with Rigby's point - many songs recited or read give the impression of 'doggerel' - it's not until you put them in your mouth as a singer that they spring to life
The opposite is the case of broadsides - as a singer, I went through dozens of collections of them and found nothing
The Critics group used a few for their albums, particularly the two London ones and, while they worked in context of the subject, few of them stood the test of time out of context
Maid of Australia is a glorious celebration of a sexual encounter, the type of which abounds in the British tradition, particularly in Scotland
"Jim, can you please point me to where I can read Bob Thomson's work?"
Bob published very little - his PhD on broadsides remains unpublished
I got a great deal of information from Bob via our friendship in conversations
He did similar work on other songs, such as 'Drink old England Dry', one verse of which he linked to the draining of The Fens
It was Bob who was responsible for acquiring The Carpenter Collection for the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library - Ken Goldstein told him about it, he told me and I told the Librarian at Cecil Sharp House
He was a great loss to English folksong scholarship when he moved to Gainesville
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 08:54 AM

"many songs recited or read give the impression of 'doggerel' - it's not until you put them in your mouth as a singer that they spring to life"

Actually that was exactly the point I was trying to make! Considered purely in terms of the written word, there is no real gap in standard or skill between a song like Maid of Australia and a typical broadside verse, and therefore I can't see any reasonable objection to the idea that a broadside poet couldn't have written those words, or the original from which they have evolved.

The point is, as Howard says, that the real, worthwhile creativity isn't in the original composition of the words. It's in the process by which they get turned into a great song.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 08:58 AM

"if a song is badly written this shows it must be by a hack,"
No - no - no
Good and bad are subjective terms in relation to individual songs
There are many folk songs that don't move me enough to want to sing them, while there are a few broadsides I relish - my favourite song, the one I usually drag out when asked to sing is The Ranter Parson
I was given it by a friend who got it from The Madden Collection and worked on it to knock the corners off
It is the overall style of broadside writing and their one dimensional approach to their subject matter that makes them unsingable
Broadside style is as identifiable as folk song style - you know one when you see/hear one
I've only ever heard The Coppers sing Shepherd of the Downs and I find their singing so singular and at odds with folk song style in general that I find it difficult to judge many of their songs
I'm not happy discussing traditional singers like The Coppers publicly, I don't think it fair and try to avoid it
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 09:32 AM

The Ranter Parson appears in Roy Palmer's book of Folk Songs Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with the following note:

"The song appeared several times on street ballads, but to the best of my knowledge has turned up only once in oral tradition: in 1904, when Vaughan Williams took it down from a 61-year-old labourer, who had learned 'most of his songs off "ballets" or from his father'."

As usual RVW only noted the words of the first verse of the sung version, so Palmer gives verses 2 to 10 from a broadside.

Make of that what you will!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 09:56 AM

Jim, first my apologies if I have oversimplified or misinterpreted your argument but it appeared to me that your justification for claiming that 'Banks of Sweet Primroses' originated from the folk rather than a professional composer was based on the style and quality of the text.

"It is the overall style of broadside writing and their one dimensional approach to their subject matter that makes them unsingable
Broadside style is as identifiable as folk song style - you know one when you see/hear one"

That's certainly true to modern ears, but the fact remains that these songs were widely taken up and sung. The need to lick them into a more acceptable shape doesn't seem to have deterred singers at the time. However, while the words may have been taken from a broadside the singer would probably have heard the song first from the ballad-seller. In your own words, it's not until you put a song in your mouth as a singer that they spring to life. Those street singers whose livelihoods depended on people buying their ballad-sheets were probably skilled at making these unpromising texts appear attractive. The folk process then took over.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 10:02 AM

I have just today read an article regarding copyright.

In a letter from a well respected researcher and author in the States,He states "For example, upper class English songwriters in the 17th and 18th century often didn't sign their works because writing songs or poems was considered beneath their social station".

Does this have any relevance in your arguments? It seems to, to me as an amused bystander.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 10:06 AM

THanks for that
I was aware of the R.V,W. version in Palmer's though I had been singing it for ten years when Roy published his book.
Either my source, Dick Snell or I removed one of the verses (about the lady laughinghing up her sleeve) because he or I found it superfluous - a case with many broadsides which feel they need to cross t's and dot i's for the sake of the listener
I suspect this is one that was either taken from a country song and expanded or made from a humorous country tale
Walter Pardon, when he heard me sing it, once described it as "Chaucerian", a description which he also used for 'The Cunning Cobbler'
It is certainly full of country humour and works very well for the old farmers that turn up for our local sessions
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 10:24 AM

"The need to lick them into a more acceptable shape doesn't seem to have deterred singers at the time."
Of course it didn't, but the vast majority of the broadsides never made it into the ffolk repertoire - a bit difficult to discuss in the context of Roud's book as he bungs everything into the melting pot and calls them all 'folk'
None of this is an indication of where the songs began - as I said, if you believe that 'the folk' were capable of making songs then you have to accept that they were the most probable composers of our folk songs, given the subject matter, the partisan nature towards poverty, injustice, class divisions, the use of vernacular and vernacular lore and humour, and above all, the familiarity with rural life.
Hoot
The anonymity of broadsides has always intrigued me - if they were the compositions of professional writers, why don't we know who they were
I don';t think anybody is suggesting that they were written by or for the upper class, bu the glees and Tavern songs that both the Steves' seem to set so high a value on were sung by a for an all-male middle-class audience.
Not my idea of 'the folk' by any stretch of the imagination
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 10:33 AM

"the subject matter, the partisan nature towards poverty, injustice, class divisions, the use of vernacular and vernacular lore and humour, and above all, the familiarity with rural life."

I agree that's exactly what you'd expect to find in folk song if it was wholly the product of rural communities. The problem is that as stated earlier, it's not clear that that is what we *actually* find in English folk song. How many rural folk songs are there that deal directly with poverty or class divisions, or which exhibit any familiarity with rural life beyond that which would have been universal at the time? Some, no doubt, like the poaching songs -- but they are dwarfed in number by the ones in which someone walks out on a May morning into a vaguely described idyll full of singing birds and skipping lambs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 11:20 AM

" How many rural folk songs are there that deal directly with poverty or class divisions"
They don't - they deal with the effects of these thing
The parental opposition to daughters wanting to marry farmhands are typical of these
Harry Cox sang Betsy the Serving Maid for Alan Lomax and spat out at the end if it, "and that's what those people thought of us"
He did similar with 'Van Diemen's Land when he went into a ranting monologue on land seizures.
Many of our sea songs, particularly th whaling songs, talk about long trips and lousy conditions - as distinct from Charles Dibdin's Jolly Jack Tars.
Copmare the 'Herts of Oak' sea songs to the songs about the Press Gangs and recruiting campaigns
Banks of the Nile type songs about pregnant women demanding to be taken off as part of the Camp Following army that followed the troops into battle are remarkable insights into warfare in the past.
The Weaving songs deal with the move from the cottage industries into the factories
It is inconceivable that there weren't many songs about the machine breakers, and the Swing Rioters which wouldn't have been sung in polite company because of their seditious nature
I once spent months in Manchester Central Library working my way through the microfilm copies on Northern newspapers which carried weekly song columns dealing with fighting for the franchise and improving the rights o the textile workers
We don't kno if any of these entered an oral tradition but the fact that they were made in the first place shown both an ability at and an inclination towards song making
Our folk song repertoire smells more of horse dung and cow shit than it does "skipping lambs ((I would suggest that one type came from the rural workers and the other from the broadside presses - I'll leave it to you to guess which?)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 11:39 AM

"Our folk song repertoire smells more of horse dung and cow shit than it does "skipping lambs""

I agree with you that there are numerous sea songs that are emphatic about the harshness of life on board ship. But that seems to me to stand in contrast to the way rural life is presented. How many folk songs lament the harshness of life as a farm labourer? I can't think of more than a handful. (Nor can I think of a single one that mentions horse dung.)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 11:55 AM

"It is inconceivable that there weren't many songs about the machine breakers, and the Swing Rioters which wouldn't have been sung in polite company because of their seditious nature"

One of the things I enjoyed about Roy Palmer's 'Working Songs' book is that he managed to find evidence for things like machine-breaking songs actually being sung in Pennine pubs.

John Harland in 'Ballads and Songs of Lancashire' reports the popularity of the Henry Hunt and 'Tyrants of England' songs, and verses on the deliberate torching of Grimshaw's mill. None of this stuff turns up in the classic 'folk' collections, though that may be because the themes were no longer current, rather than selection bias on the part of collectors.

As for 'Banks of Sweet Primroses', I don't smell much cow shit in that one.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 12:08 PM

oh dear. according to some , since the writers of broadsides were hacks then every broadside must be worthless doggerel. what a stupid generalisation

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 12:34 PM

"I don't smell much cow shit in that one."
Nor do I - it's a celebration of sex - the two don't mix (though I once went home with grass stains on my knees
"to the way rural life is presented"
Thbulk of our songs were collected when the tradition was on the wane, but even so the social misalliance songs were still a major part of the repertoire, as were the poaching, transportation and camp-follower songs - all aspects of working life.
Beckett Whitehead sang a remarkable radical song entitled 'Drinking' which never gained popular currency but was collected by MacColl and Joan Littlewood for the BBC
One verse went;

I'll drink till the high price of coals become small,
Till ale and roast beef, they cost nothing at all,
Till a dandy's worth nowt but the clothes he puts on,
I'll drink till old Peabody's money is gone.

It may well be from a local poet; it has a feel of the times that I never found in broadside, though that's not to say that it never got onto one
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 12:37 PM

here is an example of a well written brosdside

Oh the sky was dark and the night advanced
When a convict came to the Isle of France;
And round his leg was a ring and chain
And his country was of the Shamrock Green.

?I'm from the Shamrock,? this convict cried,
?That has been tossed on the ocean wide.
For being unruly, I do declare,
I was doomed to transport these seven long years.

When six of them they were up and past
I was coming home to make up the last.
When the winds did blow and the seas did roar
They cast me here on this foreign shore.?

So then the coastguard he played a part
And with some brandy he cheered the convict's heart:
?Although the night is far advanced
You shall find a friend on the Isle of France.?

So he sent a letter all to the Queen
Concerning the wreck of the Shamrock Green;
And his freedom came by a speedy post
For the absent convict they thought was lost.

?God bless the coastguard,? this convict cried,
?For he's saved my life from the ocean wide.
And I'll drink his health in a flowing glass,
And here's success to the Isle of France.?
so much for hacks, and then we have van diemens land

Come all you gallant poachers that ramble free from care
That walk out of a moonlight night with your dog your gun and snare
Where the lofty hare and pheasant you have at your command
Not thinking that your last career is on Van Diemen's Land

There was poor Tom Brown from Nottingham Jack Williams and poor Joe
Were three as daring poachers as the country well does know
At night they were trepanned by the keeper's hideous hand
And for fourteen years transported were unto Van Diemen's Land

Oh when we sailed from England we landed at the bay
We had rotten straw for bedding we dared not to say nay
Our cots were fenced with fire we slumber when we can
To drive away the wolves and tigers upon Van Diemen's Land

Oh when that we were landed upon that fatal bay
The planters they came flocking round full twenty score or more
They ranked us up like horses and sold us out of hand
They yoked us up to the plough my boys to plough Van Diemen's Land

There was one girl from England Susan Summers was her name
For fourteen years transported was we all well knew the same
Our planter bought her freedom and he married her out of hand
Good usage then she gave to us upon Van Diemen's Land

Often when I am slumbering I have a pleasant dream
With my sweet girl I am sitting down by some purling stream
Through England I am roaming with her at my command
Then waken broken hearted upon Van Diemen's Land

God bless our wives and families likewise that happy shore
That isle of sweet contentment which we shall see no more
As for our wretched females see them we seldom can
There are twenty to one woman upon Van Diemen's Land

Come all you gallant poachers give ear unto my song
It is a bit of good advice although it is not long
Lay by your dog and snare to you I do speak plain
If you knew the hardship we endure you ne'er would poach again


if jim carroll or steve gardham can write any better than these hacks doubt it, you two, have some nerve

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 12:54 PM

"I once went home with grass stains on my knees"

Too much information, surely, Jim?

Like you, I've always wondered where Beckett's 'Drinking' came from.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 12:58 PM

and aversion of the black velvet band [a broadside] from jim carroll pat mckenzie collection IS THIS DOGGEREL OR THE WORK OF A HACK, IF SO why did you think it worth preserving, jim?The Black Velvet Band
(Roud 2146)
Martin Howley
Fanore, north west Clare
Recorded 1975
Carroll Mackenzie Collection         


        
Martin Howley

As I went down to Broadway, intended not to stay very long,
When I spied a ticklesome cailín as she kept tripping along.
She took a watch out of her pocket and slipped it right into my hand,
And I cursed the first day that I met her, bad luck to her black velvet band.

Chorus:
Her eyes they sparkled like diamonds, you’d think she was queen of the land,
With her hair hung over her shoulders, tied up with a black ribbon band.

It was early then next morning, to the court we had to appear.
The jeweller he swore to the jury and the case against us was clear;
For seven long year’s transportation, into Van Diemen’s Land,
Far away from my friends and relations, to follow her black velvet band.

Chorus:
Oh , sure her eyes they shone like diamonds, you’d think she was queen of the land.
With her hair hung over her shoulders, tied up with a black velvet band.

And come all ye young fellows take warning, whenever you go on the spree;
Beware of those ticklesome cailíns, that’s knocking around Tralee.
They’ll treat you to whiskey and porter, until you won’t be able to stand.
And you’ll get seven year’s transportation for following the black velvet band.

"The earliest printed forms of this are 19th century English Broadsides such as the following;

To go in a smack down at Barking, where a boy as apprentice was bound,
Where I spent many hours in comfort and pleasure in that little town;
At length future prospects were blighted, as soon you may all understand;
So by my downfall take a warning — beware of a black velvet band.

One day being out on the ramble, alone by myself I did stray,
I met with a young gay deceiver, while cruising in Ratcliffe Highway,
Her eyes were as black as a raven: I thought her the pride of the land;
Her hair, that would hang o'er her shoulders, was tied with a black velvet band.

She towed me in port, and we anchored, from virtue she did me decoy,
When it was proposed and agreed to, that I should become a flash boy,
And drinking and gaming to plunder to keep up the game was soon planned;
But since, I've had cause to remember the girl with a black velvet band.

Flash girl, if you wish to turn modest, and strive a connexion to gain,
Do not wear a band o'er the forehead, as if to tie in your brain;
Some do prefer Victoria fashion, and some their hair braided so grand
Myself I do think it much better than a girl with a black velvet band

Young men, by my fate take a warning, from all those gay [ladies] refrain,
And seek for a neat little woman that wears her hair parted quite plain,
The subject that I now do mention, tho' innocent, soon me trapanned;
In sorrow my days will be ended, far from the black velvet band;

For she towed in a bold man-of wars man her ogle she winked on the sly,
But little did I know her meaning, when I twigged her a faking his cly,
He said, I'm bound for the ocean, and shortly the ship will be made,
[B]ut still I've a strong inclination for the girl with a black velvet band.

A snare was invented to slight and banish me out of her sight,
A fogle she brought of no value, saying, more I will bring this night
She slipped it sly into my pocket, false girl! and took me by the hand;
They gave me in charge for the sneezer — bad luck to the black velvet band!

[I?] Forkly was [j]ailed and committed, and cast in the jug for a lag,
A wipe that she pinched and bunged to me, and valued no more than a flag,
The judge said to me, you are s[e]ntenced to a free passage to Van Diemen's Land
[last line missing: My curse to the black velvet band?].

It was said to have been highly popular in the Australian Outback in the 1880s. Its first appearance in the oral tradition in England was at the beginning of the 20th century, taken down by collectors such as George Gardiner, George Butterworth and the Rev Sabine Baring Gould. During the BBC’s collecting project in the first half of the 1950s, it proved to be popular among English country singers. Its first printing in Ireland was in Herbert Hughes’ ‘Irish Country Songs' (1936). It seldom turned up from Irish traditional singers, one of the few occasions being from Elizabeth Cronin of Cork, who sang: 'In the neat little town of Dunmanway.' The popularity it finally received in Ireland was during the Irish ‘Ballad Boom'; this was largely due to its being performed by The Clancy Brothers and The Dubliners."
Jim Carroll

<< Songs of Clare
the broadside version is well written jim, is it not?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 01:07 PM

> the vast majority of the broadsides never made it into the folk repertoire - a bit difficult to discuss in the context of Roud's book as he bungs everything into the melting pot and calls them all 'folk'

No, he is explicitly concerned with the songs that the folk did sing.

Possibly some broadsides never sold very well. When they sold in reasonable numbers there must have been people who intended to learn the songs. Nevertheless, as we all acknowledge, most of those songs were not subsequently found by collectors. That could be because the people who intended to learn them had second thoughts. Or they sang them only briefly and then cast them aside. Or perhaps they did go on singing them but none of their friends and families took those songs up. Tastes can change a lot from one generation to the next, or even quicker. The songs that we love tend (though not exclusively) to be the ones that have endured because they have appealed to successive generations, albeit possibly only to an interested minority in each generation. That's your "selection" at work.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 01:15 PM

and here some of the finest lyrics in the english tradtion.. bold reynard the fox, from a broadside in the bodleian library.You gentlemen who take delight
In hunting bold Reynard the Fox:
On yonder stoney common I lived
And I had my dinner on the geese and ducks.

I kept myself on all these fine things
Not thinking soon that I should die,
Chased by a pack of bloody hounds
They causèd me my country to fly.

Throughout the wild country I rambled
And living at a fine old rate.
On sheep and lambs I had my dinner
And the farmers all around they did me hate.

So the Lord for the King's hounds he did send
and Jerry Balsam, he swore I should die.
I left three brothers all behind
That love young lambs much better than do I.

And it's down for the stoney valleys I run
And the bloody dogs they followed me;
Made me old coat stand on end
For to hear the bold huntsman, his loud "Hussa!"

And its often times I have been chased
By the dogs that run I don't know how;
In the whole course of me life
I never had such a chase and half until now.

And it's forty-five miles I have run;
I've run it in three hours space.
Strength that begins all for to fail
And the dogs they got forward on me a-pace.

And it's down by farmer Stewart's I run
And the keeper shot me in me thigh.
Curse you, huntsman, and your hounds
For this fatal wound; I know that I shall die.

And it's down to the stoney fields where they caught him
They caused poor Reynard's for to die.
Lord, they dragged him and then they tore him
And they caused his own fur jacket all to fly.

And it's now bold Reynard's he is dead
And they'll turn to the ale house and they'll dine.
Dip his old paw in the bumper
And drink me Lord's health in both ale and wine.

And Jim Carroll has the nerve to dismiss all writers of broadsides as hacks, the above lyrics are fine writing not doggerell

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 01:41 PM

"No, he is explicitly concerned with the songs that the folk did sing."
Sorry Richard, but he specifies that he regards folk sons as anything folk singers sing, so presumably if one o the singers happened to be a member of the local light opera society the Roud index would include selections from 'The Student Prince'
It is for this reason that I find Son of Folk Song in England so unapproachable

"here is an example of a well written brosdside"
Your opinion Dick - not necessarily mine, but beside the point anyway - I'm not discussing "good and bad" individual songs - I go along with Child's "veriable dunghills in which, only after a great deal of sickening grubbing, one finds a very moderate jewel" on this, but I've bent over backwards to avoid my personal taste from buggering up this discussion
I'm talking in general terms when I refer to the broadsides as being poor poetry
Do you know Black Velvet Band originated on the broadside presses and do you knowe for certain that there were no versions prior to the published one - nobody else does?
It might have been written by a hack or one that was taken by one from the oral tradition., but whichever, it is a song that became embedded in the oral tradition
Was the broadside version well written - "cast in the jug for a lag,
A wipe that she pinched and bunged to me, and valued no more than a flag" souns very much to me like a songmaker trying to sound like someone he's not to me - I wouldn't dream of trying top sing it - I much prefer Martin's
All a matter of opinion - we all have a right to our own tastes
It is not me or Steve G who invented the term 'hack' - it is a lablel that has been attached to the trade for centuries
Go dig up the originator and slate him or her for his or her "nerve"
I am not advocating that any song from anywhere is "not worth preserving
Many of the broadsides are social documents of urban life and as such they are invaluable   
Richard
It really needs to be remembered that the songs under discussion came from a period when the 'folk' were beginning to change from active participants in their culture to passive recipients of it.
In both the later traditions in Ireland and in the non-literate travellers culture you had far less of a sign of the literary effects that Mrs Laidlaw was so worried about and also a healthy and extremely active song-making tradition
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 02:17 PM

By the way Dick - I find all 'killing for sport' songs as displays of barbarity and livin proof that not all the folk produced was good
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 03:54 PM

Rigby hits the nail firmly on the head when he writes:-
How many rural folk songs are there that deal directly with poverty or class divisions, or which exhibit any familiarity with rural life beyond that which would have been universal at the time? Some, no doubt, like the poaching songs -- but they are dwarfed in number by the ones in which someone walks out on a May morning into a vaguely described idyll full of singing birds and skipping lambs."

Exactly! I love English folk songs and have sung hundreds of them in Folk clubs, festivals and singarounds over the decades. That so very few of them reflect my personal political position is a great disappointment. I wish there were more that said the likes of:-

..... When the constable do come,
I'll stand with me gun,
And I'll swear all I have is me own, me brave boys.
And I'll swear all I have is me own.

A bit of defiance.... a bit of edge. Something that reflects the real struggles that families had to feed themselves and much less of the likes of:-

A flaxen-headed cowboy, as simple as may be,
And next a merry plough boy, I whistled o'er the lea;
But now a saucy footman, I strut in worsted lace.

Songs that hark back to a 'Merrie England' that never existed. Songs that might appeal to a more literate, wealthier class who wanted to believe that in spite of the drudgery. hardships and hunger that the lower classes were happy with their lot. Whoever wrote these songs that do not reflect the lives of the people they are talking about, sadly, we know from the work of the collectors that many of them were taken up by the people. Songs that have a revolutionary message are largely missing from the English folk canon.
Here's the words of a song that I love very much and sing fairly often. It's called What's Old England Come To?:-

One cold winter morning as the day was dawning,
A voice came so hollow and shrill,      
The cold wind did whistle, the snow softly falling,
As a stranger came over the hill.
The clothing he wore was tatter'd and torn,
He seem'd to be bewailing and wandering all forlorn.
Lamenting the pleasures that ne'er would return
Oh! Old England, what have you come to?

He said oh, I sigh for those hearts so undeserving.
On their own native land led to stray,   
And in the midst of plenty some thousands are starving,
Neither house, food nor clothing have they
I am surrounded by poverty & can't find a friend,
My cottage it is sold from me, my joys are at an end
So like some pilgrim, my steps I onward bend
Oh! Old England, what have you come to?

There once was a time I could find friends in plenty
To feed on my bounteous store,
But friends they are few now my portion is scanty,
But Providence may open her door
It nearly breaks my heart when my cottage I behold.
It is claim'd by a villain with plenty of gold
And I passing by all shivering with cold.
Oh! Old England, what have you come to?

The Farmer and Comedian do daily assemble,
And do try their exertion and skill,
But Alas! after all on this earth they do tremble
For all trades are near standing still.
If the great god of war now should quickly on us call
I would break these chains so galling
And bravely face a ball,
For to see my babies starving it grieves me worst of all
Oh ! Old England, what have you come to?

There's Manchester and Birmingham, alas! are fell to ruin
In fact, the whole country is at a stand,
Our shipping lies in harbour and nothing is doing
While our tars are starving on the land.
'Twould break the hearts of monarch's bold, if they could rise again,
To view our desolation, would near distract the brain,
So pity a poor stranger, or death may ease my pain.
Oh ! Old England, what have you come to?

I got it from Leslie Shepherd's 1973 book The History Of Street Literature where it is reproduced in facsimilie. I managed to trace the suggested tune of Irish Stranger through Vic Gammon and it carries the powerful committed words well. In going back to the original words after about 3 decades, I find that I have made a number of unconscious changes in the less important words which seem to make the song more singable (to my mind). The Roud Broadside Index tells us that it was printed in Newcastle, London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, Hull; the version in Shepherd's book is signed Swindells, Printer and in an article reproduced here written by Harry Boardman with help from Roy Palmer tells us Swindells this was located in Cathedral Yard, Manchester. The author of these words is not known; I agree that it is pejorative to call him a 'hack' and the description 'desk-bound, urban-based, notoriously bad poets' would seem to me to be a speculative description not based on any historical evidence. so let's just call him an anonymous broadside poet.
Now this broadside appeared in the city where the Peterloo Massacre took place roughly 20 years earlier. Memories of that slaughter must have still been in the mind of many of the adults. The movement that came to be known as 'Christian Socialism' was starting to emerge in the north of England at that time; the earliest time that it appeared in print was in the 1840s. Many broadside printers must have thought that there was a resonance with the population for its widespread publication. It would be useful to know how widely sung it was though we do know that it was never collected in the oral tradition!
Why?
Well, we have little evidence to base any conclusion on. We do know that 'The Barley Mow' and other convivial songs were popular at that time; it appears in William Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time (1855-1859) so it is possible that people preferred the jollity of drinking songs over one that reminds them of just how grim their plight was.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 04:22 PM

there are numerous sea songs that are emphatic about the harshness of life on board ship. But that seems to me to stand in contrast to the way rural life is presented. How many folk songs lament the harshness of life as a farm labourer?
Where were these songs sung? Would it make sense if the sea songs were sung ashore and the rural songs by those who had migrated to the town.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 04:40 PM

At last we have JC's examples of the prime of English folksong that couldn't possibly have been written by a broadside writer, or have come from any commercial enterprise. We now have something to work on.

I'll start with Joseph Taylor's unique fragment known as 'Brigg Fair'.
Unique means no variation within the oral tradition. Well that's one descriptor out then. Need we dwell on this one? Beautiful tune but hardly a prime example.

Maids of Australia. Again hardly a widespread song in oral tradition. Could that be because there are so few broadsides of it?
***'there is no real gap in standard or skill between a song like Maid of Australia and a typical broadside verse'***. Must agree with this, Rigby.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 05:06 PM

There is very little difference between the broadside and oral versions of 'Maids of Australia'. It was printed in the second half of the 19th century by Such of London, Pearson of Manchester, the Glasgow Poet's Box and Sanderson of Edinburgh and there is no reason to suppose that it is any older than the earliest of these printings.
Some show signs of having come from oral tradition so I will conduct a study of all versions and get back to you with my findings. Personally I quite like the song but that's neither here nor there.

Unfortunately we can't pinpoint the date of any of these printings to within a decade. Sod's law: Nearly all of the Glasgow Poet's Box slips are dated very precisely, all except this one, grrrrh!

Anyway, just to be going on with here is the GPB version.

One morning I strolled by the Oldberry banks,
Where the maids of Australia play their wild pranks,
Beneath the wild bushes I laid myself down,
All looking delighted and chanted around,
In the forests of happy Australia,
Where the maidens are handsome and gay.

I gazed with delight at this beautiful scene,
With the forests so wild and the trees ever green;
Then a beautiful damsel to me did appear,
To the banks of the river she quickly drew near,
She was a native of happy Australia,
Where the maidens are happy and gay.

She plunged into the river without fear or dread,
And her lily-white limbs she so neatly spread;
Her hair hung in ringlets, its colour was black--
"Don't you see, sir," said she, "how I float on my back,
On the streams of my native Australia,
Where the maidens are handsome and gay."

She swam till exhausted, and near to the brink,
"Assistance," she cried, "or I fear I will sink;"
Like lightning I flew and took hold of her hand,
She instantly tripped and fell back on the sand,
And I entered the bush of Australia,
With this maiden so handsome and gay.

I gazed and I toiled with the lightest of glee,
She was the fairest Australian I ever did see;
Long time did my head on her bosom recline,
Till the sun in the west did its limits resign,
And I left that fair maid in Australia,
Where the maidens are handsome and gay.

With this version at least there can be no question about the setting. Australian Tourist Board advertisement? Without going into offensive detail it's pretty obvious the broadside writer had never been to Australia and his informants were also somewhat misled. Songs of this type with very obvious sexual euphemisms abound in street literature, a lot of them printed in Ireland by Goggin of Limerick, long before this one.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 05:25 PM

And so to 'The Banks of Sweet Primroses' an old favourite of mine. It was the very first broadside I ever acquired, in 1965, from a little stamp shop under Charing Cross in London. It was a Catnach, London printing and it cost me £1.10s which was a fair bit in those days. The most accessible sung version at the time was by the Copper Family and I promptly learnt their version and sang it in folk clubs.

The song was fairly widely printed throughout England in the 19th century, a mark of its popularity. None of the many printings I have predate the Catnach one and they are all the standard 6 verses as found in oral tradition. As far as I know Pitts didn't print it though some of his successors did, and it could well be that in that form it is no earlier than c1830.

The opening line 'As I walked out one midsummer morning' whilst used in many folk songs is even more notorious for its usage in broadsides that did not survive to be collected from oral tradition. Don't believe me? Type in 'As I w.......' in the search box on the Bodleian Ballads website.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 05:38 PM

Sweet Primroses, BTW, the last stanza 'the cloudy morning turning out to be a sunshiny day' is a broadside commonplace. Amongst others it is used in some broadside versions of 'Young Riley' and creeps into the American 'Fair and Tender Ladies'. Commonplaces are just as common on cheap print as they are in oral tradition if not moreso. The broadside writers were, like their fellow workers in the cities, great recyclers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 04 Jan 18 - 06:26 AM

I briefly considered sending this as a PM, but I think it does belong on this thread because it is germane to Jim's theme of the people who made the songs having personal knowledge of their subjects.

Steve: "Without going into offensive detail it's pretty obvious the broadside writer had never been to Australia and his informants were also somewhat misled."

What is obviously wrong, apart from the name "Oldberry"?

Even now, with a metalled road running beside the Hawkesbury River and houses, a random spot on that road as shown in Google Streetview could still pass for "the forests so wild and the trees ever green". It's not the Outback.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jan 18 - 09:45 AM

I find all 'killing for sport' songs as displays of barbarity and livin proof that not all the folk produced was good

It was good to those who enjoyed it and kept it in the oral tradition. Don't the 'folks' preferences count when discussing their songs? I don't know any now but in the fifties that was where the men who dug the estates' ditches and layed their hedges were on a Boxing Day. They explained to me why some young toffs had blood on their faces. Don't rural workers who follow the hunt count as 'folk'?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Jan 18 - 10:14 AM

"is a broadside commonplace. "
It's also an old saying - used in my urban family
"At last we have JC's examples of the prime of English folksong that couldn't possibly have been written by a broadside writer"
No you haven't Steve - I said I was not going into the single songs cul-de-sac and that is what I meant
The ones I mentioned are, as far as I am concerned, typical of th best songs in the English Tradition and well within the grasp of any country songmaker, no more than that
Tell you what - you want to play that game - tell me which of our folk songs is beyond the abilities of a rural song-maker
If you can name none, you make my point for me that there is an at least equal chance that they were made by country people
"Rigby hits the nail firmly on the head when he writes:-
"How many rural folk songs are there that deal directly with poverty or class divisions, "
Im' interested that you should pick this up, yet choose to ignore my response Vic
AS Richard pointed out, that there may well have been overt political songs in the repertoire that were not collected or even sung to a collector, but that's beside the point.
The social content of our repertoire lies in how they deal with the effects of political and social events rather than the events themselves
What astounds and somewhat depresses me in all this is the readiness show by people here to accept that rural working people didn't make their songs but bought them as they would today's pop albums
Nobody appears even to want to discuss the implications of this - it means that working people were no more than repeating the work of bad poets
Steve Gardham chose to bring my politics into this, yet it is his arguments which largely remove the likelihood of a creative rural working class, and there seems to be a consensus her that this was the case, though so far, nobody has actually had the bottle to put that into words.
I have come to the conclusion of the time Steve and I have gone head to head that there ois a political agenda her - a non-creative working class, the denigration or the oral tradition by comparing it to the work of "the lowest apprentices in the printers at the bottom of the market", the idea that "the vast majority of the rural population in the early 19th century lived in abject conditions one step above slavery and there are multiple reasons why they would not have had the inclination to make their own songs"
Steve, in his talk, paid lip service to there being a "two way process" between people's songmaking and the broadside presses, yet his %94 to %100 having originated from the hacks doesn't leave a great deal of a likelihood that worker made any songs
As I said - how depressing
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 04 Jan 18 - 10:54 AM

Isn't it all an instance of "Ninety percent of everything is crap"? Various people made songs, and various people still do, some for money, some for political purposes, some just for the sake of it. A lot of those songs deservedly die very quickly and a few have lasting appeal.

There is considerable overlap between the ones that appeal to us folkies today and those in the classic corpus from the Victorian and Edwardian collectors, but it's far from perfect overlap. Some songs that were widely collected haven't been picked up in the Revival, and some that are widely sung in the Revival were collected very few times or (breathe it softly) were only written in the 1950s or later.

One reason why a song may appeal to us is that we see it as expressing the feelings of real people in a past age, and that can be true whether it was made by one of the people concerned or by a professional song writer who seems to have understood their plight. But songs can appeal for other reasons. Many ballads appeal simply because they are darn good tales. They can be about ploughboys and milkmaids, or about lords and ladies, or about magicians and witches.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Jan 18 - 11:10 AM

"They can be about ploughboys and milkmaids, or about lords and ladies, or about magicians and witches"
I forgot to mention that Steve has claimed that the Tales, music, lore, dance etc - also originated from those higher up the social ladder.
If all this nonsense is true, there would have been no folk traditions before Queen Victoria came to the throne because that's when literacy kicked in in rural areas
Up to then, only one third of the population of England were literate, and that was mainly among the Urban population - the rural labouring classes were virtually illiterate
There must have been long queues outside the doors of the literate, of people waiting to be taught the contents of broadsides
" Don't the 'folks' preferences count when discussing their songs? "
Would you have regarded dog fighting or bear baiting or public hanging and drawing and quartering in the same light, I wonder - tradition doesn't mean good
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Jan 18 - 11:54 AM

a well written song is a well written song regardless of whether it is about fox hunting or transportation, i have providee examplesof well written broadsides.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Jan 18 - 03:11 PM

Here we have the Catnach broadside of 'Banks' with the differences of an (oral tradition version) alongside.

As I walked out one midsummer morning
(For) To view the fields and to take the air
Down by the banks of the sweet primroses
There I beheld a most lovely fair.

Three long steps I took up to her (I stepp-ed)
Not knowing her as she passed me by
I step'ed up to her, thinking (for) to view her
She appeared to me like some virtuous bride.

I said fair maid where are you going
Or what is the occasion for all your grief (And what's the...)
I'll make you as happy as any lady (I will)
If you will grant me some small relief. (me once more a leave)

Stand off, stand off, you are quite deceitful (She said stand off, you are deceitful)
You've been a false deceitful man 'tis plain (You are deceitful and a false young man)
It's(It is) you that's caused my poor heart (for) to wander
(And) To give me comfort it is all in vain. (comfort lies all...)

I'll go down into (in) some lonesome valley
(Where) No man on earth shall there me find (there = e'er)
Where the pretty (little small) birds shall change their voices (shall=do)
At(And) every moment shall blow blusterous winds (shall blow=blows)

Come all you young maids(men) that go a courting
Pray give(pay) attention to what I say
For there's many a dark and cloudy morning (There is many a dark and a...)
Turns out to be a sun-shining day (shining=shiny)

Not exactly the language of a ploughlad. Such pieces derive from the many musical pastoral plays of the early 19th century but they first hit the streets in the form of a broadside. The many broadside printings are pretty much verbatim the Catnach piece and oral versions deviate from this about as much as the version given above. There shouldn't be any reason to give the oral version's source, but suffice it to say Jon Dudley would recognise it straight away.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Jan 18 - 03:27 PM

I said I wasn't going to discuss individual songs but there's nothing to show that this wasn't taken from the tradition and altered to suit an urban audience - it's origins and percentages that concern methat concern me
I suggest you listen to Phil Tanner sing it and come back and tell me it sounds like a broadside compostion
I would appreciate a response to some of your claims though
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 04:36 AM

"Sorry Richard, but he specifies that he regards folk sons as anything folk singers sing, so presumably if one o the singers happened to be a member of the local light opera society the Roud index would include selections from 'The Student Prince'"

That's not quite what Roud is saying. His message is that it is not a song's origins which make it 'folk', but what the folk have done with it. That is not the same as saying that anything sung by a 'folk singer' is therefore folk.

For Jim, it appears that an important aspect of folk song is that it shows that working- class culture is to be valued, and he is understandably sensitive to anything which seems to undermine this. Roud's interest is in how these songs evolved and how they were used. He doesn't appear to be particularly interested in making any claims either for or against working-class creativity. As I read it, he is not intending an attack on the working class, he is simply not taking a 'class-conscious' approach, perhaps in contrast to Harker and others, whose Marxist analysis he criticises strongly.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 05:00 AM

"His message is that it is not a song's origins which make it 'folk', but what the folk have done with it. "
Same thing Richard
Roud removes any possibility of the uniqueness of folk song by including 'everything that the folk sang'
Had the tradition continued, 'The Birdie Song' and 'Oobladee, Ooblada' would have had Roud numbers
Sam Larner had a large number of American Moody and Sankey hymns in his repertoire - do they merit Roud numbers?
Anybody who has ever tried to sing what we have always accepted as a folk song knows that they differ greatly from all other kind of song - it is those differences that should be discussed
Roud has neatly sidestepped that by not including song texts and not giving a discography we can use as a guide
Either shoddy scholarship or agenda driving
He has also not included what little we have of traditional singers opinions
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 07:54 AM

Jim, interesting point Alfred Williams collected everything people were singing , the result was a historical and accurate picture of what was being sung by people in that loclity at that time, whether they are folk songs or whether we wish to sing them is a different subject, yes you are correct either shody scholarship or agenda driving

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 10:00 AM

As the Sandman pointed out, the notion that a collector should include every item a singer performs isn't new. For instance, D. K. Wilgus criticized Cecil Sharp for omitting from his Appalachian collection recently-composed parlour songs known to be popular with mountain singers at the time.

Steve Roud's scholarship certainly isn't shoddy, and on the question of commercial songs becoming absorbed into 'folk' repertoire he's pretty much in line with the 1954 definition, stating at one point that a song ideally needs to have been passed down a couple of generations to qualify. Though, as I discussed in my post of September 29th, he does leave some ambiguity about that.

Sam Larner's Sankey & Moody hymns are an interesting case. Going back to Sharp, one of the criticisms levelled persistently at his work by American scholars is that he ignored the hymns that were a vibrant element in the repertoires of many Appalachian singers. This isn't actually correct, since he actually noted down several hymns that were straight out of books like 'Southern Harmony' and 'The Social Harp', knowingly or otherwise. All of these have Roud numbers - how could it be otherwise, given that they are in Sharp's collection? So should the Roud number be withdrawn because a given hymn is shown later to have come from a book? I've no doubt that Steve has thought carefully before deciding whether to allocate a number, for every one of the songs he's examined.

Anybody who has ever tried to sing what we have always accepted as a folk song knows that they differ greatly from all other kind of song

A lot of the differences that you and I would perceive are matters of musical and lyrical form, which in turn relate to the historical period in which many of our classic folk songs evolved. I understand that there are some (including previous posters to this thread) who have preferred Roud's FSE to talk more about the songs themselves, but that isn't the point of the book. It's a very thorough historical analysis of vernacular singing, that treats the Sharpian concept of folksong with respect but doesn't confine itself to that concept, and thus encourages us to at least think about its strengths and weaknesses.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 11:51 AM

"I would perceive are matters of musical and lyrical form, "
I believe that the universal and timeless quality of folk songs accounts for their survival - once you view them as a singer you come to realise that a centuries old song can still say something about you as an individual
That is basically what MacColl and the Critics spent nearly ten years exploring and I belive it is what the singers we interviewed meant when they described their songs as "true"
Walter Pardon, Tom Lenihan and Mikeen McCarthy all described how they saw 'pictures' when they sang
As we knew Mikeen the best and the longest, we once conducted an experiment that we would never have carried out with somebody who we suspected might have become self-conscious after such an exercise
Mikeen had a mixture of songs, mainly traditional, with some early popular songs thrown in.
We got him to sing one of his traditional songs and recorded him describing what he saw - extensive and detailed, sometimes staggeringly so.
We repeated the exercise with a popular song - nothing
WE did this three times with the same result
Without actually using specific songs, we asked Walter Pardon about his pictures - he spoke at length about the pictures he saw and volunteered the information that those he described as not being 'the old folk songs' produced no such pictures
Mary Delaney had been blind from birth yet she spoke in terms of colours, sizes and hair styles - beyond me!
If talking about the songs and examining the context of song texts is not what the book is about, I'm at a loss to know why Roud calls it 'Folk Songs of England'
The greatest problem of our understanding of folk songs is that nobody ever asked the singers how they felt about then - this is led to a history of academic kite-flying
I suspect what this book is.
To ignore the basic beliefs of over a century's research by some of our greatest and most dedicated scholars is comparable to the Khmer Rouges 'return to the year zero'
Dave Harker approached his work on what amounted to personal attacks on the early collectors - Steve Gardham has described Child as an elitist and suggested he was incapable of separating his work on the ballads from that of formalal poetry
" He was Professor of English at Harvard. His previous work included a 30-vol critical edition of 'The English Poets'.Don't you think that colours some of his choices?"
Songs "being absorbed in the folk repertoire" is a meaningless term
It would mean that whatever any traditional singer who joined a local choir (as Walter's forbears did) or say, light opera society sang would automatically become a folk song.
It's the old 'singing horse' definition writ large
Jean Richie summed up beautifully how the old singers discriminated in their songs when she was collecting in Britain in the 1950s
She said (paraphrasing):
"if you asked for the old songs, you could get anything from Danny Boy tyo any of the mawkishly sentimental popular songs they had learned in their youth
Ask them if they knew 'Barbara Allen' and that's when the old folk songs songs would come pouring in".
Mary Delaney had as many Country and Western songs in her repertoire as she had traditional songs, yet she blankly refused to sing any of them
telling us "I only learned them because that's what the lads ask for down the pub".
She described all her traditional songs as "my daddy's songs" - she had dozens, when we recorded him he had six.
Their opinion has to be taken into consideration - Roud had the opportunity to include at least a a few of those opinions yet, once again - the real experts - the singers, were never consulted.
If that's not 'shoddy' than it's agenda driving.
Roud's book is of enormous interest to those who wish to lean about popular music of the past, but I fear that, taken uncritically it can do the same damage to folk song scholarship as the 'anything goes' policy has done to the club scene
It is pointless quoting the '54 definition which is largely based on Sharp's work if you have rejected the conclusions that that definition was based on
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 12:16 PM

It is pointless quoting the '54 definition which is largely based on Sharp's work if you have rejected the conclusions that that definition was based on

I don't want to go too far down the road of angels and pinheads, but 1954 extended Sharp's concept to include songs with a known composer - provided they had been absorbed and refashioned by the community. Roud as far as I can see is saying no more than this, although there may be ambiguities over what constitutes 'refashioning'. Those light opera songs you mention were never going to be the kind of songs Walter's relatives would sing down the pub.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 12:41 PM

> Anybody who has ever tried to sing what we have always accepted as a folk song knows that they differ greatly from all other kind of song - it is those differences that should be discussed

It's not black and white: there are many colours.

"what we have always accepted as a folk song" won't have exactly the same boundaries for all of us, so let's focus on what I am calling the classic corpus, the material collected by Sharp et al. Within that there are quite different kinds of song: for example the bucolic "Colin and Phoebe" sort, the ballads about battles between Scottish lords or lairds, those about sea battles, those like The Two Sisters and The Two Brothers that are set in no particular time and place, etc. To my mind the differences between those kinds are as great as between them and songs from the music hall.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 12:46 PM

" provided they had been absorbed and refashioned by the community."
It depends on how you construe the term 'absorbed'
Does repeating a song mean it has been absorbed - not in my book, it doesn't
I believe it to be far more complicated that that - it involved ownership and identification.
Let's face it, as far as communities are concerned, the popular songs all came with a shelf-life as do all popular songs - shorter nowadays than they once were
Largely they came into the repertoires stillborn and remained unaltered.
One of the great mistakes in assessing our folk-songs is regarding them as 'entertainment'
They were thi, of course, but they were much, much more than that.
Harry Cox's "and that's what they thought of us" piece of venom makes in clear that there was something going on between him and Betsy the Serving Maid' than immediately meets the ear.
We got similar responses from the singers we met.
'Pop's' Johnny Connors entitling his version of Edward' 'Cain and Abel' and claiming that Cain was the founder of the Travelling people was the first time we ever came across this
We were not the only ones to have noticed this relationship between traditional singers and their songs
Ken Goldstein had similar experiences, particularly with a New York State singer Sara Cleveland - the work done by Lomax with Texas Gladden touches on the same theme
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 01:00 PM

"It's not black and white: there are many colours."
Of course there are - within genres of songs
It's lumping all the genres together that disturbs me
This is why I feel it virtually impossible to discuss this subject without discussing the function of the songs and what prompted them to be made in the first place
Much of this work has been done by the more serious of the revival singers
I have to say I am at a loss to understand Steve Round's take on the revival - his description rages from denim clad, guitar strumming activists to agenda driven Marxists - he appears to be unaware of the serious work that was done by some performers.
When he described his own personal tastes in one interview he cited two women singers both as far away from traditional singing as you could possibly get - arcetypical breathy 'little girl' voices, gappy - 'note-per-syllable' phrasing, non-narrative and no discernable interpretation.
Maybe we're talking about a different type of folk song
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 01:15 PM

I have been reading and reacting to almost every word said in this thread - but had decided that it no longer needed my input -
However.....Jim - I think you live in a different world to me and the majority of posters here.

Good luck to you and your world - but I really don't know what you want of others....and the "insults" you write regarding Steve's selection of singers he likes....is way beyond even your previous statements, and not necessary.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 01:33 PM

"Jim - I think you live in a different world to me and the majority of posters here."
Sorry you feel the need to analyze my position in the universe without responding to ant of the points I've made Tim - particularly the ones on whether you believe working people to have been capable of making their own songs or the implications of disenfranchising and entir social class as composers of their own culture
Ah- well - at least you're not alone regarding those
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 02:00 PM

"you write regarding Steve's selection of singers he likes....is way beyond even your previous statements, and not necessary."
Why - is not part of what we are discussing what good folk singing sounds like?
Our traditional singers tended to pitch their singing around natural speaking tones and their approach was narrative
If Steve R feels free to comment as he does on a revival I was part of for nearly half a century, then I see no reason why I should not be able to comment of what he feels to be good folk singing
I get a little tired of being told that things are "good" when I believe they are patently not
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 02:00 PM

This is typical of JC's twisting and turning and misquoting or, if I am overgenerous, simply perhaps misunderstanding. No-one on any thread or in any book in recent years has suggested working people are incapable of making their own songs. Quite the contrary, we have gone to great pains to give him examples of working people making their own songs. As a field worker myself I have come across plenty of examples, some of which he has declared are not folk songs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 05:39 PM

More on 'The Maids of Australia' The English broadside printed by Such (London) and by Pearson (Manchester) are the same 7 verse text along with a printing without imprint in the Holt Collection. The Such printing can be seen on the Bodleian Broadside Ballads website.
The GPB version seems to mainly derive from the longer English printings. Sanderson, GPB, Such and Pearson were all printing past 1900, although I'd guess the earliest of these would be about 1865.

2 lines in the last verse which differ in the 2 versions, I can't make my mind up which makes the most sense if any at all. The GPB version does at least rhyme more closely, but that doesn't really tell us much.

Such et al.
'Long time on her bosom my face I did hide
Till the sun in the west its visits declined.'

GPB
'Long time did my head on her bosom recline,
Till the sun in the west did its limits resign.'

Perhaps they're both equally crap!

Now to check out the oral versions. More anon.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 04:59 AM

"No-one on any thread or in any book in recent years has suggested working people are incapable of making their own songs"
This is exactly what you have done here in regard to folk songs - the only example we have ever had of "a voice of the people"
You claim that that "voice" rather than being the voice of the people, is that of poor poets doing it for money.
If that is true, working people have left no record behind them of their lives, experiences and aspirations
You even denigrated the oral tradition by comparing it to the work of "the lowest of the broadside hacks in an attept to explain a poor version of "Higher Germany"
"Its poor construction and inconsistency might suggest having come from oral tradition, but it could also be down to the fact that such jobs were given to the lowest apprentices in the printers at the bottom of the market. It's not possible to say whether it precedes or derives from 'High Germany'"
Your claim has wavered fro 90% to 100% of our folk songs being commercially produced products.
Your responses to being challenged have been at best inconsistent and evasive, right through to being personally insulting as now, where you are all but calling me a liar
"This is typical of JC's twisting and turning and misquoting or, if I am overgenerous, simply perhaps misunderstanding."
I have set my case out as clearly as I can, I am not politically motivated as you have suggested, I am not an attention seeker, as you have suggested, nor am I a liar as you have also suggested
I have insulted no-one here, though you suggest I have
I have doubts of your abilities as a researcher, based on what you have come up with and the inconsistencies you use to defend it, but your aggressive and insulting behaviour makes you everything you have accused me of being
It's about time you addressed the points I am making instead of hurling childish abuse
I certainly have no intentions of being bullied and blustered out of expressing my opinions on this matter
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 05:35 AM

Steve: "No-one on any thread or in any book in recent years has suggested working people are incapable of making their own songs"

Jim: "This is exactly what you have done here in regard to folk songs - the only example we have ever had of "a voice of the people"
You claim that that "voice" rather than being the voice of the people, is that of poor poets doing it for money."

Sorry Jim but you are misrepresenting what has been said. The claim is that most of the collected songs were originally made for broadsides or started in the theatre etc and went from there to broadsides and from those to the folk. No-one has suggested that this applies to all the songs.

It has also been pointed out that songs made by ordinary people may have never got widely disseminated so never got collected. If they have vanished without trace we can have no idea how good or bad they were or how many of them existed.

If the "voice" that you're concerned with is that of common people making songs, rather than liking, learning and singing songs originally made by professional writers, then by all means focus on the ones that seem to best express those common people's experiences. Whether a song was actually made by (for example) a sailor or by a broadside writer based on a conversation with a sailor may be less important, but take account of that as well if you can.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 06:00 AM

"The claim is that most of the collected songs were originally made for broadsides or started in the theatre etc and went from there to broadsides and from those to the folk. No-one has suggested that this applies to all the songs."
THe claim is between 94 and 100 per cent - either casts doubt than any originated with 'the people' that they have been attributed to for the last century or so
"It has also been pointed out that songs made by ordinary people may have never got widely disseminated so never got collected."
We don't know how many were disseminated - we have to either base our assumptions on those collected fro a tradition in a poor state of health or, more logically, go to English speaking traditions that were healthier - the Scots, the Irish and most of all the non-literate Travellers
We also need to examine the contents of the songs to see if there is anything in them to suggest their origins - I have spent half a lifetime doing just that and also interviewing singers from either living or only recently deceased traditions.
"Liking " has nothing to do with this, listening has a great deal.
This is the level we should be discussing this - not slinging personal insults.
I would suggest that most if not all our folk songs are based on experiences and emotions that still apply to us all - that's what makes them important
You can't do that from a book that admits it deals with songs only "in passing"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 07:07 AM

"The claim is between 94 and 100 per cent"
Where is that claim?

"We don't know how many were disseminated - we have to either base our assumptions on those collected fro a tradition in a poor state of health or, more logically, go to English speaking traditions that were healthier - the Scots, the Irish and most of all the non-literate Travellers"

Steve Roud's book deals with what went on among ordinary people in England. Evidence from other countries could indicate how things may have been in England but it's not certain. We can't know what songs were made by ordinary people except where either someone documented them at the time or they survived in the tradition long enough to be collected.

"Liking " has nothing to do with this, listening has a great deal.

Liking has everything to do with which songs survived (wherever they started) and which ones died. Some singers may have learnt and sung songs that they personally didn't much like for the sake of pleasing audiences, but if neither singers nor audiences like a song it won't survive very long.

"This is the level we should be discussing this - not slinging personal insults."

We've had plenty of strong criticisms of other people's opinions on this thread but I haven't seen many personal insults, and of course we should be avoiding those. Let's continue to respect each other as individuals and even opinions that we disagree with.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 08:03 AM

"Where is that claim?"
"I've put it up already Richard - do you really wish to do so again - probably save a bit of time if I do
Subject: RE: 'Historical' Ballads
From: Steve Gardham - PM
Date: 19 Apr 11 - 05:14 PM
You're now changing my 95% into 100%, Jim.
"Steve Roud's book deals with what went on among ordinary people in England. "
Yet Roud tore down the barriers between what the ordinary people sang and what it has always been believed they actually made to express their own emotions and opinions
If he is right, the o.ps are still participating in a healthy living tradition in the karaoki venues in Britain - that has become the new folk music.
I don't think anybody is seriously claiming that, but that is the logic of the new definition.
"Liking has everything to do with which songs survived"
Liking has nothing to do with defining the genre of a song - I like some operatic arias, but they remain what they are
Why the singers sang what they did is a question that needs addressing, but I don't think the term "audiences" is a helpful one in this respect
I believe the songs survived because they had something to say about the lives and communities of the people who sang them
It is inconceivable to me that people in these circumstances actually learned songs they didn't like
The Tradition ended when print, radio, manufactured entertainment... replaced the home-made songs
That was when the ordinary people (hate that term) ceased to be creative participants in their culture and became passive obd=servers of it.
We wer told a story by a man in Winterton in Norfolk, Jim Larner (no relation as far as we could make out).
He described an old man walking into the local pub, 'The Fishermans Return' where Sam used to sing and seeing a new-fangled cats-whisker radio on the counter
He asked what it was and the publican told him that it was a gadget for bringing in music and news from London.
The old man swept the radio off the shelf and it smashed to pieces on the floor - it wasn't replaced till decades later.
That's what Mrs Laidlaw was saying taken to the extreme.
"I haven't seen many personal insults,"
Then you've been very selective in your reading - Steve is still trading in them
A have a PM from Steve that counts as hate mail - I have no intention of using it here, but I have it for future reference
I may get passionate and angry but I have not dealt in personal insults here and only do in return for persistent personal insulting from others elsewhere
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 08:16 AM

I'm beginning to wonder if we're all reading the same book.

Roud spends some time discussing the difficulty of defining 'folk song', and repeatedly refers to the imprecision of the term. He is also clear that for the purposes of the book it is "the process through which songs pass, in the brains and voices of ordinary people, which stamps them as 'folk'. Therefore, songs which the common people have adopted as their own, regardless of origin, constitute in some way their collective voice, and are 'folk songs'"

To me, this doesn't appear to be a particularly contentious or unusual interpretation and it reflects the 1954 definition. The difficulty with defining folk is not so much the broad concept but around the margins, and especially in pinning it down in the case of individual songs.

He also explains why he doesn't give song texts - lack of space. The book is already a bit of a brick at more than 700 pages, and to include texts would make it unwieldy or require another volume. He points out that texts (and tunes) are readily available online and provides the references to seek them out. Where it is necessary to quote a text to demonstrate a particular point he does so.

The final chapters spend some time discussing what individual singers thought about their songs, and their own accounts of how they came by them - from other singers, from printed sources, and in the 20th century from gramophone records. It also describes how songs were made in the community, both by individuals and by committee, although he makes the point that these often didn't survive for long, being too topical and too local. He also records that folk singers provided broadsheet printers with many songs.

The book can probably be criticised on a number of grounds - it would be remarkable if that were not the case. It is perhaps fair to say that it doesn't really explore how this process of adoption makes these songs special in themselves, or whether this idea is really only wishful thinking on the part of modern enthusiasts. However that isn't the aim of the book, which is to explore the social history of popular song which provided the environment in which this took place, and to show that 'folk song' didn't exist in cultural isolation but was part of, and drew on, a wider musical landscape.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 09:40 AM

"I've put it up already Richard - do you really wish to do so again - probably save a bit of time if I do
Subject: RE: 'Historical' Ballads
From: Steve Gardham - PM
Date: 19 Apr 11 - 05:14 PM
You're now changing my 95% into 100%, Jim.

You've shot yourself in the foot there Jim. That quotation from him followed one where you seemed to be attributing to him a figure of 100%. Possibly that wasn't what you meant. Anyway his figure was and is 95%.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 09:47 AM

"Roud spends some time discussing the difficulty of defining 'folk song'"
There really hasn't been any difficulty defining folk songs until relatively recently when a number of clubs decided that they wished to move away from the traditional repertoire and include music hall, Victorian parlour ballads, pop songs from earlier years (which gradually got less and less early) and eventually anything they wished to call 'folk'
THe damage done to the club scene speaks for itself - those of us who had apprenticed ourselves to a specific type of song simply walked away from the scene and sought our songs elsewhere other than the clubs.
We have a large library of folk material - I could pull down one from a hundred or so collections and say - there - that's what I mean by folk song
The last large set we added to our collection was the 8 volume 'Greig Duncan Folk Song Collection'
Before the term 'folk' became the popular form af describing this specific type of song, ther were referred to as 'popular' - of the people - as in Child's 'English and Scottish Popular Ballads'
The term is an internationally accepted one - we have numerous examples of folk songs from other countries
What on earth is difficult about that?
These difficulties' have been wished into existence by a small number of researchers for god knows what reason.
We don't need a definition to enjoy any type of music - we enjoy it for what it is, but if we are going to understand it, we need to reach a consensus of what we are referring to - no consensus has been sought here, no referenda to decide whether the existing definition is no longer valid, what scholarship has taken place has been rejected by a few people who are now declaring they have an answer that has always been available and largely rejected.
Child worked on the broadsides and described them as he did, carefully discriminating between the jewels and the dung.
Sharp held the same opinion - both lived at the time when the broadside industry was still functioning; if our songs originated on the broadside presses they were in a far better position to have judged that we are.
The way past scolarship has been regarded is little short of disgraceful in my opinion - Child becomes an "elitist" incapable of sorting Art poetry from traditional ballads, Sharp is agenda driven.
The rest are regarded similarly
Here I have become an attention seeking politico liar
The ivory tower nature of accepting this change is clearly stated when I was told that if I disagreed with it I should write my own book - very reminiscent of a revival that resented all kinds of criticism, particularly that of its superstars
This behaviour sickens me
I am appalled at the readiness of people to refuse to discuss the implications of taking the credit from the people who have always been considered the creators of folk song and giving it to doggerel writers
I'll deal with the rest of your posing later
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 10:14 AM

Once again, Howard Jones' post above seems to make entire sense to me. There is nothing in the post the does not seem to me to reflect entirely the methods and approach that Steve Roud adopts throughout his book. Howard pinpoints the reasons why there are so few songs reproduced in it and to that could be added the reasons why he does not deal with the folk revival - by the time that emerged (circa 1950) the tradition only survived in fragmentary form in a few parts of England. Some, not all, of the traditional performers who became involved in the folk club movement saw it as a potential source of material. Three examples of this that come to mind straight away would be Fred Jordan, George Belton and Sheila Stewart (yes, I know not English, but she learned and subsequently sang a song that she learned at our folk club).
He also asks us not to obsess on origins because that only leads to a chicken & egg situation which we cannot resolve satifactorily. Rather, we should draw conclusions on ideas and theories that we can give evidence for and not what we woukd like to be the case, whilst keeping an open mind of what future research may discover.
On pages 24 - 25 in the chapter on definition, Steve gives a list saying, "The following statements will help us to put these abstract concepts into context, and add some details". The list also gives the thrust of what the book is going to be about. -

* It is not the origin of a song that makes it folk but the transmission within the folk tradition which makes it so.
* It is not where it comes from that matters, but what the folk do with it (what some people summarise as 'folk song by destination' rather than 'folk song by origin').
* Folk song is not only defined partly by its social context; it relies on that context for its existence.
* Folk song does not exist in a cultural or musical vacuum.
* Oral/aural transmission has always been an extremely important component m folk traditions, but since the invention of printing, there has probably never been a purely 'oral' tradition, even among the lower classes.
* However learnt (even if from print or musical notation), performance is normally carried without the aid of written text or notated tune.
* The folk have always taken their material from anywhere they liked, in whatever medium they have found convenient. As soon as new media, such as recorded sound, films and broadcasting became available, these were readily adopted as sources of new songs.
* Within an active tradition, songs are passed from person to person and thereby down the generations. New or different songs can enter a local tradition at any time.
* If nobody in the community likes a song enough to learn it, it will die within that community, but this is not the only possible reason for the 'death' of a song.
* Folk songs are not necessarily very old, but they must have been around long enough to become part of this traditional transmission (two generations might be an acceptable rule of thumb).
* Like all human cultural activities, folk song is not static but is in a continual state of flux, and has always changed over time, A new song usually loses its origin and becomes anonymous and common property.
* The people themselves rarely have an 'original' of a song with which they can compare their own version.
* From the folklorist s point of view, no version of a song is 'better' than another, but singers themselves will have criteria by which they will judge songs and performances.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 10:24 AM

THat answers none of the points I made Vic
This, as far as I am concerned over-rides all of them
""If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'."
Weare talking about a specific type of song - if that is no longer applicacble it is up to all of us to agree to make the changes
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 10:26 AM

Should have added - that specific type of song has reveled in the description 'folk song' for well over a century
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 02:08 PM

From: Steve Gardham - PM
Date: 01 Oct 17 - 12:26 PM

Just to clarify Jim's comment at 11.28.

Fact: Of published English traditional folk songs 89% had their first extant manifestation on some form of commercial production in urban areas.

My opinion, take or leave, 95% of this corpus came from the same source. Many ephemeral printed pieces did not survive. We know this from the many catalogues that do survive.

This was posted on this thread on the above date. The same 2 statements have been posted on other threads several times. I find it sad that I have to keep reproducing it because one individual keeps twisting what it says.

That individual appears to hold the opinion that a certain substantial percentage of English folk songs from the main corpus originated in places other than the urban environment. We are not told what that percentage might be, presumably because he has not done the required research that others have.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 03:12 PM

""If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'.
jim, they are folk songs under the 1954 definition if football crowds start singing them

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 03:16 PM

""If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'."

I see little in common between any two of those five songs, beyond the fact that all five have appealed to, and been sung by, lots of people.

They are of five different vintages.

'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are both political (in different ways), but so is 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'. The latter two both concern the "class struggle".

'The Outlandish Knight' and Searching for Lambs' both concern courtship, but under drastically different circumstances.

As for the quality of the poetry: I'd put 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife' well ahead of the other four, but that's a personal opinion.

Jim, what attribute do you see as being clearly shared by your last three but neither of your first two?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 03:28 PM

"My opinion, take or leave, 95% of this corpus came from the same source"
"You're now changing my 95% into 100%, Jim."
We'll leave the fact that you have also claimed 100% as well for a moment
"My opinion, take or leave, 95% of this corpus came from the same source"
Over the same time period I presume ?
Anybody who has read anything with any perception know that styles alter over in time so it is impossible to compare anything over different periods
The only solid evidence you have is the original published date - no idea if any song appeared before that date
Nobody here has come up with a statement that working people were capable of having produced such songs so we have to assume from their silence that they don't wish to commit themselves - fine by me, I can take that silence to mean whatever I want it to mean.
"We are not told what that percentage might be, presumably because he has not done the required research that others have.?" hw ****** arrogant can you get - whatever I might or might not have done, there has been over a century's worth of research carried out on this particular genre of songs, locally, nationally and internationally, all having fully accepted up to now that the people who sang the songs quite likely made them
You say these people weren't Gods, yet it is you people who are challenging centuries of work
I don't know how many songs were made by the people and I wouldn't be arrogant enough to claim I did - that would be the work of gods, given how little we know about both broadside and folk composing.
I have no ambitions to sainthood, I leave that to the more ambitious.
I've laid out the facts as I know them or believe them to be true - no more
Fat - we ghave a genre of songs that have been around at least since the time of The Venerable Bede - fairly well substantiated
Since a group of enterprising pioneers came across them they have been pt under faily intense scrutiny - pretty well all those involved accepted without challenge that they were made by the lower classes - no serious challenge until Dave Harker's viciousness.
Back in the seventies Maccoll gave me a study package produced by an American research team of song experts headed by Alan Lomax who had embarked on an intense study of international folk song, attempting to identify forms, disciplines, vocal techniques, poetic forms.... and put them into aa societal context - the project was entitled 'Cantometrics' (song measurement) - a further project (Choreometrics), did the same job on dance carried out by dance experts
Ewan wanted me to get it reviewed for the Folk Music Journal and the then editor, Mike Yate agreed that I do the review - I didn't want to and I shouldn't have done it)
The team examined folk son in minute detail, linking each nations songs to their social systems, language, geography, cultural influences....
Not one researcher, after such close scrutiny, felt the need to revise their opinions on the source of folk songs
Wonder what they missed - or maybe they were all agenda driven elitists like Child and Sharp!!
Now small group of largely print bound 'experts' have decided that all the experts of the past gott it arse-uppards
Yeah - give me a pen - where do I sign up to that one!!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 03:32 PM

'I said I was not going into the single songs cul-de-sac and that is what I meant' JC. Jan 4, 10.14 a.m.

'I said I wasn't going to discuss individual songs' JC. Jan 4, 03.27 p.m.

'We also need to examine the contents of the songs to see if there is anything in them to suggest their origins' JC. Jan 6. 06.00 a.m.

There must be 2 JCs on this thread.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 03:47 PM

largely print bound 'experts'

Wrong ,wrong, wrong again!

Both Steve Roud and I have spent our lives immersed in traditional music at least every bit as much as JC, as performers, field workers, dancers, mummers, organisers, callers, etc. etc. Neither of us has ever used the word 'experts' to describe ourselves, nor would we. And by the way we are not a 'small' group in terms of folk song research.
Which 'large' group does JC belong to I wonder.

'I doe but shoote your owne arrow back againe' (16th century).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 04:06 AM

"There must be 2 JCs on this thread."
We all need to examine the contents of the material as a body and see if your claim floats - your aggressive and insulting responses to any form of challenge leaves me with the feeling that you are not someone I wish to do that with
We have already tried it in an earlier thread and became bogged down in unnecessary incidentals.
I have not tolerated your insulting and patronising behaviour in the hope that I might change your mind - but in the chance that someone with less of an agenda than yours (happy to say that in the light of your already having accused be of having a political one and being an attention seeker) will weigh in with other opinions

None of this can be decided by two people slugging it out on a forum that has made 'what is folksong' a no go area' and discussion on the ideas and achievements of one of the greatest contributors to our pleasure and understanding of modern folk song performance a minefield of 'name-change' and army record.
If we are going to make any sense of folk song and save it from the same fate of the club scene that burned out when its foundations were destroyed by lack of direction, there has to be some sort of meeting of minds from all with an interest - not from messiahs who appear to have stumbled across the answer.
That discussion has to take into consideration what the earlier researchers had to say and if they got is so fundamentally wrong, why they did (without the 'adenda driving' and 'elitist' garbage)
We also need to take into consideration what little we have from the singers themselves.
The positive things that came out of the revival (not the performances or the faddiness, but the writing that was done in the form of magazine articles (when the revival had such things) and sleeve notes
The Critics group did what amounted to nearly ten years research on song texts in order to sing them - mostly recorded.
Parker, MacColl, Lomax, Roy Palmer, Mike Yates.... and others interviewed some of our best sings, some of whom had participated in living traditions - all need to be got together and examined - a life's work for a future generation.
Work done by those researching traditions other than the little tiny dying corner we are talking about here, need to be looked at - Hamish Henderson, Peter Cook, Peter Hall, Hugh Shields, Tom Munnelly, John Moulden....
The last thing we need to be told is that our tradition was created for money and is no different than the output of the pop industry - which doesn't make sense anyway.

With a few notable exceptions, Folk academia seems to have shrunk into an introspective freemasonry talking to each other in "a language that the stranger does not know" and producing books that are sold at prices people don't wish to or are unable to pay.
E.F.D.S.S. should have been at the forefront of of any discussion but it is difficult to see where they stand at present
I am not able to attend T.S.F. meetings (the last one I attended several of us from Ireland spoke at) but I had hopes that they could expand and move outside of their meetings - I'm not sure now.

I don't have any answers, but I'm damn sure that lumping folk songs in with all the musical dross that was accepted for a time than forgotten, to be replaced by more musical dross, isn't one of them
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 04:41 AM

The TSF is closely affiliated to the EFDSS, in fact it should be seen as the research arm of that body. Apart from that take a look at the website, both TSF's and EFDSS, plus tthe Folk Music Journal.

Out of touch with both Folksong Research and the British Folk Scene.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 05:19 AM

Do your really
y think I haven't Steve?
My statement was made on the basis of my having looked
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 05:40 AM

It seems to me that there has always been a problem in folk song research, whereby people come to folk song and traditional music with some idea that they want it to conform to, and then they have great difficulty accepting that it doesn't.

Some wanted folk song to be an expression of class anger on behalf of the working classes.

Some wanted folk song (and folklore more generally) to be all about the supernatural, or about survivals from pre-Christian religion.

Some wanted folk song to be a sort of well-spring of uniquely English music to counter the dominance of German music.

Some wanted folk song to represent the survival of the ancient church modes in a world where art music had left them behind.

Jim seems to want folk song to represent a body of music composed by non-literate, anonymous members of the communities in which it was sung.

One of the things I love about English folk music is the way in which it stubbornly resists all of these generalisations and more. Like the English people, it's contradictory and inconsistent and wilful, and if you want to lead it somewhere, it won't follow.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 06:58 AM

"Some wanted folk song to be an expression of class anger on behalf of the working classes."
Nobody I met ever wanted it to be that
Some people used it to express their own political beliefs, notably CND and The American Civil rights movement, but that's not claiming that the songs expressed political anger - the latter were largely using spirituals
"Some wanted folk song (and folklore more generally) to be all about the supernatural, or about survivals from pre-Christian religion."
That was a very early approach that largely disappeared with Wimberly's more or less definitive work
"English music to counter the dominance of German music."
That was Sharp's original aim, similar approaches were taken by Bartok and Kodaly in Europe
In each case, the collectors and researchers came to the idea that Folk Music could stand on its own two feet as an art form in itself
Sharp's 'Some Conclusions' for all its faults, was an attempt to understand folk musc for what it meant to the folk,
Don't know enough about Church music to comment
"Jim seems to want folk song to represent a body of music composed by non-literate, anonymous members of the communities in which it was sung."
Not me Rigby - that is what the bulk of scholarship accepted as early as William Motherwell when he wrote'Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern" in 1846
Please don't make this "my" theory - it has been the long accepted belief up to comparatively recently
Watever the truth, all these 'generalisations' have a validity of one degree and another - that is why the statement by MacColl that started this shouting match is so important
"Some of them have been centuries in the making, some of them undoubtedly were born on the broadside presses. Some have the marvellous perfection of stones shaped by the sea's movement. Others are as brash as a cup-final crowd. They were made by professional bards and by unknown poets at the plough-stilts and the handloom. "
There's nothing dogmatic about that - rightly raises the possibility that our folk songs came from several sources - it was that that suggestion that elicited Steve's accusation of naivety - everything went downhill from then on
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 07:56 AM

'One of the things I love about English folk music is the way in which it stubbornly resists all of these generalisations and more. Like the English people, it's contradictory and inconsistent and wilful, and if you want to lead it somewhere, it won't follow.'

Great statement! Is it your own? Who do I come to to quote it in future publications? (Ros?)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 08:21 AM

"Great statement! "
It is indeed, but it's far from new, and it applies to those who would attempt to tie folk song (or even 95% of it) down to a single source
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 08:22 AM

Yes that was my statement, if you really think it quotable please use it as you see fit! I don't mind if you attribute it or not, but if you do, my name is Sam Inglis. I should get around to registering here under my own name some time.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 09:00 AM

Please do, Sam. Your input would be valued.

ploughlads, weavers, farm hands, broadsides, pleasure gardens, theatres, Music Hall, glee clubs, song cellars, seamen, hard-up poets, parlour songs, etc., etc., hardly a 'single source'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 09:26 AM

'I suggest you listen to Phil Tanner sing it and come back and tell me it sounds like a broadside compostion' (JC) Jan 3rd 3.27

Magnificent performance as ever, but we can't escape from the fact that Phil's 4 verses are almost verbatim 4 of the verses from the standard seminal broadside.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 09:32 AM

"The last thing we need to be told is that our tradition was created for money and is no different than the output of the pop industry - which doesn't make sense anyway."

Why doesn't it make sense? I understand why Jim may find the idea distasteful, but unless folk culture existed in a bubble cut off from all outside influences it seems entirely plausible to me. Roud's case is that there was an extensive musical culture comprising both performance and publication, and that the 'folk' weren't isolated from this but were active participants. Perhaps the more remote rural areas were cut off from this, but even these had opportunities to hear new songs at fairs and from travelling players, or they may have got them second-hand from itinerant workers who brought songs with them. In a society where nearly everybody sang, it seems entirely probable to me that they would seize on the latest songs. Most of these would rapidly drop out of fashion, but some would last.

This does not rule out that some songs were composed within the community itself - even though a large proportion of collected songs can be traced back to printed versions, that still leaves the rest, and many printed songs weren't original but had been collected from singers. And whilst printed versions may have first disseminated the songs, from then on they would probably be passed on by oral transmission.

Roud's other point is that origin doesn't matter, it is what the folk then did with it which makes it a folk song. The issue of new songs doesn't undermine this. A brand-new song in the mouth of a folk singer nevertheless isn't a 'folk song' because for it to be adopted and taken up by the community takes time. However at any one time there will always be a number of new-ish songs in the repertoire on their way to being adopted (or being dropped) which fall into a grey area - still new enough to be distinguishable as such, and not yet fully-fledged folk songs. Had the English tradition continued uninterrupted we would probably have found by now that the music hall and minstrel songs of the 19th century had become fully integrated folk songs, just as their 18th century and earlier counterparts had been by the time the first collectors got on their bikes.

As an aside, ?17.99 is a fairly standard price for a hardback book of this size. Not cheap, admittedly, but hardly unaffordable for most people with an interest in the subject. Compared with the price of most academic publications it is an absolute bargain. My paperback copy of Lloyd's 'Folk Song in England' is priced at 12/6, which would be around ?10 today.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 09:32 AM

" hardly a 'single source'."
Up to now it's been 95 to 100% from print
"ploughlads, weavers, farm hands seamen, hard-up poets"
That is what you dismissed as romantic nonsense after the MacColl statement - do I sense a retreat ?
pleasure gardens, theatres, Music Hall, glee clubs,parlour songs, etc.,
These are pop songs and have never been counted as 'folk' until now
"As I said - you and yours would rob folk song of its unique nature by making it a commercial product"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 09:46 AM

Jim one thing that saddens me is that the uk folk revival is becoming more like the pop world as every year passes on. apologies for the thread drift

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Severn
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 10:17 AM

I have always considered something became a folk song, in some cases you might argue very briefly, If used for a "folk purpose".

When my daughter (now 35 years old) was an infant, some nights she was very resistant towards falling asleep, and it was my turn to render her sleepy while my then-wife and my stepdaughter's were in the living room watching a movie that Knight have had hopes of watching most of, myself, I'd dim down the lights and set up the armless rocking chair near the crib and start singing her whatever lullabyes I knew. Sometimes, I would run out of established lullabyes and sing something nice and slow. Whatever I sang to kill t

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Severn
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 10:29 AM

Kill time automatically became a folksing at that time along with any verses I wrote to stretch out an existing song.....

When you wish upon the earth
Makes no difference what you're worth

When you wish upon a sky,
It's no use to wonder why

When you wish upon a constellation
May you ha

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 10:56 AM

Apart from the rocking chair, similar experiences. We have a family lullaby going back several generations to the middle of the 19th century, or at least that's when the broadside was printed it was based on. However my two took a lot more than a single lullaby to get off. Marching up and down the bedroom with one of them over my shoulder singing a nice rhythmical 'Oh Adam Buckham-O' (by the High Level Ranters) usually did the trick.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 10:58 AM

do I sense a retreat ? In a word. NO!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 11:01 AM

'you and yours would rob folk song of its unique nature by making it a commercial product" ' (JC)

Absolutely not. As many of the posters have already told you on this thread, what makes a folk song is the folk process, the oral tradition. Nothing whatsoever to do with the origin.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Severn
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 11:04 AM

May you have God's cooperation



.....and so on. She wasn't talking yet, so there would be no objections to being referred to in song as a "weary hobo" or the like.It was all in being being rocked gently to sleep in familiar loving arms by someone making well intentioned, famillar reassuring noises.


If the number of times I've heard "I Can't Help Falling In Love with you" sung while babies were being rocked by their mothers, that IT should be considered a folk song, even if learned from its use in an Elvis movie.

Any song I ever sang while working in my vegetable garden years ago while picking. or weeding was for that period of time, a Folk Song.


Sorry, folks. This was written in transit on a very balky device.....

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 11:22 AM

"Jim one thing that saddens me is that the uk folk revival is becoming more like the pop world as every year passes on"
Me too Dick -I'm hoping that the research side of it doesn't go the same way
"Why doesn't it make sense? I understand why Jim may find the idea distasteful, "
I do wish people wouldn't keep attributing opinions to me that I don't hold
I have never offered an opinion on payment for singing - it is my opinion that as far as folk song makin is concerned it didn't happen to any significant extent
We recorded a singer who sang on the streets for money and sold songs on ballad sheets - the most valuable source of information we ever interviewed on this subject
We asked him if he ever knew of making songs for sale - he said, "why should they, there were plenty to choose from already"
The making of songs for payment was an urban occupation and I have no doubt whatever that the people who did it took their songs from wherever they could
If they could get songs from visiting farmers of sailors or soldiers, the very nature of their trade would make it necessary to do so - that, I believe is how so many folk songs ended up on broadsides - the suggestion that it was the other way around is totally unproven.
From what we know, at the beginning of the 19th century Margaret Laidlaw regarded the printed word as a threat to the oral tradition - we have that on record.
By the end of the century, the rural communities were changing, cottage industries were being killed off by the factories and people were moving into the towns for work - these changes were turning rural dwellers into passive recipients of their culture rather than active participants - Walter Pardon explained how, in his native North Norfolk, the Harvest Suppers disappeared and the singing was confined to family gatherings.
He also described how he parted company with his contemporaries - he stuck with "the old folk songs" while his cousins went for the 'modern' popular songs.
It is my opinion that mankind is a natural songmaker - children did it for their games, we know thousands of songs were made by people trying to get the vote, both in town and countryside - Chartist newspapers ran weekly song columns - Manchester Central Library is full of them.      
I grew up in a city with a very rich vernacular speech and a noted sense of humour
I worked on the docks, where the turning of verses of pop songs of the day into little squibs was a regular occurrence
My father was a prisoner of war in Spain - he returned home in 1939 with a repertoire of songs in Spanish and English about the Civil War - the first folk songs I ever sang (not in public) were in Spanish
When he went on the road as a navvy, he and his mates made up songs about the job.
None of this was for payment - it was a need to put into verse how you felt bout things
Severn
Making songs for children is a fascinating study in itself - the same goes for storytelling
It's interesting to note how the Opies described children who sang 'dirty' songs as "ogre children" - of course children made songs about "knickers" or "poo" or farting.... and far beyond
Another subject I am inclined to take issue with in Roud is his accusation that Ewan and Bert but bawdy songs that hadn't been there before into the folk repertoire
Go look up 'The Maid of Lowestoft or The Hole in the Wall' which is accompanied by the note "we have only included the tune as the words are not fit for decent ears"   
Gershon Legman must be laughing in his shroud!
Jim Caarroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 11:54 AM

'there has to be some sort of meeting of minds from all with an interest' (JC) What had you in mind?

The TSF exists for that very thing and there are plenty of interested minds on this very thread who you mostly dismiss as deskbound and largely printbound 'experts'.
Perhaps you could name a few names. Ah, you mention John Moulden who occasionally chips in on Mudcat. No problems there. I have utmost respect for John's work, particularly on the Irish broadsides.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 11:58 AM

'We also need to examine the content of the songs'. Totally agree, but how do we do this without bringing in individual songs. What are you afraid of? Why don't you want to look at individual songs?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 12:07 PM

The English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) and its partners present the world’s largest online collection of English folk manuscripts.

Freely explore 80,000 pages of traditional songs, dances, tunes and customs from the golden age of folk music collecting, within the manuscripts of nineteen of England’s most important late Victorian and Edwardian folk collectors, including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Percy Grainger, Lucy Broadwood and Cecil Sharp.

The Full English digital archive delivers the true ‘voice of the people’ through a variety of material ranging from full songs to fragments of melodies, invaluable for researchers, performers, composers and many more. It is rich in social, family and local history, and provides a snapshot of England’s cultural heritage through voices rarely published and heard before.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 12:09 PM

If it's not already there the full Carpenter Collection is due to be added to this amazing resource shortly.

What a great waste of money and resources, hey, JC?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 12:10 PM

In a long disputatious thread that has been almost totally devoid of humour, I'd like to insert this to lighten things up for one post at least.....

This appeared on page 40 of yesterday's "The Guardian":-

Corrections and clarifications

* A review of Peggy Seeger's memoir quotes her description of her early impressions of Ewan MacColl and how they fell in love, saying he had a "hairy, fat, naked belly poking out, and was clad in ill-fitting trousers, suspenders, no shirt, a ragged jacket and a filthy lid of stovepipe hat aslant like a garbage can". The context we omitted was that MacColl was appearing in a production of The Threepenny Opera (First Time Ever, 30 December, page 5, Review).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 12:23 PM

Sounds like a perfect description of W. G. Ross in his Sam Hall persona!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 12:33 PM

More on 'The Maid of Australia'.

Quote from a very reliable source (1961)

' Contrary to the opinion of some Australian folklorists, it is doubtful if 'The Maid of Australia' was actually composed in that country. It seems much more likely to be a broadside fantasy about a country which the writer had never visited.'

I'll give the source later.

I must thank JC for reminding me of this scarce song. The study I have now carried out has thrown up some very interesting facts about Harry Cox's version(s). Walter's and Sam Larner's versions are very close to the seminal broadside as you would expect seeing as Walter's grandfather (Walter's ultimate source) got his songs from broadsides.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 12:35 PM

"Totally agree, but how do we do this without bringing in individual songs"
I said not here and not with you Steve
My suggestion was for a friendly discussion where people could raise ideas without getting slagged off and insulted
"'there has to be some sort of meeting of minds from all with an interest' (JC) What had you in mind? "
I've long thought that it's time to reconstitute the old Folk Song Federation, incorporating singers, non-academics, and audience - those who survived the revival unscathed without having the joy of folk song destroyed.
If it is to be N.S.F., the impetus has to come from them; maybe an open discussion of Roud's book would be a good starting point.
There are several other major collections that have yet to be worked on, including Pater Hall's recordings and the Grainger tapes.
I would be more than happy to turn over The several thousands tapes-worth (now digitised) Singers Workshop archive, our collection of radio programmes and lectures and our own field recordings to such an enterprise
"What a great waste of money and resources, hey, JC?"
Spiteful as ever, I see - especially as I played a large part in acquiring the collection for the EFDSS
Grow up, for crying out loud
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 12:38 PM

Sorry
Forgot to say thanks for the attempted break hostilities
Missed that glorious piece
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 12:45 PM

02 Jan 18 - 05:09 AM - "I hope we can discuss this without the former rancour and condescension"

07 Jan 18 - 12:35 PM - "Grow up, for crying out loud."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 01:05 PM

""Grow up, for crying out loud.""
That is a response to at least three threadsworth of condeesention and personal abuse Vic
Nothing like being neutral, is there!!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 01:33 PM

It's no use, Vic. JC is totally oblivious to his own personal abuse and rancour.

'I doe but shoote your owne arrow back againe' Totally wasted on him.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 02:01 PM

"It's no use, Vic. JC is totally oblivious to his own personal abuse and rancour."
No I'm not Steve, I get it all the time from you
I have insulted no-one here - I have even been fairly subdued about your personal attacks
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 02:34 PM

"Why doesn't it make sense? I understand why Jim may find the idea distasteful, "
I do wish people wouldn't keep attributing opinions to me that I don't hold

I apologise for that, Jim, but that was what your words suggested to me. But you haven't explained why it doesn't make sense - you may disagree with the argument, but there is nevertheless logic to it. There were people writing and publishing songs for money, and it seems entirely possible, to say no more, that ordinary people sang these songs and that a few of them survived to become folk songs.

The real question is what were the proportions? I think the difficulty with all this is that so much is unproveable. There doesn't appear to be sufficient evidence to know with any certainty which songs started out as broadsides and which broadsides were already existing folk songs. It may be possible to take a guess, from the language and style of the broadside version, but even that leaves open the possibility that they had over-embellished an existing song. There is inevitably some conjecture and drawing of conclusions from limited evidence, and it is unsurprising that different people come to different conclusions.

I make no claim to be an expert, I am simply a singer and musician with in interest in the material I perform. All I can say is that Roud's case seems plausible to me. I think we would have to go back several centuries to find a situation where folk culture was not influenced by outside forms. There is a parallel situation with dance tunes, where it is now apparent that a great many traditional folk dance and morris tunes can be traced back to the stage or the military, and often to identifiable composers.

I also share Roud's view that it is not the origin of the songs which matters but what the folk did with them. It has always been my understanding that what distinguishes folk song from other forms is the evolution of a song in the mouths of successive singers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 05:28 PM

'especially as I played a large part in acquiring the collection for the EFDSS'. (Jim). Now you have my full interest, Jim. Please tell us more. I also worked on the Full English and I don't remember your name being mentioned.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 05:32 PM

I totally agree with Howard's postings.

Apropos "distasteful": I don't think Jim has suggested that the writing of songs for money is distasteful, but what he does seem to find distasteful is the claim that that's where most of our folk songs came from.

I do wish we could all:
- agree that some songs that started life on broadsides and in other commercial situations such as the stage and the pleasure gardens were taken up by ordinary people and eventually collected,
- agree that some songs were originally made by working people such as farm labourers, sailors, coal miners, weavers, etc
- agree to disagree about the proportions,
- agree that the fact of songs being sung for the sake of it, and eventually being collected, is at least as important as where those songs started.

Jim sees evidence in some songs that they could only have been made by the people whose experiences they recount. I don't see how we can take that any further without looking at particular songs.

As for Maid of Australia, I will be interested to see Steve's "very reliable source (1961)" and what the Australian folklorists have said about it. For the time being I will continue to believe that the song could equally well be an account of a real encounter (perhaps embroidered) or a pure fantasy.

BTW I noted that the version quoted by Steve 03 Jan 18 - 05:06 PM refers to the maid's "lily-white limbs". That goes against a suggestion that I recall reading somewhere that she was black.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 05:46 PM

'very reliable source (1961)'. Peter Kennedy and/or Alan Lomax to Harry Cox's version in the Folk Songs of Britain Caedmon series. I have no idea what Australian folklorists had to say. I can only imagine.

'I do wish......' I don't have a problem with any of that, Richard.

Regarding the 'real encounter' possibility, all I can say is that I have a large collection of songs from all sorts of sources that include sexual euphemisms and I can't think of one that might be based on a real encounter.

BTW, Jim, on the same subject can you please direct me to the page in the book that claims that Bert and Ewan introduced bawdy songs into the folk repertoire? I must have missed that one.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 08:17 PM

In regard to songs such as the "Coal-Owner," allow me to repeat what I posted last month, which no one has responded to:

Hmmm. I find no Roud number for "The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife."

If the song never entered "tradition" before it was unearthed in 1951, was it a folk song? Is it now? Do we know if, in its day, it was ever sung as a song rather than merely recited as a poem? How many singers must there be before a song can be considered "traditional"?

Doesn't tradition imply some degree of popularity?

"Searching for Lambs" and "The Outlandish Knight," however, are well and widely attested as songs, with numerous folk variations.

So, if "tradition" is a criterion, what (other than wishful thinking) places "The Coal-owner" in the same category ("folk song" or "traditional song") as the other two?

Not being contentious. Just thinking aloud....

(To "wishful thinking," I would now add "personal appeal.")

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 03:54 AM

"agree that some songs that started life on broadsides "
Is there any disagreement on this - not from me?
Of course they did - but I happen to know from personal experience in Ireland that in the first twentieth century many hundreds of songs were created by 'ordinary' people (do wish we could find a better term than this - everybody is extraordinary in some way or other) on anything that caught their fancy, the songs circulated within a local tradition for a period and disappeared because of their parochial nature - some made their way into the national repertoire, but all were folk songs by definition.
The same was still happening within a living song tradition within the Travelling community
I see no reason why this should not have happened in England and why many songs made this way can't include those that have been documented as 'folk'
These songs need to be considered in any estimation we make of our folk song traditions - the percentages being bandied about here makes it virtually impossible to do so.
Country people have always made folk songs - that has been established without question in Ireland, in Scotland without challenge - it seems that there is a reluctance by a few people to accept that this was the case in England - that is the problem here
We do not know who made our folk songs, but once you accept that country people were capable of making songs and did make them these percentages do not hold water.
As Stephen Fry is fond of saying "nobody knows"
"agree to disagree about the proportions,"
WE can't do that while academics are producing tomes based on these percentages - we've already seen how quickly people are prepared to lap them up, inside and outside the folk world - sadly, including in this debate
I've seen no response to the implications of accepting these figures - that working people left no tangible record of their existence - not if we accept our folk songs as commercial products, as has been claimed.
"I also share Roud's view that it is not the origin of the songs which matters but what the folk did with them."
Surely, if it was historical and social events that produced our songs, then they become part of our social history - the way we once thought.
That's every bit as historically important than the entertainment value of our songs
Lighghter
"which no one has responded to:"
Sorry, thought I had
Bert Lloyd was employed by the National Coal Board to collect songs and lore and stories from the Miners - I think I have an article on it somewhere.
I always understood that 'Coal Owner' was one of these songs
Lloyd appears not to have kept a personal record of what he collected. and passed it on to his 'employers'
So little has been collected from the mining communities (MacColl did a little for 'The Big Hewer) that we don't know what constitutes an oral tradition among them, or whether one existed at all in the way we know rural ones did.
Presumably Roud didn't give the song a number because there is no proven record that it existed prior to Bert singing it (a little odd that he should give pop songs numbers, but there you go)
There are several songs from our from our collection that exist only in single versions that (I think) have Roud numbers
MacColl and Joan Littlewood collected songs in the North of England for a radio programme which was broadcast once and then (presumably) destroyed - Ewan kept a file of those songs, but not the recordings.
I've never checked to see whether Beckett Whitehead's obscene version of 'Seven Nights Drunk' or 'Drinking' or 'The Mowing Match' have Roud numbers - the same with 'Fourpence a Day' which was taken from lead miner Mark Anderson, the only surviving recorded version was that of MacColl singing it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 04:22 AM

Steve
"Please tell us more."
Am taking this separately so it doesn't get mixed up with the real subject
Bob Thomson, through his friendship with Ken Goldstein, learned of the existence of The Carpenter Collection and how it was discovered locked away in Carpenter's garage.
Bob and I were friends and on a visit to his home he told me about it and suggested that a copy should be obtained by the V.W.M.L - Bob also introduced us to Goldstein while he was visiting London, who told us more.
I passed on the information to the then Librarian (I think it was Barbara Newlyn, but it might have been Theresa Thom) and she acquired a copy of the recordings and a microfiche set of the transcriptions
The rest is history
I have printed copies of many of the texts and of the recordings somewhere here.
As far as Bright Golden Store is Concerned, way back, while we were collecting from Travellers and in Clare and had not long started recording Walter, we approached the wonderful Lucy Duran at what I think was still the The British Institute of Recorded Sound and asked her was she interested in acquiring copies of our recordings - she jumped at the chance and took our collection as it was back then.
She decided, on the basis of our collection, that her department at BIRS should move from being a musicological department concerned mainly with African and Asian music, and expand to include British music
Since Lucy (sigh!!) took our collection it has remained largely unused due, presumably to financial restrictions
Because of this, we have basically lost interest in donating the rest o our collection to them and have now found a (very willing) home for it in the World Music Department of Limerick University, who are thinking about setting up a web-site to release our, and hopefully other similar collections.
They already have an active interest in Traveller music and have done a considerable amount of work in helping to re-introduce instrumental traditional music back into their community
Just shows you what you can do when you have no problem identifying what folk music is and realise its importance!
By the way, I have always assumed that people are aware that a full set of the Grainger recordings, including some of his Scandinavian material, are included in the NSA collection and have been since N.I.R.S. days
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 04:26 AM

Sorry - have just remembered that N.I R.S. should be B.I.R.S. (the British Institute of Recorded Sound)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 04:57 AM

Whoops - half asleep still
Forget that last post
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 10:02 AM

'historical and social events that produced our songs' Not imagination and creativity then?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 10:27 AM

"'historical and social events that produced our songs' Not imagination and creativity then?"
You know I mean both Steve - we've discussed this often enough before
Given your percentages, your own claims dismissed them both and attribute any imagination and creativity to crap writes composing for money
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 10:37 AM

Without disputing your account in any way, Jim, as I understand the EFDSS had nothing to do initially with the Carpenter Collection coming onto their website. The project was a joint one between Aberdeen University and the LoC and I think funded by the LoC. If I remember aright the decision to place it on the EFDSS website was a relatively recent one. It probably had more to do with the fact that David Atkinson was seconded to Aberdeen Uni to work on the Collection and he is also the editor of EFDSS's Folk Music Journal.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 10:45 AM

'crap writes'.

Everyone here, including myself, has gone out of their way to agree that much that was produced on the vast mountains of broadsides to the modern-day mind could be described as 'crap'. However several contributors have quite rightly stated that in ANY genre of literature or music there will be 'crap' and some of it will be good, simply by the law of averages. Even the great Professor Child included a substantial amount of 'moderate jewels' in the ESPB.

Now, if the rest of us are right, and the vast majority of folk songs first hit the streets in this way, you are then condemning the vast majority of folk songs as 'crap'. That will be your legacy, not ours!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 10:49 AM

Translated into what we have been discussing here, The Banks of the Sweet Primroses, one of your favourite folksongs, more than likely originated in some pastoral theatre production and first hit the streets as a broadside. Phil tanner's wonderfully performed 4 verses are almost verbatim the version printed uniformly by hundreds of printers around the country.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 10:52 AM

BTW, 'Banks of the Sweet Primroses'. I love this wonderful folk song and couldn't give a toss where or when it was created.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 11:11 AM

I am bemused by Jim's account:
"Bob Thomson, through his friendship with Ken Goldstein, learned of the existence of The Carpenter Collection and how it was discovered locked away in Carpenter's garage.
Bob and I were friends and on a visit to his home he told me about it and suggested that a copy should be obtained by the V.W.M.L - Bob also introduced us to Goldstein while he was visiting London, who told us more.
I passed on the information to the then Librarian (I think it was Barbara Newlyn, but it might have been Theresa Thom) and she acquired a copy of the recordings and a microfiche set of the transcriptions
The rest is history"

As Steve says, the exercise to add the Carpenter stuff to the other material on the VWML site is recent. My understanding was that the whole lot passed at some time (years ago) to the Library of Congress, where it could be accessed by visitors but not otherwise. If "a copy of the recordings and a microfiche set of the transcriptions" were available in the VWML (or anywhere else besides the Library of Congress) that is news to a lot of people.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 11:26 AM

The VWML has had a set of the recordings and microfiche documents since the early seventies
Perhaps its another case of one lot of folk people not knowing what the others were doing.
The copy I am talking about was obtained then - as was the bits of it we have here
"more than likely originated in some pastoral theatre production and first hit the streets as a broadside"
You can prove this, of course - oh - I forgot - you can't prove any of your claims, can you?
"Now, if the rest of us are right"
I assume you are talking about you and Steve Roud - there has been no indication that anybody else here actually accepts your claims and researchers have been saying the opposite for over a century
Or we now arriving at the 'imaginary friends' stage of the discussion.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 11:31 AM

02 Jan 18 - 05:09 AM - "I hope we can discuss this without the former rancour and condescension"

07 Jan 18 - 12:35 PM - "Grow up, for crying out loud."

08 Jan 18 - 11:26 AM - "Or we now arriving at the 'imaginary friends' stage of the discussion."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 11:37 AM

Please stop this Vic - there is a history of nastiness from Steve dating back at least to 2012 when the topic firse hit the fan
You want to mention rancour and condescension - mention all of it
As I said nothing like being neutral - or is it ok with you that people are called agenda driven and attention seeking?
Sheesh
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 12:12 PM

Sticking strictly to this thread -

Appearances of 'agenda driven'
18 Dec 17 - 11:47 AM - "You have described Child as elitist and Sharp as an agenda driven charlatan"
18 Dec 17 - 02:59 PM - "This, as far as I am concerned makes Sharp agenda driven charlatan."
05 Jan 18 - 01:00 PM - " his description rages from denim clad, guitar strumming activists to agenda driven Marxists "
06 Jan 18 - 09:47 AM - "Child becomes an "elitist" incapable of sorting Art poetry from traditional ballads, Sharp is agenda driven."
06 Jan 18 - 03:28 PM - "Wonder what they missed - or maybe they were all agenda driven elitists like Child and Sharp!!"
08 Jan 18 - 11:37 AM - "As I said nothing like being neutral - or is it ok with you that people are called agenda driven and attention seeking?"

All these were posted by the same person.

Appearances of 'attention seeking'
06 Jan 18 - 09:47 AM - "Here I have become an attention seeking politico liar"
08 Jan 18 - 11:37 AM = "As I said nothing like being neutral - or is it ok with you that people are called agenda driven and attention seeking?"

Both of these were posted by the same person as the ones above.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 12:13 PM

Evidently "The Coal-Owner" appeared - as a poem only - in an old paper and Lloyd added a tune of his own.

Folksong? Or what?

Unless content is to be thought of as a defining element, my judgment is that the song is no more than forgotten ephemeral verses, in a popular style, set to music by a researcher generations later.

Its inherent relationship to "traditional song" would thus seem to be stylistic only.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 12:41 PM

"All these were posted by the same person."
And they were all lifted directly from what Steve as written - would you like to select any I have made up - including the remark I made about you Vic?
How on earh do you suggest I respond and how do I respond to your taking sides and ignoring all the former and ongoing abuse - or are you claiming I have made it up
Sorry Vic - I don't feel the need to respond to any of this from you
Pehraps you might like to comment on someone who takes it upon himself to speak for others on this forum in order to make tis discussion a "we win, you lose" argument
"Now, if the rest of us are right"
No?
Thought not
This is far from the first time Steve has adopted this tactic raher than respond to the points being put forward
Last time it it was a constant repetition of how many people agreed with him
This is not what constructive and healthy debate should be about
It is the type of thing resorted to by some 'usual suspects' on the BS threads in order to win glittering prizes
If you have nothing to say on the actual debate, I suggest you leave it to those who have
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 12:47 PM

Hi Jon,
Sorry not to have responded to your seemingly correct assumptions, but you can see we are otherwise bogged down with stuff at the moment.

I have an author's name, William Hornsby, and a dozen entries in my large index so the song was much anthologised latterly. But note it does not feature in my traditional folk song index for the same reasons you are suggesting.

I'll check out all the entries and get back to you. One thing that jumps out is that it features in 'The Common Muse' which is mostly broadside stuff.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 12:49 PM

To throw Jim's arrow back using his Dad's Army quote, 'They don't like it up 'em!'

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 12:57 PM

"To throw Jim's arrow back using his Dad's Army quote, 'They don't like it up 'em!'"
For Christ's sake Steve - do you realy want to reduce this discussion to this win-lose level?
If your (lack of) arguments hadn't already convinced me of my case, your behaviour has
I don't suppose Vic has anything to say about this one either!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 01:02 PM

A reminder of what my Dad's Army was a response to
""because of its political spin, (much like yours) "
Let's stop this now eh?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: TheSnail
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 01:15 PM

Having, in the past, been insulted by Jim Carroll and patronised by Steve Gardham, it's hard to take sides. They seem equally agenda driven and attention seeking. From my experience, Steve Roud is a much more agreeable person.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 01:35 PM

Are you people now hell bent on closing this thread by turning it into a kicking match?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 01:39 PM

Some relevant stuff here.

We've been going round in circles for much of the time lately, to the extent of risking emulating the oozalum bird.

Anyone got something new and constructive to offer?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 01:44 PM

You are right of course Richard
I would help if somebody actually addressed some of the points - there are enough of them being ignored to keep this going till next New Year
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 01:59 PM

Second go.
Of course Richard is right. I hereby promise to stop throwing back Jim's arrows.

IMO the only way I can see forward is to take examples of folk songs, as suggested several times, and look at what we know about their evolution. I will start with the interesting further info I have on 'Maids of Australia' and then move on to Uncle Walter's folksong repertoire which his grandfather got from broadsides.

Snail, I humbly and sincerely apologise for being patronising to you.
And yes, Steve is a much more agreeable person. I shall try to emulate him in the future.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 02:28 PM

Maids of Australia.
Keeping in mind this is a very scarce song: The few broadsides I've already mentioned and the only oral versions from England I have access to are the 3 from Norfolk all from within 15 miles of each other, Winterton, Knapton and Catfield, not a great distance from Yarmouth and Norwich. Plenty of broadside printers plied their trade in Norwich, Walker and Lane as one example. Unfortunately I haven't yet been through the collection in Norwich City library.

As I already stated Sam's and Walter's versions pretty much follow the broadside. However Harry Cox's several recordings throw up some interesting thoughts.

The version in Topic's Folk Songs of Britain's series of albums, Volume 2 'Songs of Seduction', Harry sings 4 verses recorded by Peter Kennedy, all 4 verses found on the broadside. I'm going to call these verses 1, 3, 4 and 5 as will become clear later in the final version which I will post.

In the Journal of the EFDSS, Diamond Jubilee edition 1958 Peter Kennedy published a version recorded by him from Harry which came out on a BBC RPL 22915 (LP). This now has an extra verse on the end which is not on any of the broadsides. The verse is almost verbatim one from another broadside 'Oh no My love not I'. More on this anon.

Then in 1965 Leslie Shepard recorded Harry again singing this song with yet another extra verse (no 2) inserted which is a paraphrase of the second verse on the broadside and that sung by Walter and Sam.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 02:28 PM

I, [sic] would help if somebody actually addressed some of the points - there are enough of them being ignored

Perhaps you could start, Jim?

A few bullet points, set out in short paragraphs, whilst avoiding typos, would I'm sure be very well received by everyone here...

---

Be a little kinder, Ed. I had to delete a couple of your anonymous messages. -Joe Offer-

Subject: ADD Version: Maids of Australia
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 02:51 PM

Here's harry's version as recorded by Leslie Shepard.

MAIDS OF AUSTRALIA

As I walked out by the Oxborough banks
Where the maids of Australia do play their wild pranks
Underneath a green shady bower I sat myself down
Where the birds sang so gaily enchanted all round
In the native, the plains of Australia
In the forest, the native Australia
Where the maidens are handsome and gay.

[I sat on the bank there for hours two or three,
A fair damsel came out from behind a green tree
To cover her body it was her intent
She slipped past the bushes made straight for the bank
In the native, the plains of Australia
In the native, the plains of Australia
Where etc.]

Now she dived in the water without fear or dread
Her beautiful limbs she exceedingly spread
Her hair hung in wrinkles, her colour was black
Sir, she said, you will see how I float on my back
In the stream of the native Australia
On the stream in my native etc.

Now being exhausted she swam to the brink
Assistance, kind sir, or I surely will sink
As quick as the lightning I took hold of her hand
My foot slipped and we fell on the sand
In the native, the plains of Australia etc.

We frolicked together in the highest of glee
In the finest Australia you ever did see
The sun it went down and the clouds did resign
And I left this fair maid of Australia
I left this fair maid of Australia
Then I left the fair maid of Australia
Just when the sun went down.

[Now six months being over and nine coming on
This pretty fair damsel brought forth a fine son
Oh where was his father? He could not be found
And she cursed the hour that she lay on the ground
In the native the plains of Australia
In her native the palins of Australia
Where....]

This last verse in a similar form is found in American versions but not on any other British versions.

I'll leave it there for now for comments, preferably to how this might have come about.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 02:52 PM

" I hereby promise to stop throwing back Jim's arrows."
Tsk, tstk, tsk!!!
As I said, your behaviour is pretty conclusive proof that you haVE no case
"As I already stated Sam's and Walter's versions pretty much follow the broadside"
Which doesn't say that the broadside wasn't taken from an earlier version and most certainly sounds as is it might have been
As I said - go listen to them singing it.
"Uncle Walter's folk song repertoire which his grandfather got from broadsides"
Walter's uncle's grandfather got some of his songs from broadsides - Walter carefully pointed out which and said quite cearly why he (Walter) didn't consider them "the real old folk songs"
What's all this trying to prove Steve?
Nobody is disputing the fact that as many as you claim appeared,/FONT>
Unless you can show otherwise, you cannot prove a single one of them originated there
"Perhaps you could start, Jim?"
Where to begin
Try does anybody here actually believe that working people were unable or unwilling to make the songs we know as folk songs"
If the answer is yes - why?
If the answer is no, is there any reason to believe that they didn't, as everybody has issued up to now, including those who were alive when the tradition was in full swing as was the broadside trade?
Plenty more - but that will do to begin with (though it will have to wait till tomorrow - a new series of 'Silent Witness' and I've spent far too long debating the more unpleasant side of this already - a stomach can only take so much in one day!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 03:06 PM

Another point that might be relevant is Harry did have a collection of broadsides. I'm pretty certain he stated he hadn't learnt his songs from the broadsides, but I have also heard he did use them to add to his own versions and to brush up on what he was singing.

The addition of the last verse is curious. I'll try to find a version of 'O no, my love, not I' that has it just for comparison.

Harry was very keen to add other songs to his large repertoire. He knew he couldn't sing the songs of his fellow singers in the local pubs (ownership rules) so he went further afield around more outlying villages looking for new songs to learn. I wonder if he came across Sam or Walter and adapted their second verse. Of course by 1965 all 3 of them were quite famous, especially in the folk world so it would seem logical that they could have met up.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 03:16 PM

Here are some relevant lines from the very common broadside 'No my Love, not I' which was also later rewritten as 'The Newfoundland Sailor'

v4 When eight months were over and nine months were past
This pretty fair maid brought forth a son at last.

v5 And curse the very hour you said 'O no, my love, not I.

I'm sure an oral version I collected in Yorkshire was even closer to Harry's last verse.

As I've stated before this transferring of verses from one ballad to another was common with broadside writers and in oral tradition, particularly with travellers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 03:26 PM

'A few bullet points, set out in short paragraphs, whilst avoiding typos, would I'm sure be very well received by everyone here...' (Ed)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 03:41 PM

Anyone with Maud Karpeles An Introduction to English Folk Song (OUP 1987) on their bookshelves might like to re-read the beginning of her chapter on Broadsides (pp 68 -71) especially of the interaction between the oral traditions and broadside texts. To my mind she seems to expressing ideas that been developed and researched more and presented in greater deatail in the present book.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 03:58 PM

Jon,
All of the many versions I have of 'Coal Owner' derive from Lloyd.
Several of them give a bit more information.

It is said to have been written by William Hornsby, a collier of Shotton Moor, County Durham, during the great Durham Miners' Strike in 1844. Rediscovered by another miner J. S. Bell of Whiston, Lancashire in 1951 who presumably was Lloyd's source. Whether the original had attached the 'Derry Down' refrain or whether Lloyd added it I cannot say. What I do know is that in the early 19th century thousands of songs on broadsides and many by known authors were set to Derry Down, and quite rightly in my opinion. It's a great tune, and at least as old as the earliest print.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 05:41 PM

Wherever Maid of Australia started, it evidently got "folk processed" into several versions on its way from one person to another, orally and/or through print. Such variation is an important part of our interest in folk songs (and indeed part of the classic definition).

But Jim is especially concerned with origins. This song could have been made by one of the returned convicts that he mentioned earlier. I wish we could see the evidence that Bob Thomson found. Or it could have been made by someone who made his living, or part of it, by writing songs and selling them to broadside printers. And those possibilities are not mutually exclusive: it's perhaps unlikely but not inconceivable that the writer was both a returned convict and a professional song writer. And all of that applies whether the story is true, a total fantasy, or a mixture.

What actual evidence do we have (as distinct from personal beliefs) as to who made this song, either within the song itself or elsewhere?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 06:09 PM

None whatsoever, Richard. It's only when we put together hundreds of studies like this that patterns begin to emerge. We can also compare style and various other components of a song with other songs that we know were written by known authors. It's mainly about possibilities and probabilities. These people in the towns who were passing them on to the printers quite likely came from a great variety of backgrounds. All of this of course is taken alongside detailed studies of how the oral tradition works, not just the print tradition.

Do remember that my 95% is only my opinion, but it is based upon many many studies of every oral version and every printed version of hundreds of songs. For every song in Marrow Bones, Wanton Seed and Southern Harvest and others this is what I have done. Others like Jim are well entitled to their opinion, but I doubt they have done this depth of study.

Things haven't changed that much over the centuries. Songs have always LARGELY been written by song writers, people with some skill and imagination (okay of varying degrees) rather than people who have experienced the events within the songs. And I'm talking about across all genres here, in the western world at least.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 06:14 PM

I'm quite happy to put up the earliest broadside versions alongside the later oral versions and let people decide for themselves.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 06:29 PM

Steve, please do.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 03:35 AM

Okay the first thing to note is that this song is not typical of the sources for most of our folk songs, but 'Banks of the Sweet Primroses' is, in that we only have a small number of printings extant whereas 'Banks' was printed just about everywhere.

We have the standard version printed by Pearson in Manchester and by Such in London and one other without imprint and I'd say none of them are any earlier than 1860. IMO the Scottish versions, much shorter are probably derived from these. The Scottish version printed by the GPB is unfortunately undated but could easily be c1870 and I don't have a copy of the Sanderson (Edin) printing, only a catalogue listing. (The Sanderson family were printing for more than a century and well into the 20th.) I've already posted the GPB version so I'll post the Such/Pearson copy later today.

I don't like putting too much into one posting as it has the potential to disappear.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 03:41 AM

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: TheSnail - PM
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 01:15 PM

Having, in the past, been insulted by Jim Carroll and patronised by Steve Gardham, it's hard to take sides. They seem equally agenda driven and attention seeking. From my experience, Steve Roud is a much more agreeable person
.I felt the same about Steve, patronising in the extreme assuming i have not read certain books

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 04:46 AM

A couple of days ago I said
> BTW I noted that the version quoted by Steve 03 Jan 18 - 05:06 PM refers to the maid's "lily-white limbs". That goes against a suggestion that I recall reading somewhere that she was black.

Although the version quoted by Steve refers to black ringlets, at least one other version says only that the maid's hair was curly. A maid who was a "native" of Australia in the mid 1800s could have been a daughter of European (e.g. Irish) parents and had both curly black hair and lily white limbs, but it doesn't seem very likely. It seems much more likely that the story (whether true, a pure fantasy or a mixture) concerns an Aboriginal girl and that the "lily white" was a bit of boiler-plate text from a broadside writer -- which in turn indicates that the whole song was probably made by someone whose business was writing songs, wherever the story came from.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 04:58 AM

"But Jim is especially concerned with origins. "
No I am not - stop misrepresenting me Richard
I am not "concerned" with origins - I go along with all the researchers up to now who had litle doubt that the bulk of the folk songs originated with the people who sang them - they never questioned that idea, neither do I
Some of these people, Child, Sharp, Motherwell, Burns (who was a very underrated collector) went out to the people to get the songs from the 'horses mouth' - none of them ever suggested that they had ever originated from printed texts, though some acknowledged that they ended up in print.
I've asked that people say whether or not they believe country people were capable of having made the folk songs - so far no takers
Until there are I will assume that people here believe they were
The problem with this discussion so far is that it has centered around songs as printed texts just that.
I see no attempt by either of the Steves to examine why the songs were sung or why they might have been made - they have treated them as printed products made for sale.
We have discussed 'Maid of Australia' as a printed text - what is is in reality?
It is a sexual boast of the type that could and still can be heard in virtually every working class pub throughout Britain - a man boasting about he once got is leg over - as simple as that.
There is no reason whatever to believe that a 'simple' countryman couldn't have made that song   
Banks of Sweet Primroses the same - a young man going out, buzzing with testosterone, tries to hook up with a previous girlfriend and gets the brush off because he has given her the elbow in the past - how humanly commonplace is that?
Steve describes the sunshiny day' as a broadside commonplace.
It is a common vernacular way of dealing with rejection - "plenty more fish in the sea" - plenty more where she came from"...
Again, how humanly commonplace than that?
From Mary Delaney's 'I've buried Three Husband Already, which, as 'Primroses', is about sexual relationships

"Wherever there's a goose, here's a gander
Wherever there's a will there's a way
But the sun will be shining tomorrow
And we'll call it another fine day"

This is not a printing commonplace, it's a common human attitude to life
Once you divorce these songs from the what the singers felt about them and treat them as cold print, you could prove they were all written by anyone you care to name if you had a mind to
Both the Steves have done that - they have treated them as cold, printed texts
Steve Roud chose not to include texts - I have little doubt that Steve Gardham will continue to attempt to prove his theory that they all originated as literary pieces by putting them up as texts without attempting to discuss how they might have been made by the people who sang them.
Over the time I was singing I accumulated a repertoire of over three hundred songs
I stopped singing them a couple of decades ago in order to come to terms with the information we had recorded from traditional singers
Over the last year or so I have started to sing again and I find that, after a couple of scans through old texts, the songs spring to life again - not as memorised printed words but as what they actually are - stories that happen to have tunes attached to them
Each song I have revised in this way is now firmly set in my memory because of my emotional attachment to them - not because they were good poetry or even good stories, but because I can relate them to myself as a human being
We noticed with Walter Pardon, Mary Delaney and others, how emotionally involved they got with their songs
Mary regularly broke down when she sang her "heavy" songs - not because she couldn't handle them technically but because she became overcome with their emotional content
This was especially apparent with her 'Buried in Kilkenny' (Lord Randal) but it also happened with her humorous songs - it took us numerous goes before we got full versions of 'Kilkenny Louse House' and 'Well Done Donnelly' (The Tinker) that weren't interrupted by her bursting out laughing.
Her songs had become a part of her life - I don't believe desk-bound broadside hacks were capable of creating such high art - their working conditions would never allowed them to have done so anyway.
You can only begin to understand these songs when you take them from being cold text and add the human element to them
The Steves have done exactly the opposite - they have ignored the reason for their existence and continuance and have centered their attention to the printed word
There was no effort made in Roud's 'Folksong in England' to include what little we have of singers talking about what the songs meant to them socially or even personally - there is enough from Sam Larner, Harry Cox and Walter Pardon alone to fill a whole chapter - all freely available for the asking.
Treat these songs simply as texts, divorcing them from the singers intentions, and you debase them.
For me, it is what makes Bert Lloyd's 'Folk Song in England' a vastly superior book, for all its faults.
Roud has dealt largely with the nuts and bolts of the tradition while Lloyd treated it as an expression of humanity rather than a literary phenomenon.
Roud had bundled the unique folk songs in with commercially produced pop songs, stage songs, middle-class Tavern Songs, classically based glees..... and in doing so, for me, he has failed to capture their uniqueness.
Lloyd, on the other hand, made a point of just that with his magnificent statement in the last chapter - one more time   
"If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'.
In my opinion, anybody who fails to spot or ignores that uniqueness has no claim to knowing what folk song is about
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 05:42 AM

> "But Jim is especially concerned with origins. "
> No I am not - stop misrepresenting me Richard

Now I'm confused. A great deal that you have said on this thread has been about songs being made by ordinary people (or whatever better term we can find for them) rather than by professional song writers. Is that not because you believe that it matters who made them?

> I've asked that people say whether or not they believe country people were capable of having made the folk songs - so far no takers

Surely we all agree that country people could and did make songs. The disagreement is only about the relative proportions, in the classic collected corpus, of songs made by country people and songs made by professional urban song writers.

I'm dubious as to what fraction of people sang in the past, but even if it was most people, I don't believe that most people wrote songs. Most of us today lack the skill to put words together in that particular way, while a few are good at it and a few do it even though they aren't very good at it. I see no reason to believe that that was much different in any past age.

> I see no attempt by either of the Steves to examine why the songs were sung or why they might have been made - they have treated them as printed products made for sale.

On the contrary, Steve R's book is very much about people singing. While he avoids a rigid definition of "folk song", his concept of it is all about who sang songs, where, when and why.

> We have discussed 'Maid of Australia' as a printed text - what is is in reality?
It is a sexual boast of the type that could and still can be heard in virtually every working class pub throughout Britain - a man boasting about he once got is leg over - as simple as that.
There is no reason whatever to believe that a 'simple' countryman couldn't have made that song

Indeed, but see my post of a bit earlier today.

> Banks of Sweet Primroses the same - a young man going out, buzzing with testosterone, tries to hook up with a previous girlfriend and gets the brush off because he has given her the elbow in the past - how humanly commonplace is that?

Very commonplace, which means that pretty well anyone (or at least any man) who had the skill to make songs at all could have written it. And, just like Maid of Australia, it could be a true account from personal experience, a broadly true account based on another man's personal experience, pure fantasy or a mixture.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 06:55 AM

Jim wrote:
From Mary Delaney's 'I've buried Three Husband Already, which, as 'Primroses', is about sexual relationships

"Wherever there's a goose, here's a gander
Wherever there's a will there's a way
But the sun will be shining tomorrow
And we'll call it another fine day"

This sounds very similar to the chorus of the song Where There's a Will There's A Way:
Then what is the use of repining,
   For where there's a will there's a way......
   And tomorrow the sun may be shining,
   Although it is cloudy to-day..........

The song was sung by traditional singers Gordon Hall, Frank Hinchliffe and Arthur Howard, and perhaps many others, although the earlier collectors might not have been interested in this song. It was printed on many broadsides etc ... oh, and it was written by Harry Clifton. (And it has a Roud number).

Derek (back to lurking now, but thinking that the thread is becoming repetitive, and that people have entrenched views that are not going to change)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 07:02 AM

"A great deal that you have said on this thread has been about songs being made by ordinary people "
Which is only to repeat a common belief held by all researchers
It doesn't "concern me" in any way - I belive it too be true but neither Steve nor I can prove the origin of a single song, so basically it is a waste of time to t attempt to
That's not why I am arguing here - I am asking that the songs be placed in their social context in order to understand them, maybe that way we arrive at an intelligent 'probable' answer but I believe attempting to deal in percentages verges on the megalomanic
"Surely we all agree that country people could and did make songs."
Not really - not when we need to discuss in the percentages that have been puut forward
Steve has reduced home made writing to be by farmers writing of their own personal experiences - that is not what our folk songs are about
They are general observations on what was taking place at the time - enforced recruitment, poverty brought about by land seizures, social misaliance arisin from families wishing to use daughters as a step on the social ladder.... but no one here is (I hope) claiming that these things happened to the song makers themselves - they were all common occurrences down the centuries, which, I believe, gave rise to the folk songs
Academia has an obsession with finding origins - a Holy Grail task if ever there was one
You have the "Lord Craigston, John Urquhart" academic conceit of trying to apply something that was happening throughout the world and for many centuries to an actual marriage via 'The Trees they Grow So High'
The same with the Villiers speculation around Barbara Allen, when writers poets and probably singers had been writing and singing about rejected lovers since time immemorial
American academic, Phillips Barry, took one of our most beautiful domestic tragedy ballads and attempted to turn it into a piece of mystical nonsense about Islands that could rise out of a lake and sink back again, magic seemeed, lake spirits.... crazy stuff!
"I don't believe that most people wrote songs"
Of couse they didn't - I'm certainly not suggesting they did
On the other hand, there's not mucgh doubyt that most MOST SINGERS WITH ANY DEGREE OF SKILL WERE CAPABLE OF MAKING THE SONGS - UNDERSTANDING, INTERPRETING AND PERFORMING SONGS WAS VERY MUCH A PART OF THEIR JOB DESCRIPTION
We would be kidding ourselves if we tried to claim that most people sang - at any time
You may accept that Primroses and Australia could have been made by the folk byut Steve still argues that they didn't - without being able to prove otherwise.
My argument isn't with you Richard, it's with what the two Steves are claiming
If we want to deal with probabilities, it's more probable that songs about country life or soldiering, or sea-going.... were more likely to have been made by the people who came from backgrounds dealt with in the songs that they were by bad Urban, desk bound poets who, according to Steve Gardham, tended to live near to where they worked and were subject to high pressure in order to make a living
It really isn't rocket science to work out what these songs menat to the people who sang them and once you put that alongside your admitted acceptance that the singers were capable of making songs, then there's at least a fair to middling chance that they did make them.
I refuse to deal in percentages or origins in anything like definitive terms but I have no intention of sitting by while working people are written out of the equation as composers, as I believe they are being by this little band of academics
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 07:10 AM

09 Jan 18 - 04:18 AM you're a doddery old fool, and very few here respect your views.

This is a very unhelpful comment and lowers yourself to the main perpetrator of insults on this thread. At least that person has the courage to post under his own name. For all you and I know, there may be a variety of reasons why the person you are insulting has a problem in expressing himself in "correct grammar and short paragraphs" but that does not exclude his right to express opinions.

(This angry response expressed by a man who spent 35 years in special education.)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 07:12 AM

"oh, and it was written by Harry Clifton."
Mary's song "I've Buried Two Husbands" was not written by anybody known
THe 'Goose' verse may well have been written by Harry Clifton - on the other hand, it may well have been borrowed from the tradition by him
I put it up not as a proof of origin but to point out that Steve's 'Cloudy day' "broadside commonplace" was common to vernacuar speech throughout these islands
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 07:31 AM

This is a very unhelpful comment and lowers yourself to the main perpetrator of insults on this thread

You are entirely right, Vic. I apologise to all, especially, of course, to Dick/The Sandman. My frustration at some of the entrenched views expressed and being 'tired and emotional' are no excuse.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: TheSnail
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 07:52 AM

"Bryan and I have our marital problems"
?!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 08:16 AM

A joke Brian
"My frustration at some of the entrenched views expressed"
Mine too
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 08:41 AM

Since the writers of broadsides seem by and large not to have been aristocrats or university graduates, I don't see any reason to consider them other than "ordinary people," except in the ad-hoc sense that they wrote for the broadside press.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 08:48 AM

09 Jan 18 - 07:52 AM
"Bryan and I have our marital problems"
?!

I thought that Bryan must have been hiding something from me in the 40-odd years that I have known him well,

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 08:58 AM

" I don't see any reason to consider them other than "ordinary people,"
Urban people, not particularly skilled as poets and living outside of the subjects of our folk songs - all of which makes them highly unlikely as possible authors
Who better to suspect of making sea songs than someone who has actually worked at se
The same goes for agricultural work, soldiering, mining, weaving, whatever
Would you be happy to ask a plumber to rewire your house?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: TheSnail
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 09:12 AM

It was bound to come out in the end. Jim and I will be seeking counselling.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 09:19 AM

Urban people, not particularly skilled as poets

I can't make a mark as a poet.
I make a good start then I blow it.
But then I live in towns
(Quite close to South Downs)
And by the time I get to the fifth line of a Limerick I just seem to lose all sense of rhythm and rhyme

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 09:30 AM

Great Vic
Pity there aren't any broadside companies looking for haks!
"Jim and I will be seeking counselling."
No need - it's legal now Bryan!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: TheSnail
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 09:31 AM

Meanwhile, back at my original interjection. I do feel that both Jim Carroll and Steve Gardham have taken up entrenched positions. Neither is really listening to what the other says, both argue against things the other haven't said and both claim that academic experts agree with what they say on the grounds that anyone who disagrees is clearly wrong. Jim genuinely doesn't seem to realise how insulting he comes over nor Steve how patronising. (Thanks for the apology, Steve, but I doubt if you really remember the specific incident.)

Jim responded "Are you people now hell bent on closing this thread by turning it into a kicking match?" I'm not sure who "you people" are that I am now a member of. My point was that the two of you had already turned it into a kicking match.

There is a constructive and interesting debate to be had here. This isn't it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: TheSnail
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 09:34 AM

Fortunately, this is a very long distance relationship.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 10:22 AM

Urban people, not particularly skilled as poets and living outside of the subjects of our folk songs - all of which makes them highly unlikely as possible authors,
Who better to suspect of making sea songs than someone who has actually worked at se
The same goes for agricultural work, soldiering, mining, weaving (Jim Carrol)

How about urban people who left school at 15 "joined the ranks of the unemployed ... found intermittent work in a number of jobs and also made money as a street singer (Wikipedia)" but became skilled poets and talked to the people who had done those things ?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 10:49 AM

"How about urban people who left school at 15 "joined the ranks of the unemployed ... found intermittent work in a number of jobs and also made money as a street singer (Wikipedia)" but became skilled poets and talked to the people who had done those things ?"
There is not a shred of evidence that any of them did this
Steve Gardham has pointed out that some of them might have been born in rural areas, but most lived within reach of their work
Is it so unlikely that people actually created songs based on what was happening around them (as early researchers believed) that it is necessary to invent "what ifs" such as this?
It seems to me that peaple here seem to want working people not to have made their own songs
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 11:17 AM

In spite of his marital difficulties, Bryan speaks a lot of sense at 09 Jan 18 - 09:31 AM. The reluctance to join in what has developed in part into an insult-strewn kicking match has clearly put off people who are well-qualified to participate. I have received an email and a Facebook message from two men asking me to make points on their behalf. Well, my answers to both (they will be reading this) was that I didn't want to fire the bullets that other people make. However, it does point out that things have reached a sorry state on a subject that requires participators to think what they are saying and back it up with evidence.

My silly verse above did have a serious point behind and it leads me to ask a polite question which hopefully will bring forward an answer that is without rancour -
Does the person who stated Urban people, not particularly skilled as poets and living outside of the subjects of our folk songs - all of which makes them highly unlikely as possible authors have any research evidence or factual reinforcement for the statement that town and city dwellers bring little skill to their verses? Otherwise it does seem to be a bold, bald and unsupported statement, bearing in mind that we know very little of the lives and living locations of the hundreds (thousands?) of people who contributed to the composition and/or adaptation of broadside ballads/chapbooks etc.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 11:21 AM

Sorry interrupted
Can I just reiterate that, here in Ireland, rural people were making their own songs right up to the mid 1950s - mainly anonymously - we uncovered at leasy sixty o them within a twenty mile radius of this one street town, and were made of a hundred more over the other side of the county
It is almost certain that this was repeated in every county in Ireland
While the political situation was different, the economic situation was similar to that of England
The post famine situation gave rise to many new songs - Terry Moylan published a magnificent 700 page book of them last year on political songs, but hoe we came across were on every subject under the sun, farmwork (including songs about hiring fairs), shipwrecks, emigration (probably the largest number, naturally), fashion, arranged marriages, murders, weddings, births, marriages, deaths..... everything touching on human existance.
Scotland has a fine repertoire of Bothie Songs made by farmworkers - the Tweed industry produced improvised songs made on the spot and political upheavals were marked by angry protest songs in Scots Gaelic
We know from John Holloway's 'Oxford Book of Local Verse' that similar songs have been made throughout England for centuries
I spent months in Manchester Library poring through microfiche copies of ld newspapers which carried regular columns of songs contributed, mainly anonymously (probably for fear of reprisals) by mill workers and land workers trying to get the vote
None of this is hard and fast evidence that working people made our folk song, but is shows (beyond any doubt) that they were capable of doing so.
"I'm not sure who "you people" are "
How about those who make accusations likke, "They seem equally agenda driven and attention seeking"
I have put my points without agenda and without attention seeking
I make no claims of percentages, nor do I dismiss the idea that these songs also appeared on broadsides in great numbers - a fact I have been aware of since Bob Thomson told me about them in 1969.
My reason for arguing as I do is that we examine all the facts and all the possibilities, gathering as much evidence and as many opinions as there are available.
"Fortunately, this is a very long distance relationship."
The ball's always been in your court Bryan !
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 11:33 AM

"have any research evidence or factual reinforcement for the statement that town and city dwellers bring little skill to their verses? "
We are not talking about Urban dwellers Vic, we are talking about specific tradesmen who are (as you said yourself) working under high pressure to earn a living
Their output of poetry shows their limited skills as most of it is unsingable (as distinct from our folk songs, that fit the mouth like custom-made false teeth) and display signs of a knowledge of working practices and equipment, conditions experienced by rural politics like the seizure of land, the effects of mechanisation on rural occupations, or experience of conditions at sea or in the army or in the rural industries.
No group of desk-bound poets working in the conditions they were forced to could ever produce a body of songs covering those situations the way our makes of folk songs did, in my opinion
It is still as simple as it ever was - if working people were capable of making folk songs they probably did
Nobody has suggested (yet) that they weren't
Any offers?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: TheSnail
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 11:52 AM

How about those who make accusations likke, "They seem equally agenda driven and attention seeking"
That wasn't an accusation, it was an observation.

Leave my balls out of it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 12:08 PM

I started writing this a few hours ago but then received a visitor to talk about concertinas (and many other subjects).

The phrase "Entrenched views" appeared.

That's the nub of it. Despite all the discussion, sometimes polite and sometimes not at all polite, I see little sign of anyone changing their mind. Even where we have hard evidence of the original provenance of particular songs that still tells us nothing certain about any of the others.

But I'm becoming very unsure what the parties are actually disagreeing about.

We established some time ago that all sorts of different people (including in particular both rural workers and professional songwriters) could and did create songs, that some songs appealed to popular taste and survived to be widely sung and widely collected, that others were collected only a few times, and yet others were sung only briefly and/or locally if at all and so were never collected. Modern subjective impressions of quality won't always align with what the folk adopted or ignored, but by and large at least some of the gems should have survived and most of the dung should have been forgotten.

Given the huge range of styles, from big ballads to bucolic May morning encounters, to music hall songs, etc, it's no wonder that the early collectors were selective. It's also no wonder that when later collectors bothered to ask singers for their opinions the singers drew distinctions between the different sorts.

Apart from the figure of 95% or thereabouts, which Steve believes reflects how many of the songs in the classic collections were made by professional songwriters (whether directly for broadsides or for the stage etc), and which Jim believes to be much too high, what else is under dispute?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 12:09 PM

"How about urban people who left school at 15 "joined the ranks of the unemployed ... found intermittent work in a number of jobs and also made money as a street singer (Wikipedia)" but became skilled poets and talked to the people who had done those things ?"
There is not a shred of evidence that any of them did this

@Jim Carrol. It's from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewan_MacColl Now, to be sure, self education would have been a lot harder in, say, the 1700's but there are a whole ruck of people who became succesful in many spheres who did it. Maybe many who, like, MacColl, became involved in the theatre of the time. So why not a broadside writer?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 12:23 PM

On the other side of things, in the chapter on "The singing habits of sailors and soldiers", Roud quotes Herman Melville's (fictionalised, but presumably first-hand) account of Liverpool:

"But one of the most curious features of the scene was the numnber of sailor ballad-singers, who after singing their verses, hand you a printed copy, and beg you to buy... ... he composed many of his own verses, and had them printed on his own account" (Melville)

My Kindle says I am 65% of the way though the book, but there is not much of what seems contentious in this discussion that has not been touched on.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 12:35 PM

We are not talking about Urban dwellers Vic, we are talking about specific tradesmen who are (as you said yourself) working under high pressure to earn a living

Their output of poetry shows their limited skills as most of it is unsingable

Like Robert Tannahill? As urban proletarian as you can get.

Scottish and Irish rural singers (Travellers included) seem to have managed to sing his output without much of a problem.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 12:47 PM

I've answered this already guest and asked for a response
MacColl, my father and many others educated themselves during the great depression, mainly by going into Libraries to shelter from the rain, off the streets
I have no doubt whatever that Urban working people were as capable of making songs as were rural ones, but there's no evidence that they wrote rural songs beyond the limitations of their experience at the time these songs were made
I ask again, why is it so impossible to to accept that rural people wrote rural songs about rural subjects - likewise seamen, or soldiers....?
If they did, why didn't those documenting the songs at the time spot that these songs were really Urban products?
Who is more likely to have made these songs - city dwellers working under conveyor belt conditions or country dwellers responding to what was happening all around them?
Why is is so important to you that these songs were produced for money rather than made to reflect working lives
What makes 19th century rural England so different from Rural Scotland or Ireland, where folk song making is a proven fact?
I've asked these questions over and over again and nobody appears to want to answer them!

For the interest of those who appear to be expressing doubt over the suggestion that the Vaughan Williams Memorial has held a copy of the Carpenter collection since the 1070s
I've just checked our section of the collection shelved in the loft and have established that we have 15 spring-back folders of photocopies from the contents of (I think) 5 or 6 microfilms
We paid to get as many of them copied as we could but didn't manage to get all of them
As far as I am aware, the set is still available at the Library
Each of our folders contains at least 150 songs (at a guess)
This is the first song from the first folder, though I can't guarantee we got them in order
Jim Carroll

Buchan Observer,
Turlundie Side
Bell Robertson, New Pitslogo, June 9, 1908

Now Nature decks Pitligo's groves
In all their summer pride.
And temps the wandering feet to rove
Upon Turlundie's side.
To gaze upon the prospect fair,
So varied and so wide,        
And breathe the sweet and balmy air
Upon. Turlundie's side.
To hear the little feathered throng
With music fill the woods
And the lav'rock chant his joyous song,
Hid in the fleecy clouds.
Sweet wild flowers deck the meadows green
Like to a bonny bride,
And wimplin burnies row unseen
A' down Turlundie's side.
From Brucklemore to Mormondhill        
And to the ocean wide,
The wanderer's eye can rove at will
From off Turlundie's side.
I care not for wealth's gaudy toys        .
It's pageantry and pride,
Just give me Nature's simple joys
Upon Turlundie'a side.        
Does any wish in quiet retreat
A few weeks to abide?
Just come and try this village sweet
Upon Turlundiefs side.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 12:52 PM

"We are not talking about Urban dwellers Vic, we are talking about specific tradesmen who are (as you said yourself) working under high pressure to earn a living"

@Jim Carroll. It was you who brought up Samuel Laycock (also John Clare) , and me several pages back, who quoted some biographical details. Which included 12 hour days as a weaver, poetry on broadsides that helped him get by when unemployed and enduring respect, but not much money, as a published poet.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 01:07 PM

"Like Robert Tannahill? "
Tanahill wasn't a broadside writer - he was a weaver-poet, as was Bamnford, Axon, Lackock and all the others mentioned previously as examples of working men producing poems of working life based on their own experiences
He was not Urban, but came from the market town of Paisley, the population of which in the first couple of decades of the 19th century, was less than 5,000
There is no comparison between Tannahill and the metropolitan based hacks we are discussion - he was, in essence, a country poet
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 01:14 PM

GAG
THese were not professional broadside writers as such
THey are in fact, what I have suggested the suggested authors of some of our folk songs - workers who made pennies on the side by selling some of their songs
Again - go look up Vic's description of the conditions of work of the professional broadside writers - there is no disput that they worked as professions at top speed to produce songs
Please respond to the questions I have laid out here 09 Jan 18 - 12:47 PM or leave me to draw my own conclusions - that you are unable to
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 01:15 PM

Scotland has a fine repertoire of Bothie Songs made by farmworkers

Again, we need to be very careful in attributing a majority of Bothy songs to the farmworkers themselves. What we do know is that the bothy ballads found a willing audience of singers and listeners for these songs. By British standards, the farms of Aberdeenshire and the Mearns were large and often relatively isolated and the various farm tradesmen lived in the bothies and rarely left their farms during their six month 'fee'. The farms were regularly visited by all sorts of pedlars and as well as clothing, boots and 'bacca they brought song sheets to a captive market. Jimmy MacBeath was a popular figure in the bothies both as an entertainer and for the song sheets and books that he brought to sell. One of the few broadside ballads that I own was bought in a junk shop in Dundee; the lovely ballad of Tattie Jock and Mutton Peggy. It begins -

Ye'll a' o' heard o' Tattie Jock, likewise o' Mutton Peggy
They kept a fermie o'er in Fife and the name o' it was Craigie's

... though as you might expect from a song that has entered the tradition, it has been heard by me at the early TMSA festivals with the location changed - usually further north,
It was in print from the "Poet's Box" in Dundee as late as the 1950s though the subject is about transportation to Botany Bay for theft (1840s?). Extensive research has failed to locate the farm in spite of the song. Someone must have imagined the story as well as the location, but though the story sounds entirely believeable and likely, the odds are that it didn't happen. Who wrote it remains unknown but there is little doubt that the printed version helped its widespread popularity amongst old bothy workers that we met at those festivals such as Charlie Murray, Adam Young and Eck Harley. I heard a lot of these lovely old guys who must have started their work on farms around the time of the First World War. They sang all sorts of songs, not just songs about the farms; sentimental songs were prominent in their repertoires.
They talked a lot about the songs written by George Bruce Thomson, G.S. Morris and Willie Kemp, all of whom were famed as pro or semi-pro performers on stage and in village concert party and humour and 'bothy culture and songs' were prominent in their acts. They also recorded, mainly for the Beltona label and pedlars sold these '78s around the farms. The vast majority of the bothy songs sung by these old guys could be found in either one of these two publications by Kerr - Bothy Ballads - the songs of Willie Kemp and Buchan Bothy Ballads written by G.S. Morris. Both were still in print in that poor quality paper that Kerr's always used when I bought them (along with their many tune books) in the 1960s. (I would love to know the publication date for all of any of these Kerr publications. They seem to me to be difficult to trace.)
We also need to be very careful in taking as gospel the facts expressed in the lyrics of these ballads as Ian Olson, the expert of the bothy repertoire from the University of Aberdeen has said -

Bothies were more common in Angus than Aberdeenshire, but it is the latter that has become best known as the heartland of bothy songs.

Traditional bothy ballads were mostly composed between 1830-1890, and are often characterised as being songs decrying the conditions on a certain farm or in some cases certain farmers, seemingly gaining notoriety for places such as Drumdelgie, the Barnyards o Delgaty or Rhynie. However, bothy ballad expert Ian Olson points out that the songs were jokes rather than satires. He notes that Delgaty, for example, was a prestigious farm, "famous for having the very best of equipment, horses and horsemen. Singing that there was 'naethin there but skin and bone' would have been hilarious".
From https://www.scotslanguage.com/Scots_Song_uid65/Types_of_Scots_Song/Bothy_Ballads_uid3315

Now, it could be argued that the bothy evidence that I have been talking about came at a time when they were in terminal decline but three superb books that combine oral history with other written sources and account books by David Kerr Cameron - The Ballad & The Plough, The Cornkister Days and Willie Gavin, Crofter Man give us a detailed picture of life around the mid nineteenth century on the farms of north-east Scotland and they all talk about pedlars and their central importance in bringing news and song sheets as well as everything else to the farms.
The reason for my intense interest in this part of the world is that my grandmother born 1872, who I live with in Edinburgh when I was a boy, had been a 'kitchie maid' on an Aberdeenshire farm after leaving school before she achieved her ambition of training as a nurse in Aberdeen.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 01:19 PM

And please read my list of the sources I believe to have made the songs - from MacColl's Song Carriers (which Steve Gardham dismissed as romantic rubbish)
"They were made by professional bards and by unknown poets at the plough-stilts and the handloom".
I am at a total loss to understand why I have to keep repeating this?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 01:27 PM

"Again, we need to be very careful in attributing a majority of Bothy songs to the farmworkers themselves. "
First I've heard of it Vic and my favourite book o the subject id David Kerr Cameron's 'The Ballad and the Plough
From your link:
"In the first half of the 20th century, the bothy ballad took on a more comical 'stage' form through the works of George Bruce Thomson, G.S. Morris and Willie Kemp. These more recent compositions - by and large very humorous - are sometimes called cornkisters to distinguish them from older 'traditional' bothy songs which tend to be more sober accounts of work and conditions on particular farms"

The oral tradition at the beginning of the 20th century in Scotland was beginning to deteriorate and become mor reliant on print, as was the English one
The songs we are discussing here were those made in the latter half of the 19th century and recovered from a dying tradition
Jim Carroll

Subject: ADD Version: The Maids of Australia
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 02:19 PM

Thomas Pearson, Printer, 6, Chadderton Street, off Oldham Road, Manchester. Stock No 76.

THE MAIDS OF AUSTRALIA

One morn as I stood on the Arbourer's banks,
Where the maids of Australia plays their wild pranks,
Beneath the green shades, I sat myself down,
A viewing the scenes that enchanted all round,
In the forest of happy Australia,
Where the maids are so handsome and gay.

I had not gazed long on these beautiful scenes,
Where the forest was wild, and the trees they were green,
Before a gay damsel to me did appear,
To the banks of the river she quickly drew near!
She was a native of happy Australia,
Where the maids are so handsome and gay.

She says young man I'm almost afraid,
That you will injure an innocent maid,
That is come here to bathe on these pure rippling shores,
In the streams of my native Australia
Streams of my native Australia
Where the maids....

She pulled off her clothes, and before me she stood,
As naked as Venus just rose from the flood;
I blushed with confusion, when smiling, says she,
This is the clothing dame nature gave me,
On the day i was born in Australia,
Where....

She plunged in the river without fear or dread,
Her delicate limbs she extended and spread,
Her hair hung in ringlets, which you know was black,
She says, See here, young man, how I float on my back,
In the streams of my native Australia
Where the ......

Being exhausted with swimming, she swam to the brink,
For assistance she cried, oh I'm afraid I shall sink.
Like lightning I flew, and gave her my hand,
She uncourteously slipt and fell back on the sand,
So I entered the bush of Australia,
Where...

I kissed and I toy'd with the fondest of glee,
With the fairest Australian that e'er I did see;
Long time on her bosom my face I did hide,
Till the sun in the west its visits declined,
So I left this fair maid of Australia,
Where.....

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 02:45 PM

Just like the one that ot=rigianted on the tradition
Must have got it from a visiting countryman or picked up by a pedlar - if not, why not?
If not, you need to prove it as the original
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 02:54 PM

Regarding the microfilm copies of the Carpenter collection in the VWML, which Jim referred to, I certainly knew of their presence, used them extensively and learned songs from them about 15 years ago, after a tip-off from David Atkinson. So thanks for facilitating that, Jim.

Having initiated this thread I'm beginning to feel a bit like the fellow who chucked the bomb at Archduke Ferdinand. But since the discussion has touched several times on one of my favourite renditions of any traditional song, 'The Banks of Sweet Primroses' by Phil Tanner, I must say that his exuberant and irresistible performance, and his individual way with the rhythmic structure, demonstrate to me the creativity of the 'common folk' quite as well as if he'd written it himself. Haven't I spent years trying to justify my own musical career by pointing out that interpretation of existing material is as creative in its way as composing new stuff? As for the song itself, although it's a lovely lyric I don't see anything there that would have demanded a countryman's specialist knowledge - just some experience of wandering by a river on a sunny day, and of romantic rejection.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 03:09 PM

There is nothing wrong in historical research in saying As yet we do not know the answer. We hope that future evidence will reveal this. It is a much more sensible and honest than saying, These are the facts and need to be regarded as the truth. when there is nothing concrete to back up a statement.

Let's take a couple of recent examples from this thread.
Firstly Bothy Ballads. We can date their heyday to 1830 to 1890. We know that they continued to be sung well into the 20th century by the rural population of the north-east. We know that they appeared in print from the earliest time and that there was a good distribution system and a ready market in farms and villages. We know that by the beginning of the 20th century any new song that entered the repertoire as a cornkister was likely to have been written by a professional entertainer. We know that the songs of Harry Lauder & Will Fyfe gained great currency in the north-east; Jane Turriff seemed to sing them all. What we don't know is who composed the earlier songs, let's say those that appeared before 1850, and of those, the ones that gained currency. They may have been commissioned by those who printed the sheets, they may have been written by farm workers. It may be a combination of both. In the majority of cases, we just don't know.
That's why Scotland has a fine repertoire of Bothie Songs made by farmworkers makes me uncomfortable because, in fact, we do not know for certain who made them.
That's why statements like First I've heard of it Vic are unhelpful because whether you or I or anyone else has heard of it proves nothing.

Let's move on to a subject we know even less about, the class and location of those who wrote the broadside ballads.
Urban people, not particularly skilled as poets and living outside of the subjects of our folk songs - all of which makes them highly unlikely as possible authors
Again I feel very uncomfortable about this because the amount of knowledge that we have is minimal about the poets' names, their education, their class, their other occupations if any, whether they were itinerant, living in town or country whether they were the printers or ballad sellers themselves or whether their ranks encompassed all or most of these. It would be honest to say that we don't have enough information so we should admit that, on the whole, we just don't know. We know from reading the survivors that their standard varied from drivel to some quite moving pieces. To claim otherwise as the statement above seems to me to be being economic with the actuality.

Finally, there have been a few statements of the nature of -
It most certainly is not - it's a well documented fact, including in Hindleys Hindley in teh Catnach biography and Leslie Shepherd's books on the subject
Vic has described the pressure they worked under quite adequately
Well, I certainly was not referring to any song printed as a broadside I was merely trying to make a joke (failed obviously) of the fact that the printer would not be able to wait for a polished edit of the tiresome prose of Last words of.... or Confessions of.... documents to be mulled over and corrected before the body was swinging at the end of a rope, Like football programmes, these sheets had a very short shelf life before they were discarded.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 05:29 PM

Jim's 4 questions answered.

1) why is it so impossible to accept that rural people wrote rural songs about rural subjects - likewise seamen, or soldiers....?

It isn't! We keep stating that rural people (and soldiers and seamen)
did write rural songs and indeed we have given plenty of good examples of what they wrote. More if you wish.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 05:35 PM

2) If they did, why didn't those documenting the songs at the time spot that these songs were really Urban products?

There are lots of possible answers to this and others will probably add to my list.
Most of the collectors were not particularly interested in their origins. Presumably they were happy to accept Sharp's doctrine. Baring Gould and Kidson aside, few of them had done any research on this and we already know that they were much more interested in the tunes. Vaughan Williams frequently didn't even bother to note any more than the first verse of the text. As stated baring Gould and Kidson were well aware of the broadside influence but they lived far away from London where all the organising went on under Sharp's watchful eye.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 05:41 PM

3) Who is more likely to have made these songs - city dwellers working under conveyor belt conditions or country dwellers responding to what was happening all around them?

We have already addressed this one numerous times. Vic just addressed the 'conveyor belt' idea. I certainly haven't given the impression (at least I hope so) that this was some sort of conveyor belt. I've already stated that from what we know of the writers they came from a variety of backgrounds and had various motives, admittedly the 2 most obvious, to feed a family and to feed a drink habit. We've also repeatedly asked you to give some examples of songs that couldn't have been written by the urban writers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 05:44 PM

4) Why is is so important to you that these songs were produced for money rather than made to reflect working lives.

It isn't. The fact that they were paid is incidental to what they were producing as far as we're concerned. the writers were working people. The 2 things you point to here are not mutually exclusive anyway.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 05:54 PM

5) What makes 19th century rural England so different from Rural Scotland or Ireland, where folk song making is a proven fact?

Others have already addressed the Bothy Ballads issue. I was the one who originally suggested the Bothy Ballads. Although I can't claim to have conducted individual studies on Bothy Ballads I am very familiar with them. Perhaps it might be more relevant to look at the Greig-Duncan collection, a very large body of material but much more representative of North East Scotland. Much of the material in G-D is a very mixed bag. There aren't that many of the big ballads in relation to the whole corpus, there are lots of local songs not found elsewhere, there are also lots of broadside ballads in there, as you would expect crossing over with what Sharp and co were collecting, and a whole load of Burns type stuff again which you would expect.

As for comparing what was going on in rural England in the early 19th century with conditions in rural Ireland in the second half of the 20th century, well I'll leave that to the historians to answer.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Joe Offer
Date: 09 Jan 18 - 06:02 PM

Hi, folks -
Wherever and whenever you post lyrics at Mudcat, please give the song's title and name the source of your lyrics. I've added titles to some of the lyrics in this thread. I hope I'm right.
Thanks.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 05:41 AM

"It isn't! We keep stating that rural people (and soldiers and seamen)
did write rural songs and indeed we have given plenty of good examples of what they wrote. More if you wish."
You have described these songs as Farers writing of their own exppereinces which have not become folk songs
No answer
"There are lots of possible answers to this and others will probably add to my list."
Superficial twaddle
Most collectors referred to the songs as being produced by the people - Motherwell made a point of it when he warned against editing them and Sharp quoted him doing so
"We have already addressed this one numerous times. Vic just addressed the 'conveyor belt' idea."
No you haven't
Vic actually put it forward as an excuse for why broadside compositions were as unsingably bad as they were (though he didn't mention 'in contrast to the folk songs which are highly singable'
"Why is is so important to you that these songs were produced for money rather than made to reflect working lives.
It isn't. The fact that they were paid is incidental!
What!!!!
You maid a gleeful point of describing the money aspect of the production of these songs, comparing them to those produced by today's pop industry
You are joking?
"Others have already addressed the Bothy Ballads issue. "
Nowheern near sufficiently
You fully accepted that they were exceptions because they were examples of workers having made their songs
From: Steve Gardham - PM
Date: 15 Apr 11 - 07:22 PM
Jim,
Long ago I conceded that parts of Ireland and the Bothy tradition have songs made in local communities that have become part of oral tradition. You are well aware that I am talking about the body of material collected by the likes of Sharp, Kidson, Baring Gould, Hammond, Gardiner etc.
What is being suggested here is that they weren't necessarily rexamples of such
These are more excuses with no real responses Steve
Brian
Banks of Sweet Primroses
"would have demanded a countryman's specialist knowledge"
I raise the song as a beautiful example of a comparison in style and language between the broadside output and that of the folk, not as demanding specialist knowledge of the countryside
Will deal (with some pleasure) with your 'Maid of Australia' text in full later
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 05:49 AM

Spare us. It is completely impossible to work out which is your opinion and which is quoted text in that last message.

Don't you ever preview what you post?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 06:32 AM

After my last posting here at 12:08 Mudcat time yesterday I was out at Sharp's Folk Club, where were sung all sorts of songs, new and old, most of them in my opinion (though not all) worth listening to. Having got home late, I got off to late start this morning. In the meantime there have been many further postings here, and I was going to say that the thread has moved on; but more accurate would be to say that the thread is getting stuck deeper in the mire.

Jim asked (inter alia)
> why is it so impossible to accept that rural people wrote rural songs about rural subjects - likewise seamen, or soldiers....?

I would have ventured to answer that, but Steve already did
> It isn't! We keep stating that rural people (and soldiers and seamen) did write rural songs and indeed we have given plenty of good examples of what they wrote. More if you wish.

Jim came back again
> You have described these songs as Farers writing of their own exppereinces which have not become folk songs
No answer

(Excusing the typos) I presume that Jim is challenging the latter part of Steve's answer, concerning examples. I too would like to pursue that a little further.

But Jim, do you now acknowledge that we all do accept that some songs were written by the people whose affairs they deal with, and that we disagree only in our estimates of the proportions?

Steve, please expand about the examples. It seems to me that not very many particular songs have been mentioned on this thread, that some of those have every appearance of having been written by individuals whose business was song writing, and that we have no information as to who most of those individuals were. Which songs, mentioned above, do you personally regard as (probably or certainly) written by rural people?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 08:29 AM

No problem, Richard. If we give a very rough estimate figure of the main published corpus from about 1890 upto about 1920 from southern England we're looking at about 3,000 songs. My 95% still leaves the 5% as about 150 songs. These can easily be sought amongst the published collections mentioned and there are plenty in the Hammond-Gardiner (Marrow Bones) series. Just look for those that have very few versions and are songs with an obvious local flavour like local hunting songs.

Other than that I have a good selection of songs from my local area I know were written by local farm labourers.

I have posted details on several occasions of an East Riding bothy ballad which was known to every farm labourer in the East Riding during the 20th century (and in surrounding counties) and there are 19th century versions. As far as I know the song has never appeared on street literature and seldom in other forms of print. It is a song we usually call 'Mutton Pie'. If you haven't seen a version there is at least one on our website www.yorkshirefolksong.net and I have sung it at TSF meetings. I can post it here if you wish. I did hear of a version with 50 verses which doesn't surprise me, but I never got to hear or see this version.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Just another guest
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 08:52 AM

Another quote from Roud's book, here quoting Charlotte Burne in the last part of the 19th century;

"One such song-maker, commonly called 'the Muxton carter' ... ... used to think the verses over in his mind when he was going with the horses... ... It was doubtless such unlettered poets as these wh supplied the matter for the broadsides which emanated in great numbers from Waidson's press at Shrewsbury during the earlier years of the present century"

So far in the book I haven't come across what I would recognise as a 'broadside hack' as referred to in this discussion. This is reference to many sorts of people, with varying degrees of education, who's work came out on broadsides. To me the simple interpretation is that they area a result of straightforward business decisions on the part of the person with the words, the person with the press and the person who sold them. The arrangment may or may not have been equitable amongst the parties concerned but they all must have thought that it would help them keep food on the table.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just anothe guest
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 08:54 AM

... ot beer in the pot.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 09:26 AM

Jim contrasts broadside compositions which were "unsingably bad" with the folk songs which are "highly singable".

Those broadsides which really were unsingable probably didn't survive very long, and possibly were never intended to be more than briefly topical. However the very high percentage of collected folk songs which can be traced back to broadsides and other printed sources suggests that many of them were singable. In some cases that may be because they were existing songs (or it might be that they were actually quite good) but in others the explanation must be that they were transformed into singable folk songs by folk singers themselves. Like Brian, I regard that process as a creative one, and in the context of what we mean by 'folk songs' arguably more important than the original act of composition. It is after all the 'folk process' which distinguishes folk song from the rest.

The significance to me of folk songs is their staying-power. They clearly contained something which made them relevant and meaningful to generations of people who sang and listened to them. Whether that came from the authenticity of their original composition or whether it was acquired and added by singers along the way, or whether they were simply an escapist contrast to their lives, they came to mean something to those people and perhaps tell us something about them and their lives. For me it is the whole journey which matters, not just the starting point; not where they originated but where they ended up. Of course, this is a purely personal and perhaps an emotional response and others may have very different reactions to mine, but it explains my point of view. I am not indifferent to whether or not these songs were composed by the folk (and certainly not hostile to the idea) but it is not of particular importance to me, as that was only the beginning of the journey.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 09:37 AM

> The significance to me of folk songs is their staying-power.


I take it you mean "without outside assistance."

A tiny proportion of pop songs and "art songs" have also shown great staying power - though helped along by marketing, star performers, and elaborate musical arrangements.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 01:31 PM

More on The Maid of Australia.
If you haven't already done so it's worth taking a look at the other thread on this very song. We have an unpublished version from Devon and an Australian version collected somewhat later on. For reasons I would explain if needed it surely is very doubtful that the song was made in Australia. When we have looked at all versions together I wouldn't be surprised if that one goes back to American versions. The thread also mentions 2 versions collected by Carpenter and this might prove useful when we've seen these 2 versions. The VWML website is about to put up the Carpenter Collection shortly if it has not already been done. One feature of both the versions on the other thread is some shunting has taken place(the running together of 2 verses into 1 ( sometimes attributable to oral tradition, sometimes to rewriting by broadside writers. More likely oral tradition in this case.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 01:41 PM

"Those broadsides which really were unsingable probably didn't survive very long, and possibly were never intended to be more than briefly topical. "
The ones I am referring to are the ones considered representative enough to be published - we have the thre volumes of Ashton 17th, 18th and 19th, Ashton's 'Real Sailor Songs' Hindley's 'Curiosities of Street Literature',   2 volumes of Holloway and Black..... and I would guess (without counting) another thirty collections - from early Elizabethan to 19th century
I have scoured the Pepys set and spent a long time looking through Chethams and Central Library in Mancester
Musa Pedestris and Pills to Purge Melancholy would , I think count as broadsides
Hardly a singable song in the lot of them - or certainly not for anything to use in a feature evening and then forgotten
Sorry Howard, I really have tried with these.
I would be interested to hear on a collection that did contain a few singable songs
Don't forget, many of these sheets were bought and used for decoration, as described in Issac Walton's 'The Compleat Angler'
I can hardly imagine many of them ever having been sung for any length of time.
Even most of those that went into the tradition were in very much need of adaptation.
"But Jim, do you now acknowledge that we all do accept that some songs were written by the people whose affairs they deal with, and that we disagree only in our estimates of the proportions?"
Not really Howard, otherwise people might have ventured the suggestion that the rural population might just have made a little more than the single figure numbers of our folk songs Steve is suggesting they did
Where do you stand on this?
If working people were capable of of having made our folk songs, the subject matter, the social stance of the songs, the folklore and folk speech..... and a whole host of other things suggests strongly that they made the majority of them
One of the things we noticed while interviewing singers was how they sectioned off their songs from other genres, identified with them and claimed them a their own
It would take poetical geniuses (geneii?) to have produced some work
Comared with the depth of our folk songs the work of the hacks was as different as mass produced goods next to that of skilled craftsmen
The timelessness and distribution of many of the songs is proof of that, if any were needed
Feel free to tell me if I am overstating
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 02:55 PM

"If you haven't already done so it's worth taking a look at the other thread on this very song."
Still one dimensional paperwork Steve
"Where have all the singers gone?" - as Pete Seeger neary used to sing
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 02:58 PM

You are overstating.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 03:00 PM

?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 03:07 PM

Guess where that figure of 89% came from? All the places mentioned above plus The British Library, National libraries of Scotland, Ireland and Wales etc. etc. I quickly learned how to spot those that relate to folk songs and those that didn't, copied all of those that could have related to folk in some way, checked them alongside their later oral versions and came up with that percentage. A lot of Child's grubbing around but enjoyable most of the time, over a period of 50 years or so.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 04:38 AM

Sorry chaps, I was out again for much of yesterday: first the dentist then dancing in the evening. Insufficient time to come home in between, so instead a short stroll with a friend across Regent's Park.

Steve
> More on The Maid of Australia.
If you haven't already done so it's worth taking a look at the other thread on this very song. <

Thanks for that.
Direct link here for convenience. Let's continue the discussion of that particular song there.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 04:39 AM

"You are overstating."
I most certainly am not Steve - and you know it
Where are your references to the possibilities that these songs might have come from the people who sang them or those who were an essential part of the narrative of the songs
I spent a Few hours last night struggling though a pile of published collections of broadsideses and nineteenth century songs - Hendersons Street Ballads, Lovatt Frazer, Hindley's 'Curiosities' Ashton, the 2 volum Holloway and Black, Chilton's 'Victorian Folk Songs - I reluctantle spent an hor plodding through the interminable 3 volume, 'Universal Songster'.....
I took down your recommended Senelic's 'Tavern Singing in London' and scanned through the lists.
hardly a singable song among the lot of them.
You have removed the possibility that the people who experienced first hand many of the events described in our folk songs - press-ganging, transportation and imprisonment for trying to feed their families , social misalliance, sea and land warfare.... and replaced them with the composers of this unsingable dross
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 04:46 AM

"Direct link here for convenience. Let's continue the discussion of that particular song there."
That might be a good idea Richard but, without getting bogged down with nit-picking our way through the texts again, I have a couple of general points to make on the group of songs that this is part of which I believe is very relevant to this particular argument
I'll make them when I've got over last night's ordeal
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 05:20 AM

I have finished the book but am otherwise not very well read on the subject.

Can someone direct me to examples of songs for which there is good evidence of them starting out as 'popular music' (theatre, pleasure garden, music hall, etc) and then having then been collected from an oral source in an 'improved' form?

I am not doubting they exist, but they are harder to recognise than those that seem to have become garbled so that they no longer make sense to a listener.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,julia L
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 05:49 AM

Is this allowed in the new politically correct Britain? Someone, no doubt will take offence.

Liberalism is a form of mental illness.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 05:53 AM

"good evidence of them starting out as 'popular music' "
There is no real "good evidence" - just possibilities based on publising dates, but Walter Pardon sang a beautiful version of 'The Rambling Blade' which he once described as "the best old folk song ever written" - I can't find a recording on-line but he can be heard singing it on his early albums
The somg may have originated as a printed 'goodnight ballad', but nobody can say fro certain and it is possible that it came from a 'common source'
There are no certainties in any of this - just possibilities
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 06:37 AM

Vic actually put it forward as an excuse for why broadside compositions were as unsingably bad as they were (though he didn't mention 'in contrast to the folk songs which are highly singable'
He didn't and he strongly resents being misquoted.

"Others have already addressed the Bothy Ballads issue. "
Nowheern near sufficiently
You fully accepted that they were exceptions because they were examples of workers having made their songs

The statement in quotations was lifted from a post by Steve Gardham and it refers to a long post of mine made at 09 Jan 18 - 01:15 PM . The salient point made in that post was that, without direct evidence. we do not know who wrote the earlier bothy ballads. We assume that they were any of a} the farmworkers b) the agents of the broadside printers in Dundee - mainly "The Poet's Box" or c) a combination of the two. We are informed that this does not cover the possibility of their origin Nowheern near sufficiently. Perhaps we need to be informed by the person who wrote this of other possible genesis of the Bothy Ballads.

The conduct of this thread increasingly reminds me of conversations with Christian religious fundementalists. They know that the world was created in seven days because because the bible tells us so. For these people facts and interaction of ideas leading to supportable theories have no place; what we need is the faith to endorse their dogmatic beliefs.
With such people discussion is clearly a waste of time because nothing will induce them to concede a single point.

Exeunt.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 08:02 AM

"He didn't and he strongly resents being misquoted."
I did not misquote you Vic, or if I did it was not intentional and is no cause for resentment
You commented on the pressure broadside writers worked under which I took to be a reason for their poor quality
If i was wroneIt was no more intentional than I# sure yours whan when you expected me to provide information from the 8th and 9th century when the discussion was of the songs of a millennium later
Mistakes happen
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 08:05 AM

"With such people discussion is clearly a waste of time because nothing will induce them to concede a single point."
I assume you are including Steve in this this time Vic?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 11:22 AM

starting out as 'popular music'
Just off the top of my head, lots more.
Sweet Nightingale, from the theatre
Dame Durden, glee clubs
Jim the Carter Lad, Music Hall
Villikins and his Dinah, theatre, burlesque
Caroline and her Young Sailor Bold, John Morgan, ballad writer
The Rambling Soldier, John Morgan
Pretty Caroline, George Brown, ballad writer
Flora, the Lily of the West, George Brown
The Constant Farmer's Son, George Brown
Bonny Bunch of Roses, George Brown
Dark-ey'd Sailor, George Brown
The Cruel Lowland Maid, George Brown
The Distressed Virgin, Martin Parker (17thc)
The Cooper of Norfolk "
John Appleby,          "
O dear O               "
A True Tale of Robin Hood "
The Wooing maid         "
Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, Thomas Deloney (17thc)
Down in the Meadows, Thomas Wise (18thc)
The Keeper, Joseph Martin, (17thc)
The Ploughboy's Dream, William Mason,
My True Love I've Lost, Lawrence Price (17thc)
The Famous Flower of Serving Men, "
The demon Lover                   "
The Merry haymakers,             "
Johnny Armstrong, Thomas Robins (17thc)
Robin Hood and the Beggar    "
Serving man and Husbandman, Richard Climsell, (17thc)
Baffled Knight                "
Gosport Tragedy                "
No Sir No                      "
Nightingales Sing/Bold Grenadier) "

But of course the vast majority are anon.

A ggod book for which Music Hall songs were found in oral tradition is 'Songs Sung in Suffolk' by John Howson of the Veteran albums label.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 12:22 PM

"starting out as 'popular music'"
Hmmmm?
"The Cooper of Norfolk "
No traditional versions listed by Roud
"The Constant Farmer's Son, George Brown"
Obviously a derivation of Bruton Town which shares its plot with one of Boccaccio's "Nights" and a Veronese broadside of 1629, indicating it has been around a long, long time
"Blind Beggar"
The length of the totally unsingable (50-odd verse) early version compered to the beautifully streamlined shorter traditional one indicates that the former well might have been a very-overindulged composition based on she latter
It is somewhat inconceivable that a traditional singer would plough through an ungainly epic and select a few verses in the middle, especially as a major source of this sonh was the still non-literate Travelling community
"The demon Lover"
The authorship of none of the ballads has been established definitely
The amount of pious moralising and actual folklore in this ballad suggests that it may have been expanded from a traditional composition and turned into a sermon on marital fidelity
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 12:40 PM

Steve, don't forget J. B. Geoghegan's "Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye" (1867).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 12:53 PM

Thanks for that list.

One sentence that caught my attention towards the end of the book, from Julia Bishop rather than Steve Roud, was "On the other hand, Kidson believed that "folk song", when all was said and done, was often little more than archaic popular song". The 'evidence' in the book makes it look that way to me, which is not to say that in the past, as in the late 20th century, some popular hits of the day were not penned by people who started of (and maybe ended up) 'ordinary'.

Overall the book seems to be a historical account of people doing what people who 'made their own entertainment' did. Tthe collectors' 'folk song' being when it was done near the poorer end of society.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 01:55 PM

Just picking up on one of Jim's points:
> "Blind Beggar"
The length of the totally unsingable (50-odd verse) early version compered to the beautifully streamlined shorter traditional one indicates that the former well might have been a very-overindulged composition based on she latter <

While that is not impossible, an alternative (and for most of us much more plausible) scenario is that the very long version was the original, in the fashion of its time, and that the ballad subsequently got cut down by singers, and/or by later broadside printers with or without the aid of their current writers. It certainly was printed umpteen times over the years: 317 entries in the Roud Broadside Index.

And what about the plot? Does it seem like a true account or a fictional tale calculated to appeal to a poor clientele?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 02:02 PM

Re The Blind beggar
Deloney (a silk weaver, probably from Norwich) had a reputation for re-working folk tales so he was obviously aware of the oral tradition
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 02:10 PM

"And what about the plot? Does it seem like a true account or a fictional tale calculated to appeal to a poor clientele?"
B beggar's daughter despised by rich suitors who turns out to come from a family that is richer than all three of them ?
That's the stuff folk tales are made of Richard
As for an illiterate peasant (as they would have been at the time the ballad was made), ploughing through a fifty-odd verse ballad to pick out the bits the or she didn't like - what do you think?
A later broadside hack maybe, but would a hard-pressed hack working to a deadline have time, or even be bothered to edit a ballad that length?
The latter is a possibility; the former, out of the question
"archaic popular song"."
Popular in the terms Kidson would use it, would be the same as Child's use of the term - of the people rather than top of any ancient hit parade.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 02:51 PM

Hi Jon,
The list wasn't meant to be definitive. I missed off all of Harry Clifton's and Joe Geoghegan's songs that entered oral tradition. jag only wanted some suggestions to look at. There are probably plenty of others on Bruce Olsen's website.

Apologies re 'Cooper of Norfolk'. I did say the list was off the top of my head. Actually it was only found in oral tradition in Scotland, not England. Check out 'Johnnie Cooper', versions in John Bell, Greig Duncan and Peter Buchan's Secret Songs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 03:03 PM

The ballad writers in all centuries took their inspiration from a wide range of sources, folk tales, higher literature, newspapers, gossip, pub talk, other broadside ballads, etc., but heavily sprinkled with their own imaginations and creative abilities. (list not definitive).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 03:10 PM

One that I missed off the song list because it's not a very common song in oral tradition is a song called 'Common Bill'/'I hardly think I will'/ 'I'll tell you of a fellow'. More often found in America in oral tradition than in this country, but Lucy broadwood saw fit to publish aversion in 'English County Songs' in 1891, 35 years after it was written by Mary F. T. Tucker (music by Tom Higgins) as 'Woman's Resolution'.

That's the equivalent of me publishing a song as a folk song that was written in 1982.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 03:11 PM

Roud 442 just for the record.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 03:36 PM

I wonder whether we are in danger of applying modern assumptions and attitudes to earlier and very different times.

If a 50 verse ballad was unsingable, I am led to wonder why the writer bothered to make it so long. Surely a shorter, more singable version would have attracted more customers, and been less trouble to write. As Richard says, this was the fashion of the time, but that implies that these long and unwieldy compositions were in fact popular.

I think it is possible to exaggerate the "illiterate peasant" angle. Literacy rates steadily improved throughout the 19th century, and whilst many rural workers may have been functionally illiterate it seems quite possible that there was someone in their community who could read or sing a broadside to them. It is often reported that these singers had very retentive memories (a skill which illiteracy encourages) so it does not seem impossible to me that they could that way acquire at least a substantial part of even a lengthy ballad, from which they could then strip away the irrelevancies. And of course folk singers were not all agricultural labourers but included artisans and other skilled and semi-skilled occupations who might be expected to have a higher level of literacy.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 03:54 PM

Personally I find the Blind Beggar plot not merely implausible as a true story but not even very convincing fiction. If the father actually had lots of money, why did he go about as a beggar? It wasn't (as in some other songs) in pursuit of his own amorous adventures. Was it just to make absolutely sure that whatever man took his daughter would be doing so for love, not for money? Did he really need to go to quite those extreme lengths? The ballad is typical in recounting what (supposedly) happened without saying much about the characters' motives.

Plausible or not, clearly the story was popular, and in the form of the tidied-up ballad remains so to this day among revival performers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 04:00 PM

Hi Howard,
These longer ballads of the 17th/18th centuries were definitely aimed at the rising middle class in the cities, people like tradesmen, apprentices, and people would buy them to read as well as sing. By about 1780 many of the longer ballads were being cut down drastically and being reprinted on slips to cater for the rising literacy among the poor. One excellent example that was being sung in its entirety was The Yarmouth Tragedy with 56 verses. When collected in oral tradition lots of versions were found, several with no verses in common with others because they were taken from different episodes in the seminal long ballad. I would put this down partly to oral tradition and partly to the process mentioned above.

'that implies that these long and unwieldy compositions were in fact popular.'(HJ) They were extremely popular, being printed and reprinted well into the 19thc in full, by the likes of John Pitts, but had gone out of favour by the time Catnach came on the scene.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 04:48 PM

This may not be the case here, but in earlier centuries, indeed by many today, beggars were often portrayed as very wealthy people, who deliberately dressed in rags and went onto the streets to beg but in reality were living in big houses. Whether there was any truth in this I much doubt it. Recently on our local radio a taxi driver called in to say that he regularly picked up one of these street beggars from his house daily to take him to his begging spot. Again I very much doubt this. These street beggars generally are ignored. I rarely see anyone give them anything and nowadays we are encouraged to give to the homeless organisations instead which most philanthropic people do. Aggressive beggars are soon dealt with.

This ballad may well have been meant as a dig at beggars, at least partially.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 05:10 PM

Speaking for myself, I find that long narrative ballads are much easier to learn than shorter folk songs in which there is no narrative. I'm not sure on what sort of occasion the long ballads might have been sung or recited in full, but I have no problem believing that people could and did learn them.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 05:46 PM

In the situation described by Roud where the expectation was that everyone at a gathering contributed something being able to come back from town with a 54 verse ballad to simply read out may have been worth a ha'penny or so.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 05:00 AM

"Personally I find the Blind Beggar plot not merely implausible as a true story but not even very convincing fiction"
Pepys connected the broadside to an Eating House he frequented run by such a character in East London and describes a visit to it in his diary
"This very house was built by the blind beggar of Bethnal Grren so much talked of and sang in the ballads"   
Bishop Percy in his Reliques connects the character to a soldier who was blinded in The Battle of Evesham in 1265
Somewhat coincidentally, we recorded this first on a Travellers site just off the Mile End Road in East London, a few minutes walk from the 'Blind Beggar' pub, which was the hang-out of notorious gangsters, The Kray Brothers.
Of course the 'rich beggar' character in folklore owes much to the legend of James V (1512-1542), the hanger of Johnny Armstrong, who reputably wandered his kingdom in disguise, often as a beggar, as 'The Guidman of Ballangeich'
"The ballad writers in all centuries took their inspiration from a wide range of sources, folk tales, higher literature, newspapers"
As far as the broadside writers are concerned, there is no evidence whatever of where they took their inspiration from - we have no idea who they were, with very few exceptions
Working as they did, they appear to have written almost automatically to a set formula in order to produce as many songs as possible in the shortest time.
This is where the two-way process you raised in your talk possible came in
Lile today's pop industry, the trade wa a predatory one where the song sellers would get their goods wherever they could
If country singers, sailors, soldiers..... were in town and accessible, they surely would have been regarded as a rich source of material to be printed and sold
You only have to look at the collections I mentioned to see that there appeared to be very little artistic creation in their making, none of the subtleties that you find in folk song and certainly none of the humanity
In folk song ou get sentiment and compassion, in the broadsides you get (often very exaggerated) snitmentality
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 10:10 AM

I'd like to pick up two of Jim's points.

"You only have to look at the collections I mentioned to see that there appeared to be very little artistic creation in their making, none of the subtleties that you find in folk song and certainly none of the humanity
In folk song ou get sentiment and compassion, in the broadsides you get (often very exaggerated) snitmentality"

That is again making a black and white distinction between broadside ballads on the one hand and folk songs on the other, ignoring the overlap. Do you have some particular songs in mind as examples of subtlety, sentiment and compassion?

On the Maid of Australia thread you said
"it was Professor "Bob" Thomson, who was the first to put forward the extent to which folk songs appeared on broadsides (circa 1970) and who based his PhD on the subject"

Many scholars and collectors before and since have commented on the words of collected songs being found on broadsides. Was Prof. Thomson referring to the particular case of songs that appear to have started with the "folk" and then got printed?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 10:31 AM

Several contributors to this thread have frequently pointed out the fact that, like any other genre, there was a wide range of subject, quality, sources, inspiration used to produce the matter that appeared on street literature. We have on many occasions agreed that the overall quality of material put out on broadsides is certainly not to modern tastes. The evidence is there in the songs themselves for all to see. They certainly used set formulae and many examples of this continued onto the oral versions we now call folksongs. That doesn't exclude the fact that some of them were very creative and talented.

'sailors, soldiers..... were in town and accessible, they surely would have been regarded as a rich source of material.' Nobody is denying this.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 11:23 AM

"Do you have some particular songs in mind as examples of subtlety, sentiment and compassion?"
Take any of the press gang songs Richard, particularly those in from the point of the woman
They display an account of the feelings generated rather than than a reporting of the events
Singers we recorded told us over and over again "That's a true song" = they were able to identify with the songs they sang.
We thought at first that they meant that they believed the songs were based on real the events and people until we asked Tom Lenihan when he believed the song he had just sung had taken place.
He looked puzzled and asked, "Do you think it really happened?"
He meant reality of the emotion rather than of the factual events.
What MacColl spent years trying to persuade singers he worked with to try, country singers had been doing naturally
I became convinced that the broken token songs were country compositions when Pat linked them to the rural 'gimmel ring' tradition described by Robert Chambers and William Hone in their Day Books - both with illustrations
The practice was an old one which dates back centuries and crosses class barriers
A man wishing to seal a bond with a woman (or maybe just get his leg over) would obtain a special ring which broke into two matching pieces, he would give her half of it and keep the other himself.
Among the wealthy, the rings were beautifully crafted ones and elaborately entwined ones, sometimes made in three parts - one for the woman, one for the man and a third was given to a witness as proof of the engagement
In rural areas, they were cheaply manufactured, roughly riveted ones, scratched or indented so they would match when compared.
They could be purchased at a stall in any fairground or market - Thomas Hardy mentions them in 'Tess of the Durbeyvilles'
We puzzled for years trying to work out how anybody could break a finger ring in half without the help of tools
The songs don't attempt to explain the practice - they had no need to
When they were made it was common 'insider' knowledge
I've never read an explanation as to how the rings were broken - have you?
Yhis one makes sense to me.
"Was Prof. Thomson referring to the particular case of songs that appear to have started with the "folk" and then got printed?"
It wasn't an issue then - anywhere
That's why Topic named their set of recordings 'The Voice of the People' and Bert Lloyd called his magnificent thirteen-part series The Songs of The People'
It's why Child called his collection 'The English and Scottish Popular Ballads - popular = "of the people"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 11:29 AM

"Several contributors to this thread have frequently pointed out"
You certainly have Steve; I don't recall others doing so, certainly not frequently
Please speak for yourself and not for others - only politicians are allowed to speak on behalf as others when they are pushing through unpopular ploicies
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 11:34 AM

So Broadside writers were not People or Of The Folk.........

That seems to be the feeling of some correspondents here, ie. they could not have the same feelings or experiences as ordinary working people?

That makes all writers of Crime or Spy Novels Criminals or Murderers or even Spies...

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 12:46 PM

Tim, you should know 'people' don't live in towns or cities, and the creatures who live in towns and cities can't possibly be 'popular'!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 12:55 PM

"So Broadside writers were not People or Of The Folk........."
Not in the sense we are talking about here
Our songs are rurally set, lagely dealing with rural situations and occupations
Broadside hacks were based firmly in large cities - Roud makes a point of using the London writings of Charles Hindley for his information and descriptions
"That makes all writers of Crime or Spy Novels Criminals or Murderers or even Spies..."
The best of our Spy (in particular) novels like Le Carre and Deighton spent a great deal of time researching the background of their subjects in order to bring them the authenticity they did
Workers working under the pressure the hacks were would have had neither the time, inclination or resources to do that
Is it a coincidence that our folk songs exhibited the same authenticity while the broadsides, Dibden, et al more often that not gave us pastiches of country life and an 'Oirish'-type approach to country dialect and vernacular?
Not to me
Take time to wade through the broadside collections, as I did recently and you'll be facing writers who were writing out of their depth.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 01:11 PM

"Tim, you should know 'people' don't live in towns or cities, and the creatures who live in towns and cities can't possibly be 'popular'!"
Maiowww
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 01:24 PM

'Workers working under the pressure the hacks were would have had neither the time, inclination or resources to do that' (JC) You've now said this at least 4 times. Where did you get this information? The broadside writers were under equally the same pressure as the rural poor, i.e., putting bread on the table and beer in their bellies.

The resources have been listed numerous times.

FACT, once again the earliest manifestation of our southern English folk song corpus that first appeared on cheap print 89%. Do you realise that whatever percentage you think actually originated on broadsides (ranging from don't know, to none) you are condemning out of hand as crap?

Here again for the umpteenth time 'the fact that, like any other genre, there was a wide range of subject, quality, sources, inspiration used to produce the matter that appeared on street literature.' (SG from a few posts above.)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 01:24 PM

On the MoA thread Jim said
"it was Professor "Bob" Thomson, who was the first to put forward the extent to which folk songs appeared on broadsides (circa 1970) and who based his PhD on the subject"

I read that at first as referring to collected songs having previously appeared on broadsides, but realised Jim couldn't have meant that Prof. Thomson was the first to point that out, because many scholars and collectors had done so before 1970 (and others since).

So I wondered what Jim had meant and asked
"Was Prof. Thomson referring to the particular case of songs that appear to have started with the "folk" and then got printed?"

I don't understand Jim's reply.
"It wasn't an issue then - anywhere
That's why Topic named their set of recordings 'The Voice of the People' and Bert Lloyd called his magnificent thirteen-part series The Songs of The People'
It's why Child called his collection 'The English and Scottish Popular Ballads - popular = "of the people"

Without doubt, songs that were collected and labelled as "folk songs" had mostly appeared earlier in print. The bone of contention here is how many of them had existed as songs among the "folk" before they were printed. Was that what Prof. Thomson was addressing?

If not, what did you mean?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 01:43 PM

BTW, I'm quite sure that a few of the more talented writers were making a reasonable living out of this, the likes of George Brown and John Morgan. I would also imagine that many of them had other incomes as well, just like the printers did. certainly the pedlars sold many many more things than the street literature.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 01:45 PM

Good grief, I hadn't realised that this argument has been going on here, amongst the same people, for over 10 years. Curious about the term 'broadside hack' I searched the forum for it.

I am not convinced about the rural-urban divide that seems to be taken for granted in this discussion. Roud quotes Charlotte Burne's reference to a Shrewbury broadside printer. The Bodleian index has broadsides from several printers in Shrewsbury (I have not checked the date ranges). I guess (someone correct me if I am wrong) that these were jobbing printers set up to do the routine printing of a rural county town as well as street literature.

Even now within 15 minutes walk from the centre of Shrewsbury you can get to meet a sheep or cow. Sure, the industrial revolution started just down the road in Ironbridge, but in the first half of the 19th century most of the industrial revolution was happening in the country. Even in the 1970's Oldham was advertising itself on the London tube as 'the town in the country'; in the 1960's there our milk was still delivered on a round run by the man who who milked the cows. In the early 19th century most urban workers would have had relatives in the country, many were probably born there, or even lived there and walked into the town to work.

I was slightly disappointed that Roud left a lot for the reader to form a view on rather than summarise his views. However, having accepted Amazon's suggestion of a sample of "The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs", I now see that its Introduction is just such a summary - the later book has the data.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 01:55 PM

" Was that what Prof. Thomson was addressing?"
I siad it wan't becaue it was an unnecessary question
Ver few doubted that they had
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 01:58 PM

Excellent point, jag.
I would need to see some examples of broadsides printed in Shrewsbury
before I would make any points on this. Off the top of my head those printed by Fowler of Shrewsbury were very much the standard pieces printed in many places.

Then of course the larger centres had many many more printers producing broadsides.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 02:01 PM

I'm sticking my neck out here a little but I'm betting you won't find a single ballad printed by Fowler that became a folk song that wasn't part of the general stock of most printers around the country.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 03:00 PM

"I'm sticking my neck out here a little
I'm not sticking my neck out a single inch when I say they there#s not a single broadside that you can prove became a folk song
You have said numerous times that all this is a theory of yours and you cannot prove conclusively that one single folk song originated on the broadside presses, yet you are now pretending that you can
I'd say that was a sign of a rapidly sinking ship, wouldn't you?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 03:08 PM

'you are now pretending that you can' I'm sorry, Jim. I don't see how that statement relates to any of my last few postings. Perhaps somebody can explain. I'd say you were the one clutching at straws, but let's not get back into all the backbiting. I have promised not to be drawn into that.

All I was trying to say about Fowler was his output largely consisted of the very stuff you have been complaining about, as opposed to the output of the likes of Pitts and Catnach in London which was much more varied, and contained many of the songs we now call folksongs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 03:32 PM

Jim: " Was that what Prof. Thomson was addressing?"
I siad it wan't becaue it was an unnecessary question
Ver few doubted that they had

Sorry I am not understanding at all.

Please tell us what he was addressing.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 04:11 PM

Is that Fowler of Salisbury, not Shrewsbury?

Most of the Shrewsbury broadsides on the Bodleian site seem to be to do with the 1822 Parliamentary election, some singing the praises of 'Pelham'. A web page says that John Cressett Pelham spent ?20,000 on his succesful campaign.

How many of the rhymes printed elsewhere were promotional or campaigning in some way and redundant after an election day or similar? Paper was expensive. Was the back blank and if so what did people write on it?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 04:22 PM

Right, here we go. Holloway and Black. These are not the only ones related to folk songs in the 2 volumes but just leafing through, what I can see immediately
1 Admiral Benbow (Come all you sailors bold version)
6 The Black Cow (trad in Ireland I believe)
11. Bold Captain Avery
17. The Buck's Elegy (Young sailor cut down)
18. Bunch of Rushes
36 The English Rover (Roving Jack of all trades)
37 The Bold Lieutenant
41 The Fishes (Up jumped the Herring)
46 the Highwayman Outwitted
54 the Irish Lovers (The winter it is past)
66 The Lamenting Maid ( "   "            )rewritten
71 the Maid and Wife
76 The Maids Resolution to follow her Lover (Polly Oliver)
77 The Merchant's Courtship (string round her finger)
80 Mountains High (Renardine)
88 Harry Newell (Hexamshire Lass/Katy Cruel)
90 Patrick Flemming (Whiskey in the Jar)
91 Paul Jones
94 Lark in the Morning
95 Sprig of thyme
99 rakes of Stony Batter
102 Riley and Colinband
108 the Grey Cock
109 Skewball
111 the Sheffield Apprentice
123 Will the Merry Weaver
127 The Young Man's Fortune (When I was a little boy)

That's 27 just in the first volume and whilst leafing through i came across several eminently singable songs not on the list above.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 04:28 PM

Absolutely GUEST. It is Salisbury. Apologies to jag. Rushing again. I'll have a look at those on the Bodl and see if any of them printed any that went into oral tradition, though I strongly suspect they are probably similar to Fowler's output. They certainly weren't among the main culprits.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 04:31 PM

BTW there is strong evidence to suggest that the first one, Admiral Benbow, was written and printed just after the incident c1702, off the top of my head.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 04:36 PM

Volume 2
3a & 3b The Bonnet so Blue( 2 versions) The printers pirated from each other and localised the location to suit their buyers.
5 My true Love I've Lost
8 The Cuckoo
10. the Basket of Eggs
13 Blow the Wind I O
14 The Cards (All Fours)

more shortly

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 04:37 PM

15 Buy Broom Besom

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 04:38 PM

900

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 04:52 PM

17 The Crafty Maid's Policy
19 The Pretty Chambermaid
24 Improbablility (Then my love and I will be married)
27 The Dumb Wife
32 The Gypsy Laddie
36 The Bold Astrologer
50 The Sheep Shearers
53 Fox Hunting Song (Most gentlemen take delight)
55 Dicky Milburn
59 kelly the Pirate
61 Georgy (Child Ballad|)
62 The Bold Prisoner (Child ballad)
70 The Deserter
82 the Bonny Bunch of Roses-o
92 The Old Woman of Rumford
123 The Tailor in a Hobble

That's 23 so 50 altogether. My first estimate was rather modest. There are probably a dozen more if I checked carefully, and again in volume 2 some eminently singable songs that didn't stay in oral tradition long enough to be collected.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jan 18 - 05:08 AM

Checked Hnederson and Holloway and Black thoroughly last night
Apart from the half dozen I put markers in, which I hope to be able to list later, every single one of them you have listed here are poorly written and false-sounding songs
From my selection, two of the songs are identified as being of Irish origin, on from the Joyce Collection
I've taken four of your list from volume 2, Holloway and Black, numerically selected, which you claim to be singable songs
They are all, in my opinion, false in conception, and crude in poetic style - doggerel - typical of the broadside output
At a glance, I find most of the others on your list are more or less of the same quality, but I'll go though them in more detail later
Compared to the smoothness and reality of our folksongs - dry, tasteless chalk to rich, satisfying cheese
You have done yourself no favour in suggesting that these suggest that folksongs and compositions such as these come from the same stable
I have left the editor's note to the last song in - that sums up y feelings on the vast majority of broadside compositions (though many lack the mentioned charm!)
You claimed that you have produced a list such as this from Holloway and Black - this is the first time I have ever seen such a list
Can you link me to your past lists please
Jim Carroll
Incidentally - my point is about the singability of these songs - if you consider songs mocking dumb people - both inhuman, and in this case, extremely sexist - singable, we come from different worlds

19
The Pretty Chambermaid
Printed byJ. Catnach, 2 Monmouth-court, 7 Dials. Sold by Bennett, Brighton

Not far from town a country squire,
An open hearted blade;
Had long conceived a strong desire,
To kiss his chambermaid.

One summer's noon, quite full of glee,
He led her to a shade,
And all beneath a mulberry tree,
He kiss'd his chambermaid.

The parsons spouse from window high
This armorous pair survey'd;
And softly wish'd, none can deny,
She'd been the chambermaid:

When all was o'er, poor Betty cry'd,
Kind sir I'm much afraid,
That woman there, will tell your bride,
You've kiss'd your chambermaid.

The squire conceiv'd a lucky thought
That she might not upbraid;
And instantly the lady brought,
Where he had kiss'd his maid:

Then all beneath the mulberry tree,
Her ladyship was laid;
And three times three well kiss'd was she
Like to the chambermaid.

Next morning came the parson's wife,
For scandal was her trade;
I saw your squire, ma'am, on my life,
Great with your chambermaid.

When, cry'd my lady, where, and how,
I'll soon discharge the jade;
Beneath the mulberry tree, I vow,
He kiss'd your chambermaid.

This falsehood, cry'd her ladyship,
Shall not my spouse degrade;
'Twas I chanc'd there to make a slip,
And not my chambermaid.

Both parties parted in a pet,
Not trusting what was said;
And Betty keeps her service yet,
That pretty chambermaid.

24
Improbability, Or, A Batchelor's Dislike to a Married Life
Printed and Sold by. Pitts, 14, Great st. Andrew Street, 7 Dials

As I was a walking in a grove,
All by myself as I suppos'd.
My mind did oft times me remove,
But by no means could be composed,
At length by chance a friend I met,
Which caused me long time tarry,
And oft of me she did intreat,
To tell her when I had a mind to marry.

When saffron grows on every tree,
And every stream flows milk and honey,
When sugar grows in carrot fields.
And usurers refuses money.
And countrymen forjudges sit,
And Michaelmas falls in February.
When millers do their toil forget,
O then my love and I'll be married.

When Shrovetide falls in Easter week,
And Christmas in the month of July,
When lawyers plead without a fee,
And taylors they deal just and truly,
When all deceit is quite put down,
And truth by all men is preferr'd,
When Indigo dies red and brown,
O then my love and I'll be married.

When men and beasts the ocean plough,
And fishes in green fields are feeding.
When cockle shells in the streets do grow,
And swarms upon dry banks are breeding,
When muscle shells for diamond rings,
And glass to gold may be compar'd
When gold is made of grey goose wings,
O then my love and I'll be married.

When women know not how to scold,
And Dutchmen leave off drinking brandy,
When cats do bark and dogs do mew,
And brimstone's took for sugar candy,
When Whitsuntide it does fall,
All in the month of January,
When coblers work without an awl
O then my love and I'll be married.

When candlesticks do serve for bells.
And frying pans do serve for ladles,
And in the seas they dig for wells,
And porridge pots do serve for cradles,
When all maids prove true to their lives,
And a man on his back an ox can carry,
And when the mice with the cat do play,
O then my love and I'll be married.

36
The Astrologer
Printed for and sold by J. Pitts, No. 14, Great Saint Andrew Street Seven Dials

There was an old astrologer in London who did dwell,
For telling of girls fortunes there was none could him excel,
There was a girl among the rest to this old man would go,
And for to have her fortune told much she did to know. [?wish

Amongst the rest a brisk young maid there went
And for to have her fortune told it was her intent,
She asked for this cunning man, answer was made she,
He is up stairs in his chamber, pray call him down, said she.

And when that he came down, she thus to him did say,
I hear you can tell fortunes, can you tell mine I pray'
And if that you tell me truly, I'l pay you well says she,
No question but I can, fair maid, come walk up stairs with me.

No I'll not walk up stairs with you nor any man indeed,
She spoke with so much modesty as if she'd been a maid
I am in haste, she said, and thought not to have staid,
Pray be as nimble as you can, for I am a servant maid.

O then he stood and paus'd awhile, a scheme began to rise,
Then he boldly answer'd her, and made her this reply.
You say you are a servant, I am sure you are no maid,
It is time, sweetheart you were wed for you have wanton play'd.

O then she blush'd with shame at hearing him say so,
For that he spoke the truth she very well did know,
Deny it not, says he, I know it to be so,
For you did lie with your master not many nights ago.

She stampt, and swore her master she would bring,
To witness for himself and her that it was no such thing,
To lie and curse it makes your case the worse,
For I know he gave to you a crown, you have it in your purse.

She finding him so positive, she could not him deny.
Then she boldly answer'd him, and made him this reply
Indeed, kind sir I am a maid, and hope so to remain,
'Tis true he had my maidenhead, but give it me again.

50
The Sheep Shearers
Printed and Sold byJ. Pitts, 6, Great St. Andrew Street, 7 Dials

There's the rose bud in June & violets blow
And the small birds they warble on every bough,
There's the pink and the lilly the daffy down dilly
To adorn and perfume there's the rose bud in June.

We'll all hold the plough the fat oxen draws low
While our lads and our lasses a sheep shearing do go.

When the shepherds have shorn their jolly fat fleece.
What joys can compare when he talks of increase
Each lad takes his lass gently on the green grass,
To adorn and perfume, there's the rose bud in June.
We will, &c.

There is our clean milk pails which foams with good ale,
At our table where plenty be found,
We whistle and sing and we dance in a ring
To adorn & perfume the sweet meadows in June
We will, &c.

Now sheep shearing's over and harvest it draws nigh,
We'll prepare for the fields our strengths for to try
We'll reap and then mow, then we'd plough and then sow,
To adorn and perfume the sweet meadows in June.
We will, &c.

Now our barns they are full and our fields they are bare,
We must thrash for the market and our ground we must till,
We must reap and then mow, next plough, and then sow
To adorn and perfume till June does return.
We will, &c.

Editor's note
"Doubtless a stage piece: charming, but not to be recommended for realism"

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 13 Jan 18 - 07:57 AM

I've just about given up reading all these messages in the thread, which has now developed into a bad-tempered conversation between 3 people, and very occasional inputs from another couple of people.
It's a pity that Steve's book announcement thread back in the summer has been taken over by this conversation, as it detracts from any further consideration of Steve's book (Yes, Jim, we know you don't like most aspects of the book so no need for you to repeat that).

Of course, if someone collated all these 900+ comments they might be as long as Steve's 750 page book.

Instead of contributing further, write your own books Jim and Steve G ... or take your discussion to a new thread.

Goodbye!

Derek

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jan 18 - 07:58 AM

Singable.... really???
Jim Carroll
55
Dickie Milburn

Dicky Milburn was a miller and he liv'd at a high house in the west of England; his wife was taken very ill with the cholic, she did not think she would live. - Oh! Dicky, my dear, if you don't get up and go to Bristol and fetch me a bottle of Epsom water, I can't live the night over. Wei, my dear, if you are no better, I' get up and go. Dicky got up and away he went, and on the road he met with a waggoner. Good morning to you, Master Waggoner. Good morning to you, Mr. Milburn; why, where are you going so early this morning, Dicky? I'm going to Bristol, to fetch my wife a bottle of Epsom water; for she is taken so bad, I don't think she'l live. - Dicky, you're a fool - May be so, Mr. Waggoner. - I've a bag of hops that is half full, if you'l get up, I'l tie you up in the mouth of the sack; then we'l drive merrily, jerrily [sic], as waggoners do, til we get to Mrs. Milburn's door; there will be no one so ready to receive as Mrs. Milburn with a parson at her tail. Now they came with a double rap at the door - Good morning to you, Mrs. Milburn. Good morning to you, Mr. Waggoner. Ive a bag of hops that's very much damaged with the rain, wil you let me lay it before your fire? O yes, by all means, walk in Mr. Waggoner; I'm only cooking a mou'ful of dinner for the parson and myself. Dinner being ready, she askt him to have a bit. Pray, Mr. Waggoner, wil you have a mou'ful. My bag of hops gives me so much concern, that I've no heart to eat; but taking a second thought, he set to and made a hearty dinner, and thou't himself no fool for so doing. After this they had a bottle, and then a second and third: - Pray, Mr. Parson, wil you be so kind as to give us a song? I am the parson of the parish, and wear a black gown; it's beneath me to sing. Now, Mr. Waggoner, wil you give us a song? I must needs tel you, that my bag of hops gives me so much concern, that I've no heart to sing. - Then you may both go and be hanged and il sing my song myself.

Now little Dicky Milburn to Bristol is gone,
To fetch me a bottle of Epsom so strong;
I wish him a long journey never more to return.
And hey for a bottle more ale, more ale,
And hey for a bottle more ale.

A very good song indeed, Mrs. Milburn, and very wel sung, said the waggoner. Now, Mr. Parson, wil you favor us with your song? I'm the parson of the parish, and 'tis beneath me to sing - woman is the forerunner of all evil; wel, i'l lay aside my black gown, it may go and be hanged, and il sing my song in my turn.

Little Dicky Milburn, you little do think,
I'm eating your victuals and drinking your drink;
But if God spare my life, i'l lie with your wife,
And it's hey for, &c.

A very good song indeed, Mr. Parson, and very wel sung, said the waggoner. Now Mr. Waggoner, wil ye let us have your song? why really my bag of hops gives me so much concern, that i have no heart to sing; but i'l say as the parson said, let the bag of hops go, and be hang'd, and i'l sing my song in my turn.

Little Dicky Milburn, since you are so near,
Out of my hopsack you soon shal appear;
If a friend you do lack, i wil stand at your back;
And it's hey, etc.

Now Dicky lay peeping out of the sack, like a scalded cock in a tub of cold water, of a sharp frosty morning. Now you've all had your songs, it's time for me to have my song in my turn.

Good morning, to ye, gentlefolks, all of a row;
Since now i have come all your secrets to know,
The parson shal be horswhipt before he does go;
And it's hey, etc.

So they horswhipt the parson, i've heard many say,
And Dicky lives happy to this very day;
Since the parson is gone, never more to return.
And it's hey for a bottle more ale.

Printed and sold by T. Batchelar, 115, Long Alley, Moorflelds, London.
Epsom water dates from 1770 (OED), but this piece is doubtless later

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Jan 18 - 08:57 AM

'write your own books Jim and Steve G' Er.... I did, several, Derek.

But you are absolutely right. This is all going nowhere.

Bye-bye!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jan 18 - 08:59 AM

"write your own books Jim "
Elitist, Ivory tower crap
Point made, I think
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 13 Jan 18 - 08:29 PM

Somewhere in the course of this interminable thread, I suggested to you, Jim -- politely and sincerely -- that you write a book. I expressed the view that such a book would likely be very interesting and informative. You said something to the effect that at this stage of your life you lack the energy. Having written more than 20 books myself and about to embark on yet another (none on a subject relevant to Mudcat, though there are passing folksong references in some, including in one an extended discussion of the lore out of which "Thomas the Rhymer" grew), I respect the sentiment.

The reason I write these words, however, is that if I am an ivory-tower elitist for writing books and urging you to do the same, the whole concept has been grievously devalued. I doubt -- though I don't know either of them personally (I have, however, read two of Roud's books) -- that the Steves are either. I actually think that those who have something to say, and I certainly include you in that number, ought to write intelligent, informed books instead of wasting their energies on ephemeral stuff like Internet spats. And please don't insult us authors. We already suffer enough. Most of us are among the earth's lowliest creatures, unwelcome in ivory towers and shunned by elites. In another time, perhaps, we'd have been on the street, in fair weather and foul, hawking broadsides and hoping against hope that the tradition would take note.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 14 Jan 18 - 05:49 AM

Derek said
"I've just about given up reading all these messages in the thread, which has now developed into a bad-tempered conversation between 3 people, and very occasional inputs from another couple of people."

The vast majority of posts in the last few days have been from two people. If Derek is including me or any of the others who have made occasional contributions, I am disappointed. Mine have been mostly seeking clarification of comments that I had failed to understand: if they have come across as bad tempered I apologise.

GUEST,Jerome Clark mentioned one of his books with 'an extended discussion of the lore out of which "Thomas the Rhymer" grew'.
Reference, please!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 14 Jan 18 - 06:01 AM

I've finally reached the end of the book. I found it interesting and found its arguments pursuasive. Roud's main purpose is to explore the evidence and show that, while there are many gaps, there is more than perhaps had been realised.

I have found this discussion, for all its bad temper at times, very useful in helping to shape my thoughts and questions while reading the book.

Rather than kick any more hornets' nests I'll say no more than that.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jan 18 - 11:45 AM

"I suggested to you, Jim -- politely and sincerely -- that you write a book."
Why?
I really have nothing to add to what I have said here - nobody knows what the origins of any single folk song are, there are a few strong possibilities, but beyond that, the only chance anybody has of making sense of folk songs is to cary out a full assessment of all that has been said in the past, examine the only solid evidence we have - the songs themselves, those on paper and those in recorded form, as living entities rather than dead texts and debate them in friendly terms - everything not just the current flavour of the month.
Nobody here appears to want to believe the folk as serious contenders for having made thse songs, which saddens me deeply
It is an accusation that has lurked behind society's thinking since folk songs (particularly the ballads) first raised their inconvenient head
Based on our work among 'the folk', I have come to a pretty firm observation that is not ony possible, but highly probable
These debates cannot possibly achieve anything while people approach books like 'Fonk Song in England' as uncritically a they have done here - if this is true, this is the last place for serious debate.
I have made a point here (with some difficulty - I'm well aware of having a short fuse) of not insulting anybody or blowing my top
I have made my points as clearly as I can and have constantly requested responses - few have been forthcoming
If it has been a two-horse race it is because people have been happy for it to be - summed up somewhat succincly by Howard's "Rather than kick any more hornets' nests I'll say no more than that."
Steve and I are at opposite ends of teh argument (sort of), though my desire here has been more interested to discuss his "two way street" origins of folk song than he is prepared to.
If the rest of you choose not to participate, sorry, but that's down to you - nuffin to do with Steve and I
I've always found the academic world an odd one - 'facts' are changed as often as underwear
One day Child is a ballad guru, next minute he is an "elitist" who cant's distinguish his poetic arse from his elbow.
It's like a jockey in a race using his whip on an opponents horse
Not for me, I'm afraid
I remember clearly the hostility that greeted Dave Harker's book, because of his attitude to researchers of the past, I was part of that hostility
Now, here we go again - same theories in different clothes - the folk didn't make folk song and the suggestion that they did was based on agenda driving and ignorance of past researchers.
People are forever welcome to access our collection and I live for the next opportunity to discuss our work, but to joint the academic freemasonry and add yet another hobby horse to a going-nowhere race - thanks, but no thanks
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 14 Jan 18 - 12:29 PM

Please exclude me from your charge that "nobody here appears to want to believe the folk as serious contenders for having made these songs."

My naive suggestion that you develop your arguments methodically, at book's length, was in good part a selfish one. I wanted to be able to appreciate your case, which seems eminently worth contemplating, outside the distractions of the hothouse temperature of Mudcat mud fight.

My impression, from the perspective of a generally informed lay reader/non-expert, is that Steve Roud, right or wrong, has put forth a reasonable argument. Like so many reasonable arguments, reasonable people will disagree about its ultimate correctness, and the discussion will continue. Those of us who are merely interested, not dug into a particular set of ideas, will be the wiser for that continued discussion.

If your fuse were longer, you'd understand that. And I sincerely regret not getting to read your book.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jan 18 - 01:33 PM

"has put forth a reasonable argument. "
My problem with this is that he has widened the goalposts to include what is nowadays described as 'pop song' in order to make his claims and has ploughed ahead as if will accept it
He summed that up, somewhat arrogantly, I thought, in his summing up
"Once we have jettisoned the idea that it is the origin which makes it folk"
With a few taps of the keyboard, he undermines the entire basis of past research and removes the uniqueness of folk song that distinguishes it from all other vocal forms
Now, if we find that folk singers sing grand or light opera.... or whatever, it automatically becomes folk song
There is nothing "reasonable" about that
This is so fundamental that study of form, function, social significance... becomes meaningless because the songs are reduced to personal likes and dislikes - if a traditional singer likes it well enough to sing it, it becomes folk
Even the views of the singers themselves, what we have of them, are disregarded
Walter Pardon, England's most articulate known traditional singer sings 'Put a Bit of Powder on It' and, when questioned (with a tape recorder) makes a point of explaining why it, and songs like it, are not folk songs.
It now has a Roud number - not particularly democratic, and not particularly logical wiuthin the bounds of Roud's approach of letting the singer have the decision on what a folk song is.
Sorry - while the attitudes that have been displayed here prevail, open forums such as this will always be the best place to air ideas - not in an atmosphere that suggests "'write your own books Jim"
We don't need any more messiahs, we need to sum up what we already have because we ain't gonna get no mo' until we do
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 14 Jan 18 - 02:10 PM

we need to sum up what we already have. So do it.

Roud's book isn't academic. If it was the rules would have required him to go back through 120 years or so of other people's ideas in tedious detail. He starts at the other end of the story and methodically presents historical information about what the folk were singing. His evidence suggests to me that the folk have always done what folk who make their own entertainment do now. But more often because most of the time there were no professional entertainers to be entertained by.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jan 18 - 03:05 PM

"If it was the rules would have required him to go back through 120 years or so of other people's ideas in tedious detail."
THat is what research should be about
The fact that you regard it as "tedious" says what needs to be said
"historical information about what the folk were singing."
Yet h offers nothing what they say about the songs, nor does he present the songs themselves for examination
He doesn't even provide a discography for the reader to check out the songs he is referring to.
A book on folk song with the songs taken out - unique, to say the least
The fact there is no recommended further reading makes his the only voice
I see no evidence to back up his most important claims - just personal pronouncements
The problems with messiahs is that they usually preach to the converted or end up arguing with other messiahs
My greatest influence was MacColl, who I worked with for two years and associated with for twenty - till the end of his life, pretty much
When MacColl was asked to set up classes e refused suggesting that the best way to learn was to set up a working group to work on each others singing
I am now indexing the several hundred recordings of that work and have worked out that MacColl's message was 'find out for yourself'
And yet, the programme on the Critics Group was somewhat spitefully entitled, 'How Folk Songs Should Be Sung'
MacColl always said that he learned as much as the rest of the Group during its existence
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 14 Jan 18 - 03:36 PM

The fact there is no recommended further reading makes his the only voice The bibliography runs to about 600 references. Get reading and analysing - that is what research is about, not regurgitating earlier ideas.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Tootler
Date: 14 Jan 18 - 06:39 PM

I see no evidence to back up,his most Important claims

The bibliography is where the evidence is and it's 1/3 of the book. The main text is his summary of the evidence. As I see it, following this thread, you have come to the book with a closed mind and it has challenged your preconceived ideas and you don't like it. You were criticising Steve Roud early in this thread for not stepping outside the boundaries he had himself imposed, at the same time admitting you hadn't read the whole book, just the bits you were "most interested in". A clear sign you approached with a closed mind.

I am not a folk song scholar just someone who enjoys singing folk songs and has an interest in where the songs came from. However I did spend most of my working life in an academic institution and am well aware of the conventions of scholarly writing and Steve Roud's book follows those conventions, albeit written in a style aimed at a wider audience than the usual academic publications. At the end he suggests where there are major gaps in our knowledge and suggests further lines of research. He also gives a perfectly plausible reason for not including extensive examples of individual songs. He has previously published a book of songs - The New Penguin Book - where you could look if need be, though I suspect you don't actually need to knowing enough songs anyway. I think that criticism is simply something else to beat Steve Roud over the head with.

There have been some interestings ideas in this thread generated by Steve Roud's book but they've largely been drowned out by two people arguing from entrenched positions and neither willing to budge or to give some serious consideration to the points made in the book.

Personally, I found the book interesting and I found the main thrust of his argument convincing. There is so much we don't know and probably never will know but it's important to keep an open mind on the subject and I'm sure in the future more information will come to light. As to the songs themselves, I like Martin Carthy's view on them that the worst thing you can do with them is not to sing them.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Jan 18 - 03:22 AM

" As I see it, following this thread, you have come to the book with a closed mind and it has challenged your preconceived ideas and you don't like it. "
I came to the boor with a great deal of pleasant anticipation - it fell very short of what I anticipated
It challenges almost everything that has gone before, that is it's main failing - by redefining folk by including pop songs of the past, it makes what was a handleable subject into one so vast that it would be unapproachable
It removes the uniqueness of the genre and it doesn't touch their social or historical significance as a 'worms eye view' of humanity and social history.
If there are 'preconceptions' in what I have argued, they are no mine - they are those that have existed since the topic first came to public attention
Why do you people insist onn making this discussion a personal attack - are the arguments I have pur forward so profound or so offensive that nobody actually wants to discuss them
Is the idea that working people could have made their folk songs so outlandish?
The points these "two people" have argued out here are fundamental ones and need to be established before we can begin to understand folk song
It's very difficult to discuss them elsewhere on this forum as 'What if folksong' has been made a no-go area
Rud raises that question in the beginning of that book and it continues to the end
If we can't discuss it here, where the hell else are we going to discuss it
I agree with Carthy's point too - what a shame Roud didn't include a discography or full texts of songs so we could see and listen to the "Folk Songs of England" the author was talking about?
You say you find the book interesting and agree with the "main thrust of his argment convincing"
Good for you - I found the bbok interesting and find the main thrust of the argument totally unconvincing, and that is exactly what I have been trying to discuss.
Why don't you stop making personal attacks and do exactly that?
All such attacks achieve as far as I am concerned is to persuade me that I might just have a point
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 15 Jan 18 - 12:29 PM

I fear that nothing any of us might say here will cause anyone else to change their opinions, but let's try a few observations.

Steve R's book is concerned with what where and when people sang for the sake of singing rather than as professional performers (though there is a slightly grey area of acknowledged traditional performers singing for beer). Jim's beef (if I understand aright) is that Steve has applied the label "folk song" to whatever people sang, ignoring origins; but even the "1954" definition includes material of non-"folk" origin if that material has been traditionally transmitted.

People sing whatever songs they come across and take a fancy to, whether those songs are old or new and whether they are about ordinary people in their own time, kings and lords of centuries ago, or characters of myth. Songs that got printed on broadsides stood a much better chance of spreading, surviving and being collected than those that never got printed, regardless of where they had originated. So it is only to be expected that the bulk of the classic collected corpus (as sampled, according to different criteria, in the old and new Penguin books) can be traced to broadsides.

Opinions differ as to what proportion of them started life on those broadsides and what proportion started life with the people whose affairs they describe, but we all accept that there were some of each. No-one here denies that ordinary people, who had day jobs other than song writing, could and did make songs. Opinions differ as to how widespread this was, but certainly some of those people did, as people still do.

We all acknowledge that the professional writers churned songs out by the yard and that most of those either were only intended to be ephemeral or were too poor to survive for long.

We can look at a particular song and surmise whether it was made by the person concerned, by a professional song writer who heard the person's tale and turned it into song, or by a professional song writer out of his/her own head. Internal evidence includes the style of wording, the use of stock phrases, whether the account seems true to life or idealised, etc, but we can seldom be absolutely certain. Even a song which is positively identified as having been performed on the stage could have existed in oral tradition before that.

Let's take each one on its individual merits
a) as a song that we enjoy singing or hearing for its own sake, and
b) as possible evidence of how things really were for certain people at a certain time in the past.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Jan 18 - 01:03 PM

> as possible evidence of how things really were for certain people at a certain time in the past.

But not very good evidence because the songs are often heavily stylized, and post-1900 historians have unearthed far better sources, which they cite extensively in their publications.

The songs, however, are excellent evidence for changes in popular taste and attitudes (at least in songs) over the past 350 years.

Of course, so are pop songs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Jan 18 - 01:15 PM

First Richard
The '54 definition was an attempt to analyse the uniqueness of folk song - what made it different from other genres of song
It wasn't a rule book - it was a rough guide - it was a compromise anyway because it was arrived at by an international team to incorporate the national differences.
I'm not for one minute suggesting this is what you are doing here, but whenever people wish to avoid definition, they always quote the flawed '54 as if those of us who believe there to be no great problem are adherents to it.
I seldom is ever use the definition because, as far as I am concerned, it's the uniqueness and, in my opinion, the common origin of folk song which is important
I certainly have never attempted to exclude commercially produced material - I have fully accepted that broadsides have been part of the oral tradition.
My point is and remains that if, as Steve Gardham (and to an extent Roud), has stated, that the mkeup of our folk repertoire was a two way street broadsides feeding into the tradition and the tradition providing material for the presses, why the hell are we discussing such high percentages when - here at least, people have accepted that rural dwellers were capable of making songs?
'Ordinary' people, rural and urban, have made songs since childhood days; we know from the first reported sighting of cattlemen singing, that the oral tradition predated literacy by at least one thousand years.
What has been suddenly discovered to question that fact?
Did printed songs stand a better chance of surviving in a society that was new to literacy, if it existed at all?
When Victoria came to the throne one third of the English population could be described as being in some way literate, in the countryside, literacy hardly existed among the rural workers
The songs, particularly the ballads, thrived in totally non-literate societies - the Travellers were still proving to be the greatest carriers of ballads right into the latter half f the twentieth century - The Maid and the Palmer, probably the finest version of Young Hunting recorded from an illiterate wood-seller, a unique Clare version of William and Margaret (Child 74) learned from an alcoholic Travelling woman, a full version of Lamkin, two versions of Lord Gregory learned from one illiterate man.....
Go look at the Scots Traveller repertoire to see how many ballads survived thare
It is facile to the point of being ludicrous to suggest that these were introduced into the communities via the printed word and the purchaser sought out a local reader in order to learn them.
Sterve Roud's and Gardham's claims appear to be based on how many songs appeared on the broadsides
Unless that can show there to have been no oral versions prior to the printed versions, they really do have no case.
Your "some of each" dodges the question of how many are being claimed here
How do you feel about 95 to 100% - they are the figures we need to be discussing
Nobody is arguing that some didn't start on the presses - I said so right at the beginning of these arguments and have always accepted it
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Jan 18 - 01:16 PM

"I like Martin Carthy's view on them that the worst thing you can do with them is not to sing them."
the problem with this statement, is that it could be interpreted, as its ok to sing them in an unrehearsed manner. the worst thing you can do with these songs is to sing them in an unrehearsed way or in a way that takes the mickey out of them, the songs deserve respect

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 15 Jan 18 - 06:46 PM

Bugger! Spent some time writing and editing a post, neglected to save it as text, and it vanished. Trying again, while I can remember some of what I said.

I have loved folk songs (in a moderately broad sense of the term, including songs by the likes of Tommy Armstrong, Sydney Carter and Cyril Tawney, but not as broad as the way that some people use it). However I have not studied broadsides and have no basis for putting my own figure on the proportion of the collected corpus that started life there (or in the theatre or pleasure gardens). As the Steves have studied broadsides extensively, I am inclined to accept their figure of 90-odd percent.

Most of the early collectors were well aware that most of the songs they were collecting had appeared on broadsides, but they didn't say much about ultimate origins, being more concerned with the forms in which they were finding the songs and especially with the tunes. (Child, of course, said a great deal about the stories but was apparently unaware of what was still being sung in his day.)

Very very many songs that were printed did not survive to be collected, if they were ever sung at all. An unknown number of songs made by the "folk" (i.e. anyone who wasn't in the business of writing songs commercially) likewise did not survive to be collected.

Jim believes that the 90-odd percent figure is far too high, seeing evidence in many of the songs that whoever made them knew what they were writing about (or singing about, if they were illiterate). Others find this less convincing.

Jim, what sort of figure would you put on it (for the classic collections, not for the songs that you were finding in Ireland)?

Anyone, how can we take this any further?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Jan 18 - 07:52 PM

Why is it so important to distinguish the workaday "broadside hacks" from other working people as creators of song texts?

Is it because the hack-work is unfaithful to the lives of non-hacks?

Evidently the non-hacks didn't think so, since, whatever the proportion, they sang whatever broadside ballads appealed to them.

I.e., had the "ring of truth," or at least the virtue of humor.

Isn't the penchant of some singers for the flowery neo-classical lyrics that we disdain an indication not of origin, but of changing tastes.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 03:57 AM

here is an example of a song that i imagine was written by somebody educated in a hedge school, but is a fine piece of writing

   

[Ye damsels of Castalia Melpomene and Thalia
Extenuate an alien that languishes in woe]
Dan Cupid has surprised me waylaid and pauperised me
Why thus he martyrises me is what I wish to know
Exiled in this fair city a paragon of pity
I lucubrate my ditty and I catalogue to tell?
Of the beauties of that matron my connoisseur and patron
That consort fit for Satan the star of Sunday's well.

Expressly fabricated for to be venerated?
Her weight is estimated at fully fifteen stone
The undulating ocean recalls her vagrant motion
Magnanimous devotion I render her alone
She's blooming and she's bonny with real estate and money
A flowerlet filled with honey in a soft suburban dell
And I the bee go soaring around her bower adoring?
The beauty and the store of the star of Sunday's well.

This matron subsidises both Beamish's and Wise's
The viands that she prizes provide most comely fare
Yet I wish I could administer a modicum of Guinness t'her
For there is nothing sinister or medieval there
Her heart I would allure it but that a grocer's curate?
Is planning to secure it by artifices fell
But I've dropped hints abundant to that obscure incumbent?
To flutter less redundant round the star of Sunday's well.

All through the summer weather two lovers linked together
Patrolled Marina's heather or strolled along the Dyke
The blackbirds and the thrushes established in the bushes?
Their elegies in gushes propelled to Kerry Pike
I heard their jocund royster and yearned all for his cloister?
The quaint but fulsome oyster like a hermit in his cell
But I lacked reciprocation in this matron's cognition
For I got a harsh negation from the star of Sunday's well.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 04:33 AM

"Why is it so important to distinguish the workaday "broadside hacks" from other working people as creators of song texts?"
For the same reason you attempt to distinguish the work of craftsmen from that turned out on the conveyor belt - one is produced for profit, the other because the maker brings something else to his or her creation
It is the case with all art
The iporance of who produced the songs lies in the possible reason they were made in the first place - the Steves go for money and simple entertainment, I have come to the conclusion that it is far deeper than that
The lives of people are reproduced in microcosm in whole genres of our folk repertoire

Take the social misalliance songs or those of arranged or forced marriage
At the time many of them were made, society was shifting, the old order of gentry was being replaced by the successful tradesmen who sought land and power
A presentable daughter was not just a 'joy to behold', but she was 'money in the bank' for an ambitious family - a step up the social ladder.
The human effects were reproduced in many songs.
One of the most remark examples of this is the ballad 'Tiftie's Annie'(Child 233)
On the surface, it is a family tragedy, a young woman associates with a servant to a local lord, the family disapprove the liaison and o to extremes to prevent it, and eventually beat her to death to prevent it
A powerful plot, worthy of the greatest writers anyway
Start digging into the ballad and it becomes even greater
THere are whole layers in the ballad - at first it's fine to fancy the servant, even the mother does, but, once it goes beyond that things get sertious
First they take the piss on the match, then they lock her away and when they realise the girl is serious, the father writes to Lord Fivie accusing him of witchcraft:

And Tiftie's penned a long letter ands sent it off to Fivie
To say his daughter was bewitched by the servant, Andrew Lammie

Andrew is forced to answer the charges in Edinburgh and while he is away the girl is systematically beaten by all the members of the family in turn until her back is broken - they would rather see her dead than risk the rise of the family fortune with a disgraceful match
The added importance of the ballad is that it is based on traceable historical characters
We visited Five Church - there is a large stone tablet on the wall in a very prominent position honouring local miller, William Tifitie.
WE couldn't find the daughter's grave, but some time later local folk enthusiasts located it and cleaned it up.
The mill is marked on local maps
Making a ballad on this incident would require local knowledge not available to a town songmaker and the subtle skill that went in to its making is way beyond that of a townie hack

THe folk repertoire throughout Britain and Ireland abounds with such creations, mostly on a smaller scale, because the situation that prevailed was common to all
When Harry Cox sang 'Betsy the Serving Maid' to Lomax and spat out; "and that's what they think of us", he made it quite clear that he was aware of the social significance of the song - it puzzles me why people here can't grasp that significance.

"but of changing tastes."
I believe the greatest mistake made in trying to understand folk songs is to take them out of context and treat them out of context
Great art is multi-layered - ranging from simple titillation to historical and social information -
Dickens is probably one of the finest examples of this, from the death of Little Nell through the upheaval caused by the Industrial changes taking place, Revolutionary Europe, squabbles over inheritance of property, the mechanics of the Law, the Gordon Riots... to surviving on the London streets
All a magnificent artistic dip into 19th century Britain presented in magnificent prose
His mate, Wilkie Collins, with his obsession of a woman's right to inherit property, produced highly enjoyable early feminist novels - and one of England's early detectives.

I believe our folk songs did the same on a smaller scale, but in a way, a far more important one
They are small histories of a people who has been largely ignored by historians, made by the people who experienced the events the songs deal with.
THese are all only possibilities of course - even the two Steves have admitted that, but if it is a possibility, it's surely worth consideration
Little sign of that so far - people can't even bring themselves around to considering the possibility that workig people produced songs about their lives, and have gone for the commercial theory with the enthusiasm that a terrier goes for a rat
Beyond me, I'm afraid
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 04:36 AM

Five Church
Fyvie of course - sorry
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 07:56 AM

Small correction to my 15 Jan 18 - 06:46 PM post:
I omitted a few words when I re-typed my lost post. I meant to say
"I have loved folk songs for most of my life ..."

Jim
> people can't even bring themselves around to considering the possibility that working people produced songs about their lives, and have gone for the commercial theory with the enthusiasm that a terrier goes for a rat

For the umpteenth time; all of us agree that working people did produce songs about their lives. The disagreement is only about how many of the songs in the classic Victorian and Edwardian collections originated in that way rather than from commercial song writers. In the absence of hard evidence I can't see us getting beyond informed guesswork for most songs, based on subjective assessments of their wording.

Anyway there is a continuum, from strictly factual accounts from eye witnesses to total fiction. In between there are many, such as the ballads of inter-class marriages being prevented, that may or may not be true accounts concerning real individuals (Tiftie's Annie clearly is a true account, at least in outline if not in detail) but anyway do accurately reflect the state of affairs in society in those times (whoever wrote them!). The tales of inter-class marriages being achieved despite parental opposition are more likely to be fantasies, but who's to say for certain for any specific instance?

I said yesterday
"Let's take each one on its individual merits
a) as a song that we enjoy singing or hearing for its own sake, and
b) as possible evidence of how things really were for certain people at a certain time in the past."

Lighter commented
"But not very good evidence because the songs are often heavily stylized, and post-1900 historians have unearthed far better sources, which they cite extensively in their publications."

Indeed often not very good evidence but there will be exceptions.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 08:45 AM

"The disagreement is only about how many of the songs in the classic "
For the umpteenth time Richard the argument is that it is overwhelming number - 86 to 100%
If that is the figure you accept, your acknowledgement that workers made some of the songs is little more than lip service
Even the two Steves have accepted that workers may have made some
The fact that inter-class marriages was an important enough issue to have inspired songs indicates that they were coming from a grass-roots level - the beneficiaries of the state of affairs weren't too concerned about it
Anyway - it's not just a matter of upper-class families - the practice of marrying off daughters 'for land' or even selling off pretty daughters to wealthy clients was common to all classes
The Lord Leitrim assassination, where Clements was said to have claimed the right of 'Droit du seigneur' (first night with the bride of his underlings) gave rise to a dozen songs.
"Let's take each one on its individual merits"
You really don't have to do this Richard
periods in history gave rise to entire families of song
I've already covered the 'Broken Token' group
The 'Banks of the Nile', 'Manchester Angel', 'Lisbon' songs refer to the prectice of 'Camp Following' - often referred to soldiers wives, but also included large numbers of barbers, doctors, barbers, dealers, publicans,   prostitutes.... anybody who would serve the soldiers needs while on combat
The women were used to pass ammunition to the troops during the battles   
THis is my note for 'The Banks of the Nile on the Clare County Library website:

EBanks of the Nile (Roud 950 Laws N9)
Pat MacNamara
The theme of this song; a woman asking her soldier or sailor lover to be allowed to accompany him to battle or to sea, is not so unbelievable as it might first appear.
Armies once trudged their way around the world accompanied by 'camp-followers', mobile settlements of women, children and tradesmen all running risks not too different of those taken by active soldiers.
Following the defeat of the rebels at Vinegar Hill in 1798, British troops rounded up and massacres the camp-followers who has assisted the rebels during the fighting.
Camp following lasted into the nineteenth century and continued to be a common part of army life into the 19th century.
The same went for seamen; in 1822 an anonymous pamphlet suggested that members of the Royal Navy were taking as many as two women apiece aboard the ships. These women also proved useful in that they fought alongside their lovers at the Nile and Trafalgar during the Napoleonic wars.
The well-known saying "show a leg" is said to have originated from the practice of officers in the Royal Navy clearing the crew from their hammocks and bunks by demanding that the occupant sticks their leg out to show whether they were male or female.
'Banks of the Nile' is probably the best known song of women accompanying their lovers into battle or on board ship.
Though this version refers to the practice happening among the Irish military forces, the song is just as popular in England and probably originated there"

In the case of some of these songs, the woman is often pregnant
I'll happily go on to the poaching songs if you wish.
If this doesn't add social or historical significance to the songs, then nothing will

We really have tried to examine individual songs - at Steve Gardahm's insistence, but when it didn't go his way he did a runner
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 08:46 AM

"86 to 100%"
Sorry - that should reas 96 to 100%
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 09:54 AM

No-one has claimed 100%. That figure has only ever been mentioned by Jim or by someone else quoting Jim.

> "Let's take each one on its individual merits"
You really don't have to do this Richard
periods in history gave rise to entire families of song <

All right, take them as families instead. The same considerations apply. Make your own judgements as to who wrote them, how true to life or otherwise they are and what they tell us about what people thought and felt. Taking them as families you can also assess how far each song was a new composition in its own right and how far it was a recycling of a previous song.

I note that Steve has given up on this thread for the last few days and I think I'll join him until someone controbutes something new.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 10:18 AM

"No-one has claimed 100%."
From Steve Gardham
"Date: 19 Apr 11 - 05:14 PM
"You're now changing my 95% into 100%, Jim."
This needs to be taken in context with Steve Gardham's other claims on Folklore, folk music and dance

"Date: 23 Apr 12 - 02:46 PM
From Steve Gardham
'The same goes for 'folk' tales, customs, beliefs, dances, music, lore, painting.... it is their common origin which identifies them all as "folk art" '
Sorry, Jim, this is just not true, except one would presume with folk painting, much of the rest originated in high art! Or certainly higher than the common folk, sophisticated sources in other words. Dances in particular."
Leavinbg working people onl;y ever havoing prodi=uced cave paintings and scrimshaw

"All right, take them as families instead"
I've given you two so far Richard - feel free

"I note that Steve has given up on this thread for the last few days and I think I'll join him until someone contributes something new."
Sorry Richard - it's not for the want of trying on my part - you and everybody else have masses to respond to, yet everybody appears too reluctant to do so
The situation is simple - you accept that working people were capable of making their songs, you need to say why they didn't and why it is more likely that these were Urban products
Not to do so is an indication that you are unable to present an alternative and that any amount of argument you are given will produce the same result
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 10:35 AM

In the absence of hard evidence I can't see us getting beyond informed guesswork for most songs, based on subjective assessments of their wording.

If someone went to the considerable effort making all the texts computer readable then modern techniques of text analysis would probably help go beyond the subjective.

Even usage of individual words may tell us something. How often so words like 'lucubrate' and 'viands' (from The Sandman's last post) appear. Is that typical of the vocabulary of "somebody educated in a hedge school" ? (or am I missing some irony in that post)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 12:58 PM

"Even usage of individual words may tell us something.
The point I have been making all along
The use of vernacular, the familiarity with terms, work practices, etc.
My argument is that any way forward has to include the song texts themselves and possibly the analysis already done for articles, sleeve notes, etc.
The Critics Group as singers, spent nearly ten years studying and analysing texts of traditional songs   
Throughout the sixties, seventies and into the eighties Folk magazines and journals carried thoughtful articles on the make up and significance of the songs, by scholars and singers alike
So much of this work has already been done, largely by the more thoughtful side of the folk song revival.
A quick foray into the forty-odd songs from broadsides Steve Gardham put up before his departure was more than enough to show that frodsides and folk songs almost certainly cale from different stables - I suspect that is why he left the discussion.
"Is that typical of the vocabulary of "somebody educated in a hedge school"?"
Not really Hedge School, which tends to be more based on classical literature
Rather a popular poetic form in Ireland based on the humourous use of internal rhyming and ludicrous geographic comparisons
A similat song is

The Traveller All Over the World

Come all you fellow travelling men of every rank and station
And hear this short oration which as yet remains untold
You might have been an Austrian, a German or a Bulgarian
But sit ye sios-in-aice-liom, and the truth I will unfold
You'll hear of great disunity unveiled to the community
So take this opportunity of listening to me
You'll hear of foreign nations and of youthful expectations
And of a few relations in that beauty spot Glenlea

I went to see the world's rage, being only sixteen years of age
A steerage passage I engaged on a ship called the Iron Duke
I went on board at Dublin's wall, being southward bound for the Transvaal
I had a friend from Annascaul, and one from Donnybrook
Our noble ship had scarcely steamed when in my mind sad memories gleamed
I thought of my dear neighbours and their loving company
I though about my brothers and our love for one another
And of my grey haired mother there at home in Sweet Glenlea

We landed safe but suddenly in that British spot Cape Colony
In search of manual labour I travelled near and far
I crossed the Orange River, among Hottentots and Kaffirs
And I was made Grand Master on the Isle of Zanzibar
A Dutchman high who admired me ways took me to see the Himalays
And Boys o Boys was I amazed, their awful heights to see
We wandered on through Hindustan, along the River Ganges
And though it was a grand place, still the fairest was Glenlea

This Dutchman suffered health's decline, he heard of cures in Palestine
Persuaded me with him combine and along with him to go
We landed safe at Jaffa and we journeyed to Jerusalem
Thee ancient city of Hebron and the ruins of Jericho
The surrounding mountains highest peaks, just like McGillicuddy's Reeks
And from their summit you could see the Lake of Gallilee
Likewise the River Jordan and the province of Samaria
But though it sounds contrary - the fairest was Glenlea

These doleful times soon drifted by till this faithful Dutchman friend and I
"Even usage of individual words may tell us something.
The point I have been making all along
The use of vernacular, the familiarity with terms, work practices, etc.
My argument is that any way forward has to include the song texts themselves and possibly the analysis already done for articles, sleeve notes, etc.
The Critics Group as singers, spent nearly ten years studying and analysing texts of traditional songs   
Throughout the sixties, seventies and into the eighties Folk magazines and journals carried thoughtful articles on the make up and significance of the songs, by scholars and singers alike
So much of this work has already been done, largely by the more thoughtful side of the folk song revival.
A quick foray into the forty-odd songs from broadsides Steve Gardham put up before his departure was more than enough to show that frodsides and folk songs almost certainly cale from different stables - I suspect that is why he left the discussion.
"Is that typical of the vocabulary of "somebody educated in a hedge school"?"
Not really Hedge School, which tends to be more based on classical literature
Rather a popular poetic form in Ireland based on the humourous use of internal rhyming and ludicrous geographic comparisons
A similat song is

The Traveller All Over the World

Come all you fellow travelling men of every rank and station
And hear this short oration which as yet remains untold
You might have been an Austrian, a German or a Bulgarian
But sit ye sios-in-aice-liom, and the truth I will unfold
You'll hear of great disunity unveiled to the community
So take this opportunity of listening to me
You'll hear of foreign nations and of youthful expectations
And of a few relations in that beauty spot Glenlea

I went to see the world's rage, being only sixteen years of age
A steerage passage I engaged on a ship called the Iron Duke
I went on board at Dublin's wall, being southward bound for the Transvaal
I had a friend from Annascaul, and one from Donnybrook
Our noble ship had scarcely steamed when in my mind sad memories gleamed
I thought of my dear neighbours and their loving company
I though about my brothers and our love for one another
And of my grey haired mother there at home in Sweet Glenlea

We landed safe but suddenly in that British spot Cape Colony
In search of manual labour I travelled near and far
I crossed the Orange River, among Hottentots and Kaffirs
And I was made Grand Master on the Isle of Zanzibar
A Dutchman high who admired me ways took me to see the Himalays
And Boys o Boys was I amazed, their awful heights to see
We wandered on through Hindustan, along the River Ganges
And though it was a grand place, still the fairest was Glenlea

This Dutchman suffered health's decline, he heard of cures in Palestine
Persuaded me with him combine and along with him to go
We landed safe at Jaffa and we journeyed to Jerusalem
Thee ancient city of Hebron and the ruins of Jericho
The surrounding mountains highest peaks, just like McGillicuddy's Reeks
And from their summit you could see the Lake of Gallilee
Likewise the River Jordan and the province of Samaria
But though it sounds contrary - the fairest was Glenlea

These doleful times soon drifted by till this faithful Dutchman friend and I
Were for
I stood forlorn upon the quay as the ship that bore him sailed away
His memory in my mind will stay till life's long days are o'er
Still Providence had willed its way and therefore conscience must obey
I went on board and sailed away when my friend did me forsake
But often meditation made me turn for recreation
And go home in contemplation to that beauty spot Glenlea

In Palestine I made some coin, I heard of San Francisco's mine
For to invest me capital I thought a good idee
I landed safe in Frisco when the trees were blooming beautiful
It was on that same evening that there was a great earthquake
I was in my bed and sleeping sound, I woke to find things moving round
But after that I heard no sound, no pain affected me
And on the following morning when I?d recovered consciousness
I wrote of all the consequence to my home in sweet Glenlea

I told them in the letter how I lost the situation
It was my earthly station and I wanted to go home
And I hoped their generosity would aid my transportation
And I went o
I got the cash to pay my way without disaster or delay
And landed safe at Queenstown Quay, on board the Chimpanzee
And after an excursion of some five long hours duration
I reached the little station on the road to sweet Glenlea

As we approached the terminus I viewed with consternation
The awful congregation there assembled in the rain
And I hoped some other personage of worldly estimation
To heed their expectation was coming on by train
As I scanned each individual's face, friends and neighbours, old time mates
Assembled in their hundreds with a welcome home for me
Oh they shouted with elation and they shook with great vibration
The surrounding elevation on the road to sweet Glenlea

And now I live contentedly among these friends and neighbours
Endowed with all the favours of good fortune and delight
And I've found among the multitude a charming little creature
She's full of admiration, she's my lovely Irish wife
And when we meet at Sunday's noon, at that cozy spot called top-of-Coom
Where songs and storie
Among that grand old company of lovely friends and neighbours
We're never tired of praising that beauty spot Glenlea.

Or Sweet Omag Town

If you look up the songs of Con 'Fada' O'Driscíoll or Adam McNaughton, you will find some of the best modern use of this technique on every subject from Hamlet to Ben Hur
Jim Carroll


I stood forlorn upon the quay as the ship that bore him sailed away
His memory in my mind will stay till life's long days are o'er
Still Providence had willed its way and therefore conscience must obey
I went on board and sailed away when my friend did me forsake
But often meditation made me turn for recreation
And go home in contemplation to that beauty spot Glenlea

In Palestine I made some coin, I heard of San Francisco's mine
For to invest me capital I thought a good idee
I landed safe in Frisco when the trees were blooming beautiful
It was on that same evening that there was a great earthquake
I was in my bed and sleeping sound, I woke to find things moving round
But after that I heard no sound, no pain affected me
And on the following morning when I'd recovered consciousness
I wrote of all the consequence to my home in sweet Glenlea

I told them in the letter how I lost the situation
It was my earthly station and I wanted to go home
And I hoped their generosity would aid my transportation
And I went o
I got the cash to pay my way without disaster or delay
And landed safe at Queenstown Quay, on board the Chimpanzee
And after an excursion of some five long hours duration
I reached the little station on the road to sweet Glenlea

As we approached the terminus I viewed with consternation
The awful congregation there assembled in the rain
And I hoped some other personage of worldly estimation
To heed their expectation was coming on by train
As I scanned each individual's face, friends and neighbours, old time mates
Assembled in their hundreds with a welcome home for me
Oh they shouted with elation and they shook with great vibration
The surrounding elevation on the road to sweet Glenlea

And now I live contentedly among these friends and neighbours
Endowed with all the favours of good fortune and delight
And I've found among the multitude a charming little creature
She's full of admiration, she's my lovely Irish wife
And when we meet at Sunday's noon, at that cozy spot called top-of-Coom
Where songs and storie
Among that grand old company of lovely friends and neighbours
We're never tired of praising that beauty spot Glenlea.

If you look up the songs of Con 'Fada' O'Driscíoll or Adam McNaughton, you will find some of the best modern use of this technique on every subject from Hamlet to Ben Hur
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 01:19 PM

Is use of 'lucubrate' indicative of something being written by an ordinary working person for an audience of ordinary working people?

A Google search gives nine pages of results from dictionaries and other word lists before the first usage in a sentence - by Edgar Allen Poe.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 02:27 PM

"Is use of 'lucubrate' indicative of something being written by an ordinary working person for an audience of ordinary working people?"
Nobody is claiming that all of these songs came from ordinary people by any means, but this type of poetic verse is to be found in many Dublin street songs
One of the best of these songs, 'Mullingar', was written by a Civil Engineer designing bridges.
Irish language traditional song from 'The Peasantry' has strong roots in Bardic Poetry
It's often forgotten that premier performances of Shakespeare's plays were for the delectation of 'the sweepings of the London streets and Londoners were queuing up for the next instalment of 'Great Expectations' and Nicholas Nicholas Nickleby
Similarly, Synge, Yeats and especially O'Casey were writing for the 'ordinary' people of Ireland - they were 'popular' playwrights
There's a sound basis for the story about the navvie being interviwed for a job with McAlpine   
He was asked what the difference wwas between a joist and a girder
He replied. Joist wrote Ulysses and Girder wrote Faust
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 02:29 PM

Poe was an incredibly 'popular' writer, by the way
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 02:31 PM

Jim ,do you know the origns of the star of sundays well? was it a broadside?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jan 18 - 03:54 AM

"Jim ,do you know the origins of the star of sundays well? was it a broadside?"
Almost certainly not Dick - that is, it didn't originate on a broadside and wasn't written especially to be sold
It was the work of a local poet.
There were dozens of poets and songmakers writing in that style in the 19th century - the 'Hedge School influence was certainly there and still lingers in the songs of Con 'Fada' O'Dirisceol
The hedge schools were rural institutions which arose as a reaction to the Penal Laws and largely disappeared in the 1830s
This is Donal Maguire's note to it from his album of the same name
"6. The Star of Sunday's Well
This song adequately thumbs its nose at the purveyors of all those stories which portray the Irish as a race of semi-literate inarticulate numb-skulls. Undoubtedly written with tongue in cheek by W. B. Guiney, it appeared in the Cork Examiner in 1871. It is a masterpiece of rhetoric and abounds with flowery language, a legacy of the penal law period of 'Hedge schools' where not only the 'three R's' were dealt with but the classics as well.
The action takes place in Cork city and this surely is the most eloquent put-down of amorous aspirations you are likely to hear"

Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Jan 18 - 05:41 AM

Is there any significant distinction in genre or quality between songs/poems written for newspapers and those written for broadside publication?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jan 18 - 06:04 AM

Money and function
Newspapers carried locally made poems and didn't pay for them
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Jan 18 - 06:09 AM

Sure, but that didn't mean there was any other difference. I have seen a lot of Scottish newspaper songs and poems - they are just as variable in quality as the broadside-published stuff from the same period. Broadside publishers often printed stuff without paying the authors, too.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 17 Jan 18 - 06:57 AM

Newspapers carried locally made poems and didn't pay for them

The Introduction to Samuel Laycock's Collected Writings says "Deeply moved by the acute suffering which surounded him on every side, the spirit was kindled within him, and he began to write his Famine Songs. Week by week they were published in the local papers, and large numbers were issued as broad-sheet ballads. Many of these were learnt by heart and sung by lads and lasses in the streets of the town.

It dosn't say if he was paid or not but the Wikipedia page on him says "Laycock was one of the thousands unemployed and tried to earn a meagre living by writing verses which the unemployed could set to music and sing in the streets for pennies."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Jan 18 - 09:33 AM

It seems to me that the question of artistic merit (as subjective as the broader question of taste) is being subordinated to the test of whether the "artist" has been paid or not.

Is that really a valid criterion, especially when we don't know (except in rare cases) who was paid for what and who wasn't or under what circumstances?

Most great artists have been paid for their work, even if inadequately, and even if payment was not on their minds while they were working.

And, of course, it almost always was, whether they were trying to please a patron or an audience, or simply expressing themselves.

Is it true that a pop song or an "art song" that has been written for money is necessarily an inferior work of art, or necessarily insincere? If so, on what basis?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 17 Jan 18 - 10:55 AM

I think whether or not someone was paid is part of the social history, part of understanding the genesis of the songs.

I don't see that present day judgements of taste or artistic merit are much help because they are ephemeral.

Sharp and his contemporaries filtered out the bawdy element, but that was alive and well amongst 'ordinary people' during WW2 and afterwards. Indeed, activities of the sort recounted in those songs seem to have been acceptable in Hollywood until recently.

I guess most collectors of the 'First Revival' wouldn't have got too worked up about hunting songs and neither did many of people of the 1950s an 1960s. Taset has moved on and voices in this discussion seem to want them classified (airbrushed?) out of folk song.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Jan 18 - 11:18 AM

most collectors of the 'First Revival' wouldn't have got too worked up about hunting songs

They were. Most of them have never been printed, even now.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Jan 18 - 11:30 AM

We have no right to airbrush hunting songs even when we disapprove of hunting, that is no better than those collectors who cleaned up sexual content in songs of a sexual nature.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 08:38 AM

"
It seems to me that the question of artistic merit (as subjective as the broader question of taste) is being subordinated to the test of whether the "artist" has been paid or not."
Not by me, it hasn't
I have consistently made the comparison between the superior quality of the songs made for money (under pressure) and the superior quality of the traditional songs
Steve Gardham examples of broadsides from the Holloway and Black collection and his hasty departure seem be an acknowledgement on his part that there is no doubt on that question, but of course, anybody is free to take the point up again
Money in itself is an incidental - but the motivation of payment for making songs most certainly is not

Laycock, and especially Bamford (author of 'Passages in the Life of a Radical') may have put out songs on broadsides, but their compositions were created to illustrate the conditions of the times, that was why the songs were created - money was an addition.
"when we don't know (except in rare cases) who was paid for what and who wasn't or under what circumstances?"
We know that the broadside trade was based on making a profit
"We have no right to airbrush hunting songs even when we disapprove of hunting,"
Nobody is suggesting this Dick
That these songs exited and were sung makes them part of the repertoire
If songs in praise of hanging, drawing and quartering existed, they would be part of the reperoire
THat doesn't mean they have an automatic place in today's repertoire
As far as I know, opposition to hunting is a relatively modern phenomenon anyway and would in no way effect the collecting of such songs.

Many of the collectors and anthologists, the Rev Sabine Baring Gould including, may not have published bawdy and erotic songs, but they kept them in manuscript form (Bishop Percy's 'Loose and Humorous Songs' being a prime example of such)
Occasionally, if you thumb through the Folk Song Journals you will find examples of songs not being documented, such as 'The Girl from Lowestoft (The Hole in the Wall)', but many survived Victorian prudery
Sharp and his crowd aimed to get songs into schools as a way to preserve them; under these circumstances censorship was inevitable
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 09:53 AM

"We know that the broadside trade was based on making a profit"
Do we? All of those small-town printers?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 10:02 AM

"Do we? All of those small-town printers?"
The last remnants of the broadside trade, the balld sellers in Ireland, paid the printer for their work and hoped to sell enough to make a profit on what they's laid out
None of these people did it as an act of charity
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 10:24 AM

So they made a living by distributing something that people wanted? If people had a choice of what or whether to buy then selling songs that more people liked would help pay the bills and put food on the table.

Whether, 150 years later, you were going to like the songs and want to sing them was irrelevant.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 10:31 AM

Or, to pick up a theme in the book, whether they are of any use to you and your peers should not distort the opportunity for others to appreciate the songs that ordinary people sang.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 10:57 AM

"So they made a living by distributing something that people wanted? "
Commerce isn't as democratic as that - they produced something they wanted people to want
Everybody is still shuffling around the idea that these songs were made by the people who felt the need to make songs as a reaction to what was going on around them and - unless anybody can show otherwise were well capable of doing so
That has now been established as having happened in Ireland and was common among agricultural workers in Scotland
Were the English so unimaginative and talentless as to have to pay somebody to do the job for them?
It seems that if somebody writes a big book everybody feels the need to bow down to it
JIm Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 11:29 AM

Were the English so unimaginative and talentless as to have to pay somebody to do the job for them?

Maybe their imagination stretched to getting someone to pay them for it, and so not be regarded by you as writers of 'folk songs'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 11:42 AM

"Maybe their imagination stretched to getting someone to pay them for it,"
People have been making songs since the time of the Veritable Bede
Facetiousness is the lowest form of argument
Jm Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 11:52 AM

Veritable Bede
There are typos and typos - but that one deserves a prize!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 11:54 AM

I wasn't being facetious. You were with your "Were the English so unimaginative ..."

Then as now some people with a day job got paid for their writings.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Sue Allan
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 12:26 PM

From my researches into the broadside and chapbook ballad trade and ballad singers and sellers in Cumbria (I know, a very limited field: but nonetheless presumably not untypical of some other areas in the country), where there were small-town printers and stationers aplenty in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century not only re-publishing material from presses elswhere, but also actively collecting songs for chapbook collections - from, for example, dialect poet and musician Robert Anderson - as well as distributing broadsides and chapbooks from elsewhere.
Later in the nineteenth century printers were often commissioned to print ballads written by local ballad singers/hawkers (notably Jimmy Dyer) in order for them to make a few pennies by hawing them around country fairs and markets.
I think we need to remember that we are not always talking of city v. country, but a whole range of small country towns and villages where books,songs, elections sheets and playbills were printed and where ballad singers wrote and sang printed ballads - and many people bought them.
Admittedly there was a very high literacy rate in nineteenth century Cumberland (as in Scotland), which might explain the plethora of small printers, but on the other hand you actually do only need one person in a pub to be able to read a ballad and others can learn it from them. We need to remember too that almost all the tunes were passed on orally.
The countryside was also home to a much more diverse society of artisans and tradesmen - hand weavers, tailors, cobblers, smiths, carpenters, masons, shop-keepers, dancing teachers, fiddlers etc - than we often think of today: not everyone was a ploughman or a milkmaid. This heterogeneity, and a notable degree of interaction between towns and countryside, is, to my mind, celebrated in the wide range of folk songs we have. Some come from commercial sources, some written by people in the community - including some they endeavoured to printed locally, or which were learned by ballad singers and sellers in order to provide new material to broadside printers. It's a wonderfully heterogeneous, lively scene!
Money certainly did change hands at times - Anderson and Dyer were always broke and on the look-out for more ways to make some cash through their words and music. There are so many shades of grey ...
I do hope this thread can be laid to rest now - if people could just agree to disagree on proportions of songs from the broadside presses.
(Sorry if the above is rather incoherent: it's a bit of a stream of consciousness, born out of frustration that this thread, which should have been a celebration of Steve Roud's book, has instead has become a somewhat ungainly, and at times unseemly, argument.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 12:38 PM

"but that one deserves a prize!"
As do your hit and run interventions Vic

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 12:59 PM

Sorry Sue
I intended to respond to your interesting post
Steve Round has written an interesting book - on popular song
It is my opinion that he has entitled it incorrectly
As ha has taken it upon himself to re-fefine folk song in the way he has and turn a century or so's scholarship on its head, surely he can expect adverse response from those who disagree with him, especially from those of us who have been at it as long as he has?
This redefinition is so fundamental as to cause us all to question what we have been doing for the last half century
I was part of a singing revival which fell apart when the foundations were destroyed by people who wished to turn our clubs into cultural dustbins by using them as convenient platforms to perfiorm any type of song they wished
I'm not suggesting for one minute that this is Steve's intention, but this could well be the effect these claims have.
Already we have seen the "Oooh look - the folk didn't make folk songs" responses from the establishment art critics.
Our own researches, in Britain and Ireland, suggest the opposite to be the case
Is it "unseemly" to argue on the basis of those researches.
One of the main proponents of this argument, someone who has co-operated with Roud on his book, has reduced these discussions to personal slanging matches - I have insulted nobody and have sought to avoid doing so.
No these arguments are being reduced to using errant Spellcheck correctors to snipe from the sidelines
Not particularly "seemly" either
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 02:03 PM

"not everyone was a ploughman or a milkmaid. "
Sorry - missed a bit
The only people to have mentioned "not everyone was a ploughmen or milkmaids (or "swains and shepherdesses" are those ridiculing the suggestion that working people made these songs - it has long been established ploy to 'romanticise' the opposition
Our work was with small farmers, agricultural labourers, roadwokers... et al.
WE even recorded fishermen and a village carpenter!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 03:00 PM

Jim Carroll, can you kinmdly answer my question about the star of sundays well, thankyou in anticipation

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 03:06 PM

Dick,
Seemingly what you require is on p258 of O Lochlainn's More Irish Street Ballads.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 03:17 PM

"Jim Carroll, can you kinmdly answer my question about the star of sundays well, thank you in anticipation"
I've told you what I know Dick, which is confirmed on "p258 of O Lochlainn's More Irish Street Ballads."
No indication that it appeared on a broadside, let alone originated on one
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 04:18 PM

thankyou

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 08:04 PM

"I do hope this thread can be laid to rest now - if people could just agree to disagree on proportions of songs from the broadside presses."

Am I the only one here who's going to commend Sue on her sane and measured contribution to the discussion?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jan 18 - 03:56 AM

"Am I the only one here who's going to commend Sue on her sane and measured contribution to the discussion?"
And the arbitrary re-definition of folk song by a single academic....?
And the dismissal and denigration of some of our greatest researchers....?
And the refusal ro respond to a single significant point of argument...?
I most certainly hope you are Jerome
If I have anything to do with it, I hope this subject will run and run until the issues raised in the book are thrashed out honestly and in detail, if not here, than elsewhere
I have invested far too much time, thought and energy in the subject of the decades I have been involved in it to walk away from being told I am a dewy-eyed romantic
The future of our understanding of folk song rests on a genuine sharing of knowledge and experience, not the back-biting nastiness (down to the level of the use of typos) that has taken place here.
Incidentally, I responded to Dick's question on 'Sunday Well' by using Donal Maguire's sleeve notes of his album of that name
Maguire is a very talented revival singer who is heavily involved in researching the life of Land League activist, Michael Davitt, using the songs of the time
Maguire's work is typical of the information gathering that is invaluable of our understanding of folk songs      
The Folk Song revival is peppered with such examples, in sleeve notes, in researched articles for magazines and journals.... all there for the researching
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 19 Jan 18 - 04:50 AM

I thought Sue Allan's post was very measured. It led me to do a little web searching and I am now enjoying reading her thesis (at least I assume it is the same Sue Allan).

I found this thread because I was interested in the book, but my interest is mainly in social history, particularly of the 'ordinary people' who did not write history books about themselves and their forebears. Roud makes a lot of material very accessible.

I am not really a member of the community that comes here. My interaction with the 'second revival' is as a consumer (since about 1960) not a participant. However, I do like to spend my time in environments were people 'make their own amusement' and that includes playing tunes, singing songs, reciting doggerel and if I am lucky people reading out their own made up ditties. If someone wants to contribute some nice Lennon & Mccartney or Rogers & Hammerstein that's just fine by me. It's as social occassion.

What I find in the book is lot of detail about 'people doing what people do'. Draw your lines about 'Folk Song' if you like, keep 'popular music' out of your Folk Clubs, don't let people hold a sheet in their hand to help. But the book suggests that what the 'ordinary folk' were doing wasn't like that. If someone came back from market with a broadside that took their fancy and sung it out before they had learned it, or fancied singing the one pasted to the pub wall, or got a shilling from a printer for their song, were they cast out?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jan 18 - 06:20 AM

I too found Sue's contribution interesting and said so - it's the bit about this thread ending on agreeing to disagree was what I took exception to
"Draw your lines about 'Folk Song' if you like, keep 'popular music' out of your Folk Clubs,"
I don't know if it's me putting my case badly or you being obtuse, but this has nothing to do with what happens in folk clubs - it is an attempt to identify a musica/poetic/historical phenomenon in order to understand it.
I was a regular singer but am, and have been for four decades a researcher gathering information on the type of songs I sang
I have laid out as clearly as I can what I believe to have discovered.
If you are going to respond, please do so to what I have said and not to agendas you believe I have
If you believe there to be no difference between folk song (as we have come to recognise it) and all the othere genres that have been added by Roud, let's go there, but please to attribute opinions or motives to me that I don't subscribe to
Folk song, as far as I am concerned, is a unique and important cultural phenomenon made mor important by it's social origins.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jan 18 - 06:24 AM

Bty the way
The dangers of not presenting what you claim to are evident by the current state of the clubs compared to the time when you could go to a folk club in the full knowledge you would go home having heard some rather than an evening of poorly rendered Beatles numbers
You want to run a social club - call it a 'Social Club', you want to run an 'anything goes' evening- call it that.
Not to do so is sharp practice
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 19 Jan 18 - 07:56 AM

Jim wrote: "I hope this subject will run and run until the issues raised in the book are thrashed out honestly and in detail, if not here, than elsewhere."

Can we suggest somewhere else then?

Perhaps a well-written, evidence-based refuting of the aspect of Steve's book that you object to most, placed in an academic journal.

I know you don't want to write a book ... you expressed in no uncertain, and rather rude, terms my suggestion that you could write a book as "Elitist, Ivory tower crap" ... though I'm not so sure why. I know you own lots of books written by other people.

It's all very well saying that you will run and run with the argument, but is there anyone on this thread that agrees with you, or who has changed their views because of your arguments?

These are genuine questions.

Derek
Sue Allan's post was good ... evidence-based information. And she is the same Sue who has a PhD.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Jan 18 - 03:01 PM

folk clubs are social clubs, they are places where we people socialise whilst listening to folk music, mo people do not go there to be patronised ov lectured at, they got to listen to folk music and socialise, so FolkClubs are a form pof social club just as jazz clubs are

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Jan 18 - 03:38 PM

correction, folk clubs are social clubs where people go to participate in folk music as well as listen and socialise , anyone that claims they are not does not understand the meaning of socialising

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jan 18 - 04:51 AM

"Can we suggest somewhere else then?"
Suggest away Derek; if the subject is not fit for a website that styles itself as being about "Traditional Music and Folklore Collection and Community", where else can it possibly be fit for?
For me, folk song has always been a living entity, as a singer, a listener and a researcher.
All three of those have been part of my learning curve over the last half century and, as far as I can judge, all three of those go into the make-up of this forum - or if they don't, they ***** well should
The idea that this should be taken to an academic journal fills me with horror - I have to say I'm more than a little disappointed you, of all people, should make such a suggestion.
"but is there anyone on this thread that agrees with you,"
These discussions are not about winning hearts and minds or winning over people - they are about open;y exchanging ideas, as all discussions should be
I sincerely hope there are enough open minds here to at least accept that the ideas we are discussing are not the only ones on offer
If this was the only place these discussions were taking place you might have a point - it isn't
I was intending to write a detailed response to Roud's ideas - I still intend to do so, but now there is enough here for me happily to point to and say - "you want mine and other's opinions who made folk song - go open the " New Book: Folk Song in England" on Mudcat and make up your own mind - I have already done so to several friends.
You can judge for yourself whose arguments here make the most sense and who needs to resort to ivory-towerism and personal insulting (ant typos)
This thread has proved an extremely useful sounding board and platform without my having to join the Folk Freemasons, learn a new language and re-mortgage my house so I can afford their literature - thanks all the same.
I don't want to write a book - I probably won't live long enough to do all the things I need to to make sense and make accessible half of what Pat and I have already done.
I worked out a few weeks ago that Pat and I have given something like fifty talks on folksong, to clubs, at conferences, to colleges and Universities down the years, even to groups like The Ethical Society - all were scripted and archived and are part of our collection along with about 100 talks given by others.
We did a few radio programmes in Britain, before we moved to Ireland, since the move we have made getting on for a dozen for Irish radio, we are immensely proud of the three on Travellers and the two on MacColl - all archived and accessible (or will be)
Early this week we met up with the librarians of Limerick University to arrange for them to receive our Library and our thousands of tapes worth of recordings - made by us and others who were generous enough to donate copies of their own work
If Britain had a healthy folk scene, academically or on a performance level, there would be a place for such a collection there - it hasn't, so we have to rely on Limerick making good use of it in their World Music Department - luckily there is more respect for the traditional arts here that they is on your side of teh Irish Sea
EFDSS, which should have been a natural home for collections such as ours, has been turning down donations for years because it doesn't even have storage space, let alone interest in folk material nay more - I know of at least another two British researchers who have the same problem we do in deciding where to leave their work
This argument is a response to the views of a couple of people whose arguments, I believe, could set research in Britain back decades, if taken unchallenged - as if it wasn't in a bad enough state already
Perhaps, if people concentrated more on putting their flk house in order rather than breaking their arses to accept the idea that the folk didn't make folk songs, the position might be improved by coming to terms with the importance of the folk arts taher than trying to bung it in alongside that of the popular music industry - a square peg being pushed into a round hole, if ever there was one.
In twenty-odd years, a few dedicated Irish people have established a firm foundation for traditional music here by creating gatherings like The Willie Clancy Summer School and setting up The Irish Traditional Music Archive
The result has been many thousands of young people streaming into the music and playing it like old masters
A future of at least two generations has nor been guaranteed for Irish music.
A valuable lesson to be learned there
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jan 18 - 04:53 AM

"has nor been guaranteed for Irish music."
Should read "has now been guaranteed for Irish music." - must change this keyboard!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Jan 18 - 05:04 AM

The result has been many thousands of young people streaming into the music and playing it like old masters"
only partly true, other factors contribute to this phenomemenon, including encouragement from the media, vast government funding,parental encouragement which includes parents being able and considering it a priority to spend money on instruments, basically a difference of cultural priority.
your argument is an over simplification, some of the youngsters are not playing in anything but the style advocated by CCE, much as you might wish to ,Jim, you cannot ignore the influence of CCE, THEY STILL HAVE AN INFLUENCE AND BRING AN ATTITUDE OF COMPETITIVENESSWHICH IS NOT HEALTHY. all is not rosy in the trad music garden in ireland although despite CCE it is healthier than in the uk.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jan 18 - 06:23 AM

"only partly true, "
Not in the slightest Dick - the Media dengrated Irish music ad "diddly di" until it realised that it had become popular again, then they jumped on the bandwagon
Parental encouragement in the form of driving young people into the competition based arms of Comhaltas drove moe of them out than it did commit people top music
Everything good that has happened in the last thirty years has come from ITMA and The Willie Clancy Summer School approach
Even Comhaltas have been given a new lease of life from the upturn with dying branches springing back to life
CCE was one described by Irish music's leading researcher as "an organisation with a fine future behind it" - a perfect summing-up
No intention in allowing you to divert this argument - the answer to this is evident

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Jan 18 - 09:32 AM

thousands of pounds are poured in to tradtional music in ireland through cce, and you feckin well know it. secondly tradtional music is encouraged through the media and has been for years on radio and television, that is not denigrating it, there have been programmes on tradtional music on television and radio for over 30 years stop talking rubbish. jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 17 Feb 18 - 03:55 PM

Writing books is one thing, documentary films quite another, (if you've a eye for it).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: r.padgett
Date: 18 Feb 18 - 12:01 PM

Documentary films will/would benefit or be skewed by choice of interviewees and interviewees~ er um a bit like here?

Ray

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Feb 18 - 12:20 PM

"housands of pounds are poured in to tradtional music in ireland through cce, and you feckin well know it."
If you continue this aggressive tone you ahve no right to expect an answer Dick
CCEs 'singing, dancing and playing by numbers' competitive approach to music had done more damage than it has good - and you know it
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 22 Jun 18 - 07:27 AM

This is a very saddening thread. In places it feels like a shouting match.

I find many of the posts disrespectful to Steve Roud. I know little about the man, but I have seen some of his work, and he does not merit such disrespect. He comes across as a nice reasonable thoughtful guy.

I feel it is disrespectful to visitors to the site.

The same points are made over and over again, in heated language, often by people who in more or less the next post object to heated language.

There are lengthy, repetitive posts which fail to do the readership the courtesy of checking over for typos, punctuation, and paragraphing. This sort of stuff is a) no pleasure to read and b) needlessly difficult to get sense out of and c) not likely to encourage people to change their views. It is ironic that some of these posts have been made by people who claim that 'the folk' can produce beautiful, expressive language.

On buying this book, when I try to enlarge diagrams, song tunes etc on Kindle versions they won't enlarge, unlike the print. This has rendered some books I have bought on Kindle almost useless. So I shall not be buying the Kindle version of this one, in case.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Jun 18 - 08:18 AM

Guest
It is not disrespectful to disagree with somebody - it would be disrespectful to ignore what you believe are major errors if you believe them important - as I have done here.
There has been a great deal of @disrespect from all sides here. not just to participants in this argument, but to some of the greatest contributors to folk song
If Steve's arguments are to be accepted, then the opinions of Child, Sharp, Motherwell, and most of the pioneers are wrong
We have already has Child being unable to distinguish between traditional ballads and the formal poetry he was working on
The redefinition of folk song that has been used in 'Folk Song in England' flies in the face of over a century's scholarship
Not only this, but the lasr of our big repertoire Traditional singer, Walter Pardon would have been mortified to find songs he considered not to be folk included in that definition - he certainly did not hold that opinion.
Steve's contribution to Folk Song is enormous - I would not have been able to carry out much of my work as I have without his numbering system - but he is not God - nobody is (not even God IMO as an atheist)
Regarding your problem with Kindle
I believe most on-screen text is reproducible if you have a graphic system and a programme that will copy the image from your screen and paste it back
I use 'Lightshot', but there are others.
Good luck
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 22 Jun 18 - 11:26 AM

Whoever said that Jim Carroll should write a book is right. It seems his life has been full and interesting, and that he knew many people worth remembering too. So it should be an autobiography. Describing some of his work and how it was done will also set down for posterity how the folk music he collected happened, its contexts. This is something he seems, unless I got the wrong end o stick, to be rather keen on putting over. With pictures ideally, as too much text can get dull.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,JHW
Date: 23 Jun 18 - 05:18 AM

still only read about half an inch of my copy, keeps getting leapfrogged by other stuff to read

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Jun 18 - 05:29 AM

I read it from cover to cover
I now know much pore about the history of pop music
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Jun 18 - 05:44 AM

"more" of course
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Jun 18 - 02:01 AM

"It is not disrespectful to disagree with somebody - it would be disrespectful t
THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK, really rich coming from, Jim.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Jun 18 - 02:04 AM

I don't pick fights with you Dick - please don't try to pick them with me
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 09:39 AM

My copy arrived this week and I have been browsing in it. So, some initial thoughts.

1 I have to say I think it's good value for money. Paperback novels are nearly a tenner.

2 I welcome the chapters setting out information about pioneers and collectors. This is because when you set out to look into the history of the song, you find pieces about it in all sorts of places, and it may be interesting or even useful to have a source of contextual information about the people whose work you are looking at. I think it is also interesting in itself. For me, the book is worth buying at the set price just for that section.

3 For me, given the influence of Child and other people from the North American continent on thinking about folklore, it was good to see a section on him, and on the lasting influences of his approach, with some critical comments on the strengths and weaknesses of it. As usual, the matter is complicated, with the lack of definitive statements by Child. Frustrating, perhaps, but good to know. One quotation given from Child is to the effect that 'the popular ballad is not originally the product or the property of the lower classes of the people. Nothing, in fact, is more obvious than that many of the ballads of the now most refined nations had their origin in that class whose acts and fortunes they depict - the upper class.' That might be interesting to discuss. Does it reflect Child's overall view, and if so, was Child right? What does the term 'the most refined nations' suggest about Child's world view? The book also suggests that Child thought that the old ballads had more change of being subject to 'wilful change' if transmitted through the mouths of 'unlettered people...'.   

4 I have not had time to do more than glance at the Bishop chapters, but they don't seem to simply rehash her chapters in the Bishop and Roud book of English songs, which is good. I am glad that they are there. Lloyd had a section on modes in his book, and it will be interesting to see how far the discussion has moved on. I would encourage people to persevere with these chapters. That's what I intend to do.


It would be interesting to read some discussion about these chapters. Songs are songs, after all, not poems.

5 Definitions of folk song are clearly contested, and a site of ideological conflict. I am not an expert, but it seems to me that Roud's introduction does acknowledge this, and does set out various points of view for the reader, rather than just hammering away at the definition he decides to go with. To sum up, he goes with a 'use' definition rather than an 'origin' definition.


6 In some ways, the debates about this book remind me about what may in future be called 'blues wars',(along the lines of the 'ballad wars' mentioned by Roud) arising from what has been called 'revisionist' scholarship. But, probably, enough said about that.

7 It is full of gems. It isn't so long ago that I was reading something quite polemic about Scottish snaps, so I was fascinated to see that they crop up in Roud.

8 The book does not have the European sweep attempted by Lloyd, but it does have the advantage of seeming thought-out and planned, with careful referencing of ideas. We aren't treated to comment about how folklore flourishes under communist rule, for example (see p 20 on Balkan collective-farm peasants, which, coming to Lloyd for the first time after the horrors of the break up of the former Yugoslavia, reads as, to put it mildly, dated.)


9 I read somewhere the idea that the musical identity of a person depends upon all the music they experience. On that basis, I find Roud's information about how people embraced aspects of popular culture interesting and valid, as well as his sections about work-related songs.

10 Nice to see some info about women singing, the bit about the use of songs in lace making training was evocative and sad.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 10:27 AM

Of course it should have been 'less chance of wilful change', the implication being that unlettered people are less capable of re-writing, unlike the 'professional singers' and 'modern editors' mentioned in the next breath.

Apologies.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 10:39 AM

A useful balanced response, Ps.

>>>>>It would be interesting to read some discussion about these chapters.<<<<<(The tunes) Agreed, but not many of us are qualified to do so. Perhaps such a discussion would be better in its own thread.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 11:26 AM

Pseudonymous wrote -
"It is full of gems."
It certainly is and will probably be the most incisive, original-thinking and thought-provoking book on the subject that appears in my lifetime as well as being rigorously argued and meticulously researched with statements backed up from undeniable sources.
It certainly deserves that sort of detailed and thoughtful response and analysis that the post I have have quoted has given it, rather than the silly comment about it that appeared in this thread five days ago.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 12:12 PM

If it's my comment you are talking about you need to say why it is, and not throw stones at it
I don't think the book purports to be anything other than popular songs that people sand rather than those they made themselves
Even Steve gardham said that the overwhelming majority of them were made for money like today's pop songs

If people believe that to be the case, they owe the tradition and those who work in it the duty to justify it (as we do Walter who firmly discriminated between the songs he sang
Call that "silly" if you like
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 01:18 PM

@ Steve Gardam

I've just discovered the Mudcat section on 'Modes'. Off to browse it before considering new thread.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 03:35 AM

Jim, Im commenting on your post,imo you waste much of your time getting over excited verbally, a shame really because on other occasions you are helpful to others with information.
I agree with you that CCE are a curates egg both good and bad in places,
but you are living in cloud cuckoo land if you try to deny that thousands of pounds are poured in to tradtional music in ireland through cce, or that tradtional music is encouraged through the media and has been for years on radio and television,or there have been programmes on tradtional music on television and radio for over 30 years.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 04:02 AM

If it's my comment you are talking about you need to say why it is.. quote JimCarroll that is exactly what i am doing, but thatis not picking a fight, it is pointing out why another of your comments is silly

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 06:48 AM

I now know much pore about the history of pop music
I suggest that you read this comment on the book and compare it with the detailed analysis by Pseudonymous and decide which is the most sensible approach to the subject.
It would be fine to state your argument in the terms, I believe, that you advocate; that you are much more interested in the ways that folk songs originate than Steve Roud's interest in the way songs develop in the mouths of the people. An argument put forward in those terms would be met with respect and could lead to useful discussion and even to a greater understanding of the two approaches. A comment such as I quote at the beginning of this post is unhelpful, provocative and in no way carries the discussion forward whereas I would say that each of the ten points made by Pseudonymous carries careful reflection behind it and are all worthy of further reactions and observations.
I say this, Jim, in the hope that you will raise the standards of what you post here to that which I know that you are capable of rather than descending to trite barbs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 07:04 AM

I have tried to ague my case articulately - eventually I received far more abuse than I gave (some people even descended to typos - not mentioning any names!) - people seem to have a cupboard where they hide facts like those so they can concentrate on the handy bits.
You want to talk about abuse - talk about it all
I believe that if to redefine folk song in the way people are doing without open and honest discussion is suicidal in respect of keeping our music alive.
To do so is to junk over a century's research - we have already had an example where Francis J Child couldn't tell the difference between his formal poetry arse from his ballad elbow.
Respect is a multi-way street involving the people who discuss now and the countless number from the past whose work is being undermined by a Brave New Theory
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 07:16 AM

You want to talk about abuse - talk about it all
I thought that my post indicated that I didn't want to talk about abuse nor do I want any abuse to appear here. I thought I was advocating discussion which is free from rancour and concentrated on ideas, knowledge and logical arguments.
If you read my previous post as a personal attack, that was not its intention. Please read it again and see that it was an appeal for a reasonable degree of the usual academic courtesy even when the ideas proposed differ from one's own.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 07:38 AM

1000!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 08:00 AM

[i]
I don't think the book purports to be anything other than popular songs that people sand rather than those they made themselves [/i]

Jim I think Vic Smiths comment was a fair one. You were arguing that the book should have been something different from what it was which I think was unfair on Steve Roud. He set out at the beginning what he was going to write about. It may not have been what you were hoping for and it's OK to say that but to dismiss the book because it focussed on the songs that people sang and where they come from and not what you wanted to see was unfair particularly when you dismissed suggestions you write such a book.

You are also far too prone to treat criticism of your stance as an attack on you personally rather than simply disagreement with your take on the book. People respect the work you have done but that doesn't mean they have to agree with everything you say on the matter. You need to learn to cope better with differing opinions.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Tootler
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 08:01 AM

Sorry Guest above was me. I hadn't noticed my cookie had expired.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 08:46 AM

I would have liked to discuss this book.

But, to be honest, I am reluctant to enter into a debate which so quickly becomes heated and personalised. It verges on the intimidating.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 08:54 AM

"I would have liked to discuss this book. "
Please don't do so on my behalf
It's fairly obvious that those I have already attempted to discuss the book in critical terms with don't wish to do so
I think the subject is far too important to discuss in these terms so I'll leave you to it
I hope I have not put you off - sorry if I have
I'll take my arguments elsewwhere
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 09:16 AM

I've just discovered the Mudcat section on 'Modes'. Off to browse it before considering new thread.

We have several threads about that. Which one in particular?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 10:31 AM

It isn't one person. And I would not want anybody to be leaving or any such thing.

At the risk of annoying everybody, I'm just registering a general subjective view that it's a bit like walking into the front room of a very fractious family, and one that has been fractious for a long time!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 10:42 AM

"At the risk of annoying everybody,"
It's not you - it's me (as I've been told on numerous occasions!!)
I would be delighted to see a lively discussion on the book - it's a great piece of work as far as it goes
There are aspects that need discussing - but obviously not here
I've said what I have to say - your turn
Best of luck
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pauline Valentine
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 11:25 AM

I'll take my arguments elsewhere
Jim Carroll                                                   
Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go! Oliver Cromwell.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 12:41 PM

In such company, how could I resist such an invitation Guest Pauline ?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 30 Jun 18 - 06:52 AM

I found a couple more reviews. Don't think these have been mentioned before. Some different pints of view.


http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/awake-awake/

Quotation as taster

One comes away, in fact, with the impression that there is not really such a thing as folk song proper, certainly not the romanticised notions either of merry peasants and maypoles or politically radical peasants and unbounded erotic energy; nevertheless Roud comes to its defence against iconoclasts such as Dave Harker (the implicit target of the comment on class above), whose Fakesong (1985) made a lively case for the need to subject the concepts “folksong” and “ballad” to “a lengthy period of political re-education”, seeing in them little more than an attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie to “mystify workers’ culture” and prevent international solidarity.

Odd to find this in The Spectator

If Roud had written a shorter book on the decline of English folk song over the last two centuries, he could well have produced the definitive study. But when a man has written at such length on English folk song and still has the chutzpah to pronounce that ‘origins do not matter’, he is perhaps not the right person to tackle the centuries when English folk song was part of a vibrant, largely oral, British tradition.

Familiar themes for readers of this thread?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 30 Jun 18 - 07:13 AM

That Oxonian Review article is really good, lots of stuff that was new to me.

Who was the Spectator reviewer making that comment?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 30 Jun 18 - 07:38 AM

Clinton Heylin. Not a name I'm familiar with. Trust me, please, I really don't read the Spectator, it just came up via Google.

Sorry forgot link

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/12/the-vibrant-tradition-of-english-folk-song/

At the risk of raising peoples' blood pressures, including mine, and of being accused of being 'academic', which I am not, currently meditating issues about the *methodology* for the claims about percentages. And not just the 'How do we know the broadsides/earliest printed versions are the originals?' question. I think this thread - and others - has discussed that aspect of question. And the definitional issues.

Could the book have been more explicit on the matter of methodology, or did I miss something?

I note Roud does have an example of a ballad writer who was not working class but deliberately researched a work activity to create 'realistic' songs. I am thinking this is a cat among the pigeons example. Not saying all songs with workplace details had similar origins, just noting how ***** complicated it all is.

On the criticism in one of the articles I read (or was it a post here) that he doesn't include many songs: I have his book of folk songs, so I suppose he didn't want to do songs again and felt he had something else to say.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 01 Jul 18 - 05:47 AM

Clinton Heylin once wrote a rather good book about the New York punk rock scene called From The Velvets To The Voidoids. I had no idea he had any interest in English folk music.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 01 Jul 18 - 06:28 PM

Clinton Heylin has just published a book on the history of Fairport Convention. One of the website comments states:
"Clinton Heylin is one of the leading rock historians in the world, with over two dozen books to his name."

Allegedly.

Derek

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 02:55 AM

Not going to get too involved here too much, in deference to Shirley Valentine, but Heylin's comments make perfect sense to me - the term 'Folk' is a reference to origins and source of the songs, so suggesting that it does not matter poses serious problems.

"but deliberately researched a work activity to create 'realistic' songs"
This subject is given a fair amount of attention in the occasionally flawed but otherwise excellent introduction to the traditional ballads 'The Ballad Tree' by Evelyn Kendrick Wells (New York 1950)
In her last chapter, 'The Literary Ballad', she discusses the practice at some length, then gives numerous examples.
For me, her summing up is a superb analysis of the difference between art or commercially produced poetry and that of 'the folk' - an essential hint as to where our songs may have originated.

"The ballad has thus shown itself, even in the few examples here commented upon, as a proving ground for poets. Its stanza and occa¬sional refrain enclose actual ballad stories reworked with new stresses, or popular legends balladed for the first time. From the more pedestrian broadsides unfortunately many early imitations arose, as can be detected by their jog-trot verse. During the Romantic period the medieval ballad, often concerned with the supernatural, held sway, and the “antique patina” was cultivated. The modern poets are hap¬pier than the older ones in the judicious use of commonplace and concrete detail, the challenging “fifth act” beginning, vagueness of time and place, effective dialogue, and approach to climax through incremental repetition. No doubt increasing acquaintance with the ballad of tradition has helped them here; certainly recent imitations approximate the traditional ballad more nearly than the early ones.
The secret powers of ellipsis and allusion are hard to acquire. Rhyme and meter are apt to be unnaturally fluid; but some compensation must be found for that aid to smoothness in traditional verse, the ballad tune, and deliberate roughness would be more regrettable. The ballad’s simplicity of language has led to some confusion be¬tween the trivial and the effective in everyday expression; and in the aping of a dialect unnatural to him the poet becomes, by an ironic turn of the tables, more instead of less literary. But in general, ballad imitation has disciplined the poet in discrimination, imagination, and economy of expression.
It is in objectivity, that veil behind which generations of folk poets have hidden themselves, that the modern imitator fails. He finds it hard to avoid interpretation; a moral, a personal reaction, or a reflection from his own experience slips out. Interest in the emotional and the pathetic lacks control, particularly when it is a motivating cause for the action; the story is not allowed to speak for itself. The supernatural becomes a source of subjective wonder and marvel, made deliberately eerie to evoke horror. The bounds of the simple ballad are thus broken down by the dual interest in action and emotion.
These tendencies are hard to suppress, even if the poet wished to do so. In many cases he does not. The ballad supplies him with an opportunity to speak symbolically in a texture of apparent simplicity. Beneath the spareness, the ellipsis, the paucity of detail, and the plain yet suggestive speech, he may imply his contrasts, comment in parables, harp us up to the throne of God or down to the hinges of Hell. From Wordsworth to Benét the study of the influence of the ballad upon conscious poetry is a chapter in the history of English verse, working in the direction of simplicity, sincerity, and art."

That works for me
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 03:50 AM

Fascinating thread creep. we now have a mention of a film called Shirley valentine. Jim ,i am intrigued, whats this about alfie

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 04:41 AM

Dick, Jim is refering to Pauline Valentine's post of 29th June 11-25am.
not the film character.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 04:46 AM

Thanks Derrick
An attempt at humour - feeble but mine own
You need to tell him that "what's it all about" is from another film!
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 06:10 AM

That quote from "The Ballad Tree" makes no allowance for a ballad being adapted in transmission - the author seems to assume that they are "composed" once and for all. It seems pretty clear from the sort of scholarship Roud and Gardham have put in that that is almost never the case - they are not the property of the original author, or of the social class that author belonged to, and radical editing is the norm.

I haven't read Roud's book yet, but maybe he covers something that I haven't seen mentioned here. Many of the very oldest songs we know seem to be lyrical fragments extracted from much longer narratives, which may have been metrical or a mixture of prose and lyric. And the editing process of oral transmission often leads to what Evelyn Wells called the "fifth act" phenomenon - the sung jumps in at the point where most of the story has already taken place, and the best songs leave a lot implicit.

Which implies that the relationship between songs and patter is not accidental. If a song is an episode in a story that everybody knows, it doesn't take much explaining. If not, explaining the background is an essential part of the performance. And which bits are included in the song and which bits left to prose explanation is going to vary over time. You don't want to look at the evolution of songs in isolation - the meaningful unit is the song together with whatever in the performance and the audience's understanding makes its narrative intelligible.

Inclusion of too much story is what makes much of Scott's output unreadable today. He was trying to emulate the sort of written mediaeval tradition where every last pernickety detail had to be left in, since the songs were often about the nobility and they wouldn't tolerate being relegated to a footnote (for an absolutely appalling example of the original practice, look at "Graysteil"). Scott went in for the same sort of aristocratic arselicking that created heraldic emblems with every ancestor included inside quarterings upon quarterings. Whereas if you didn't have a noble patron to please, you could leave Lord Muck out or muddle him up with Prince Pigshit and nobody would care. Maybe the singer would know about facts that the song omitted, but there would be a tendency for them to get lost over time.

Does Roud talk about this sort of thing? If not, who does?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 07:06 AM

Jack Campin wrote -
" Many of the very oldest songs we know seem to be lyrical fragments extracted from much longer narratives"
Undoubtedly true! I would give Child 19 King Orfeo as a prime example. The story of Orpheus and Euridice from Greek mythology turning up in manuscript forms in the 19th century in Shetland being the ones Child includes and fragments of that ballad being collected in the oral tradition there in the 1950s.

Jack Campin also wrote -
"I haven't read Roud's book yet...."
Then I would suggest that someone like himself really ought to do so quite soon.

Can I also thank Jim Carroll for his enormously thought provoking quotation from The Ballad Tree. There's another book that I will have to get down from my bookshelves to give renewed consideration.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 07:27 AM

Jack

You mention a lot of things, so not sure what you mean by 'this sort of thing' but maybe that's just me.

As Scott wasn't English, Roud doesn't cover him. But he does complain about collectors who re-write stuff, giving Percy of Reliques fame as an example, saying it his work is mostly useless as a result.

But Roud does not attempt a 'literary' analysis of the sort Evelyn Kendrick Wells appears to have provided.

I'm not sure we actually know much about written medieval songs.

Roud provides various contemporary accounts of how/what people did sing together through the centuries covered in detail in his book, but I don't recall him mentioning introductory patter. His sources are autobiographies and so on. These sources suggest that the ordinary people often sang 'commercial' materials, which for some means it cannot count as 'folk', but irrespective of definitions, I think it is an interesting aspect of popular culture and one worth noting.

Roud does acknowledge change through time. He collects and indexes different versions of songs, and their sources. I think he asserts that once print happens, you won't get a 'pure' oral tradition, another idea which is controversial. I think Jim Carroll would perhaps argue that 'folk' singers knew which songs were 'in the tradition' and which were not. Roud thinks that written and oral intertwine over time.

Hope I haven't misrepresented this.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 07:50 AM

I'll second what Vic said about Jim's contribution. Ditto about reading Roud.

I realised after reading it how my own childhood music experiences singing songs from books round the piano played (not well) by Mum were influenced by folklorists and American songs, including what I now know something about, minstrelsy. I hadn't thought of it quite that way before. And of course, minstrel troupes did come to Britain


Roud refers to 'community singing' and I have a edition of the Ernest Newton Community Song Book (1927ish), which includes Rule Britannia, Ye Banks and Braes, The Harp that Once, Shenandoah, and The Maple Leaf For Ever as well as some labelled 'traditional'.


I googled Wells, and she knew Sharp and taught children dances he taught. That's partly how they financed their trip to Appalachia.

Returning to thoughts raised by Jack: Roud (and this is another gem) explains how libel cases relating to ballads could end up in the Star Chamber, and people are studying these cases. He relates a story about three blokes caught singing something somebody didn't like being punished, including being made to ride backwards on a horse. It wasn't just what the royals thought of your songs you had to watch out for.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 08:12 AM

"the author seems to assume that they are "composed" once and for all."
The singers were unlikely to accept the stilted language the early 'pretenders" used in their compositions - many of them would not have access to them anyway because of limited literacy skills, a major part of her book
She makes the interesting point that, at a later stage, rather than the singers adapting the imitations, the poets attempted to adjust their styles to folk forms.
One of the problems of all this is that the information we have from the singers, beyond the 'name, rank and serial number' stage is incredibly limited - virtually non-existant
The 'Steves' research' is based largely on speculation, what else did they have?

If you read Maidment's notes and some of Burns', Scott's and Hogg's comments, you get a different picture, but even that is bitty and largely second-hand
Our understanding of the oral tradition, with a few notable exceptions, doesn't predate the beginning of the 20th century, when the oral tradition was terminally moribund.

As for our later singers, few were asked for anything beyond the songs (in Britain and Ireland, that is); based on our own limited experience, our singers had a very different picture of their songs than the Steves.
I anybody had asked Walter Pardon, 'When the Fields Were White With Daisies' would never have been given a Roud number

Questioning these singers was extremely difficult; yo balanced a tightrope between getting information and intruding with your own ideas
When you managed it, it was extremely rewarding and informative.

'singers knew which songs were 'in the tradition'
Not really Pseudo (hate these names - they always sound as if you are being rude)
The singers we recorded described their songs as "real" and identifed with them as individuals
They saw the characters and the surroundings visually, as they sang and they identified sympathetically with teh action
I'm sure yuou know the Dillard Chamdler story of when he sang 'Little Musgrave' and punctuated it by saying "If Id been there I'd 'uv hid behind the door and shot Lord Barnard in the back when he come in".

We once carried out an experiment with a singer we became very friendly with, Traveller, Mikeen McCarthy.
We got him to sing a couple of traditional songs and asked him what hee saw when he sang them - full descriptions of people, clothes, surroundings, he told us, "we often drove pat the door of that cottage when we was tinsmithing" (he had a verse and a half only of that song
Then we got him to sing two tear-jerkers: 'I Wish all my Chidren were Babies Again and'The Night You Gave Me Back My Ring' - no pictures, nothing whatever   

Steve R's statement about literacy is simplistic - it really isn't that easy.
English and Scots Travelers are the greatest source of our ballad repertoire; both were basically 'non literate' when the oral tradition was still functioning

Sorry - I'm banging on again
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 08:36 AM

Responding now to Heylin; he is perhaps unfair to Roud in ascribing ignorance of song histories to him. He says Roud's stuff seems only to go back to 1765, 325 years after Child #1 was first noted down.

I looked through my copy of Bishop and Roud's Penguin Book of songs, and discovered one where they noted that Child (the expert cited by Heylin) had missed something. Forget which one now!

I think it is unfair of Heylin to Roud to state out of context that he believes 'origins don't matter'.

And I imagine that some who take an 'origins' view of the 'correct' definition of 'folk' might agree that this review tends to take cheap shots and does not do Roud justice.

It would be interesting to know where Heylin thinks anybody is going to find the material to produce the book he wants about the 'centuries' when folk music was 'part of a thriving, and largely oral, British tradition', even leaving aside the rather broad brush approach suggested by the word 'British'.


I'm not certain Heylin read past the introduction, to be honest.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 08:48 AM

Jim

Thanks for the clarification of your views. Apologies for inadvertently misrepresenting. Also feeling inclined to get a copy of Wells' book.

You could call me 'pseu', and not think about the spelling. Would that do?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 08:50 AM

jim ,i know that, my attempt at feeble humour.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 09:24 AM

"Also feeling inclined to get a copy of Wells' book."
I don't know how involved in folk song you are; can I just reiterate that the book has flaws (Aberdeenshire has moved into the Scots Borders somehow).
It is an excellent introduction to the 'feel' of the ballads (it added immensely to my love of them)   
Two other authors, Madge Elder (Ballad Country) and Willa Muir (Living With Ballads), do the same job but not in as much detail

"my attempt at feeble humour."
Just making sure Dick !!!
Everybody knows your song is from the Elizabethan tragedy; in full, it should read, "What's it all about Malfi"
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 09:46 AM

So, pseudonymous, could you be a boy named pseu?

My even feeble attempt at humour.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 09:54 AM

Jim Carroll wrote
"What's it all about Malfi"
Yes, I'm sure that Burt Bacharach had Elizabethan tragedy in mind when he wrote that great hit for both Cilla Black and Dionne Warwick; but I'm sure that not the only example of Burt taking songs from the drama of that era. Burt also wrote "Another Lear Falls" which was a great hit for the Walker Brothers.

I feel I ought to point out that neither of these songs have Roud numbers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 09:58 AM

could you be a boy named pseu?
I never thought it likely that humour would break out on this thread!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 10:29 AM

""Another Lear Falls""
Oh dear, what have I started?
Next stop
Volpone
oh, oh
The Changeling,
Oh, oh, oh, oh

JIm

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 10:34 AM

Beg pardon -
That last should be:
"The times they are a Changeling"
Must ne this heat!!!
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 01:59 PM

Humour much needed on this thread. It's been too much like

"The ring of ire"

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 02:12 PM

Lear was also a very good artist. how about another pear falls, from the group isaac newton was wrong, aka the flat earth society

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 02:38 PM

Jim said (inter alia) "the term 'Folk' is a reference to origins and source of the songs, so suggesting that it does not matter poses serious problems."

Not sure whether you intend "source" to be synonymous with "origins", or to refer to the "source singer" from whom a song is collected, or what.

But anyway that's not quite what the Steves and others are saying. The person from whom a song was collected certainly matters, and the origin matters if it can be positively identified, possibly telling us something about the originator and providing a reference point for comparison with what has happened to a song in subsequent transmission (orally, through print, or some of each). But origin and source are among a variety of possible criteria by which one might try to decide which songs are "folk" and which are something else.

Consider for example Freda Palmer, who learnt much of her repertoire from her aunt and a double CD of whose songs was recently published by Musical Traditions Records. First, read the description of her on that page. Then look at the track listing.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 02:50 PM

"Humour much needed on this thread"
Was hoping to get in 'The Faust Time Ever'
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 03:45 PM

Sorry 'bout that (and the damned doule posting)
Washed up the tea things and had my shower
Richard
"origins", or to refer to the "source singer"
I refer to origins
I don't wish to te-tread the arguments above, but for the sake of those who were not around or have forgotten

My introduction to this argument (seems a lifetime ago)was when I quoted MacColl's statement at the end of The song Carriers;

"Well, there they are, the songs of our people. Some of them have been centuries in the making, some of them undoubtedly were born on the broadside presses. Some have the marvellous perfection of stones shaped by the sea's movement. Others are as brash as a cup-final crowd. They were made by professional bards and by unknown poets at the plough-stilts and the handloom. They are tender, harsh,, passionate, ironical, simple, profound.... as varied, indeed, as the landscape of this island.
We are indebted to the Harry Coxes and Phil Tanners, to Colm Keane and Maggie MaccDonagh, to Belle Stewart and Jessie Murray and to all the sweet and raucous unknown singers who have helped to carry our people's songs across the centuries"

I was accused by one of the 'print origin' advocated of being 'starry eyed for believing "such romantic nonsense"
The song Carriers covered the whole known repertoire of foldk-song, from the Frog and the Mouse", the first folk song named in print in 1550 as being sung bty shepherds, to a song describing the death of an Irish labourer killed in Birmingham during the blitz
You really couldn't get more comprehensive than that.
After a while, the argument changed - my protagonist said he only meant the songs collected in the latter half of the 19th century when he claimed 90 plus percent of them had originated in print for money
Ist goal shift

I've always accepted MacColl's statement on the spread of composers
When Roud's book came out, the term had been re-defined to include everything the folk sanf (presumably everything from the National anthem and 'Hymns ancient and Modern to 'You'll Never Walk Alone'
Another major goal shif which, for me, removes the sociali uniqueness of the music I have spent my laife following

Sorry
Can't finish - duty calls
Will continue tomorrow
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 04:50 AM

@But origin and source are among a variety of possible criteria by which one might try to decide which songs are "folk" and which are something else.]
not according to the 1954 dfinition, according to that definition, football chants are folk, the origin.. often popular music ill never walk alone] the source the people who attend football matches. im sorry but i am not going to accept that such dross as the wheelbarrow song[notts county] is acceptable as a folk song i am certainly not going to pay to hear it sung in a folk club

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 09:56 AM

So what does Roud actually say on definitions.

Roud calls the chapter where he discusses definitions 'Is There Such a Thing as Folk Song Anyway'? That might be seen as a bit provocative.

Whatever your views on definitions, it seems to me that Roud's chapter is worth reading. He explains how the term 'folk song' was used between 1870 and 1900 by 'various individuals in England' to refer to the 'repertoires of song and styles of singing' which seemed different from classical (what in the USA they call 'Art') music and the commercial music of the day. For various reasons they set about 'collecting' material, and proselytising. Those collectors had specific views of what counted as 'folk', so their collections, Roud says, did not reflect the whole range of songs sung by working people, their actual musical practices. They were not interested in the context in which the singing took place. Their agenda was partly nationalistic (England had been accused of not having any 'native' music, and partly to some extent based on class sympathies).


Roud explains that a 'cultural survivals' theory underpinned much of the argument of the Victorian folklorists, an idea linked with what he calls a 'Romantic Nationalist' view that all cultures go through similar 'folk' stages. Sometimes, Roud suggests, people assume that anything 'vaguely "folky"' must be old, and is evidence of early stages, when this is unproveable.


This interest died out, though the singing did not, not entirely, until after the 2nd World War when there was a 'revival', drawing much inspiration from abroad, which is where the folk singer with guitar seems to come in (though American influences began earlier than this eg the banjo).


Starting after the 1960s there was a strong left-wing attack on the early collectors, who were seen as being bourgeois and self-interested. One David Harker is a key figures here.


Roud says all this gave rise to two things: 'folk song for use' and the 'burden of expectation'.


The label folk song for use refers to the fact/idea that people coming to folk song have often wanted to do something with it, have been involved in a 'movement', whether this was to foster national pride or to counteract the 'evil influences of pop music'. For Roud, this inevitably meant 'compromises to make the material more easily accessible, up to date and relevant to todays society'. Roud says here that both the Edwardians singing folk in evening dress and the guitars and denim (blush blush) of the post war generation were 'incongruous' but justified in terms of the need to spread the message. Maybe the adopted accents mentioned in this thread are examples of this incongruity? Maybe not.


The 'burden of expectation' problem, as described by Roud, is what gave rise to the 'bitterness' of attacks such as Harker's, when it was discovered that folk song's potential for furthering particular causes was less that had been hoped for.

Roud thinks that this 'burden' led to a) tinkering and b) people writing their own 'folk songs', thus wandering away from the ideal of 'authenticity'. I write as a person who for a short while imagined that Dirty Old Town was authentic folk music, whereas now I think it was a commercial piece and that it is about Salford. But I still like it.

You can see that there may be problems in defining 'folk' in such a way as to include Dirty Old Town and Child Ballad Number One, which Heylin's Spectator review moans has such a low Roud number.

Roud than makes some claims of his own. For him, for example, 'there was not been a pure oral tradition for at least 500 years, not least because most folk songs owe their continued existence to their regular appearance in print'. He also comments that many songs later recorded as 'folk songs' were written by professional or semi-professional song-writers and poets. He then makes what for me is the crucial remark in terms of Roud's definition of 'folk'. He says:


"But what matters is that, of all the songs available at any given time, the ploughboys, milkmaids, miners and weavers took hold of some, and liked them enough to learn them and sing them, to make them their own and pass them on, and this makes them well worthy of our notice"


This point about learning it, singing it, making it their own, and passing it on, seems to me to be crucial in Roud's 'use' definition.


It certainly is not a simple matter of Roud stating that 'pop' music is 'folk' just because one person does an open-mike version of it.

Roud explains his thinking further:

'It is not our purpose here to discuss whether any of the modern styles {by this he means eg folk=rock, singer-songwriters} are 'folk' but what we are doing, in effect, is to reclaim the word from all its additions and accretions, to get back to something approaching what the Victorians and Edwardians meant by the word, but with additions and corrections of our own based on a re-interpretation of the evidence from their time.'

Roud also emphasises the 'process' whereby folk songs are created: again, for him the passing on of a song seems crucial.


However, Roud questions whether one definition can hold for 'all time'. He questions whether the historical narrative should be the same for different countries, whether it should be the same for Wales, the Scottish Highlands, and Ireland as for North America and New Zealand. This makes sense to me. The cultural contexts look different.


He therefore refers to his own definition/s as being 'attempted' suggesting an awareness that people coming later may see things differently as a result of their own context, and also, for me, expressing a certain amount of modesty.


So, for example, he says that many of the early conclusions about the origin of a song were speculative because 'we do not know where many of the tunes came from'. He gives Child as an example of an 'origins' theorist, saying he started a fashion for believing that folk songs came from the medievalk minstrel era because 'it was this aspect that gave the material its particular character, and also gave the ballad importance in the literary world'. This makes sense because in his day job Child wrote books about Geoffrey Chaucer who was 14th century. Child was a 'philologist'.


{It's a pity, perhaps, that Roud does not delve into the racialist thinking underpinning early editions of the American Journal of Folklore (eg Vol 1 No 1 1888). Thinking went beyond 'national' folk cultures.}


Then Roud gives a statemtn about his definition(Not his definition):
'..it must be clearly stated that the key component of the definition of 'folk song' in ths book is that it is the process through which songs pass in the brains and voices of ordinary people which brands them as 'folk'. Therefore, songs which the ordinary people have adopted as their own, regardless of origin, constitute in some way or another their collective voice and are 'folk songs'.

...'It is not the origin of a song which makes it 'folk' but what the 'folk' do with it.

Roud also suggests that maybe it not any one characteristic that should be crucial, but that it might be a matter of degree.

As already discussed on this thread, this definition is controversial and will not please everybody. It may exclude some work that some people strongly believe should be counted as 'folk'.

But I think we ought at least to pay Roud, who has produced a fascinating and carefully evidenced book, the courtesy of trying to deal with his ideas about definition as they are, and not over-simplify them.

Was it on this thread that somebody quoted Wittgenstein on language games?

NB Sandman: I can see where you are coming from, but there's a lot of stuff labelled folk in some contexts that I might not listen to for free on aesthetic grounds, especially medieval ballads in a language I can barely understand in print and no doubt would not understand at all if 'oral', but I can see that football songs that emerge from the terraces might be a fruitful source of stuff I might generally be happy to label folk. Drunken group sing-song activity: seems traditional enough to me. And 'You'll never walk alone' seems a good example. Pity nobody set the offside rule to music: that would make a good folkloric textual study.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 10:49 AM

I can see that football songs that emerge from the terraces might be a fruitful source of stuff I might generally be happy to label folk. Drunken group sing-song activity: seems traditional enough to me. And 'You'll never walk alone' seems a good example.

And its tune also fits a traditional pattern, if you want to reinforce that categorization on stylistic grounds. The rising sequence and overall contour is much the same as "Hey tutti tati" aka "Scots Wha Hae".

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 11:07 AM

Pseu
Not got a lot of time now - just thought I'd comment in passing
You may well regret opening the Pandora's box of definition - 'a lorra men did and a lorra men died'
The problem with Roud's, or anybody's re-definition depends on whether you can redefine something that is no longer alive
Can you re-define 'Elizabethan Madrigals' or 'Medieval Hymns' or 'Victorian Parlour Ballads'?
You can't, in my opinion.
You can certainly fill out existing definitions with information that has been missed, but this is not what the re-definers have done

I believe 'folk song' to be a specific term which defines who made them and continued to re-make them.
When Sharp and his colleges were operating, they believed that they were 'hearse-chasing', and to a degree, to a great degree they were correct.
New songs were not being made, the places for singing had largely disappeared and the dominance of broadsides meant that the songs were still-born (we have lots of examples of old singers who wouldn't dream of altering a printed text)
Eventually, the singers changed from being active participants in their culture to passive recipients of it

We were lucky to have worked in two major traditions.
The Irish Traveller song culture was very much alive when we started, open air and pub singing sessions were common and self-made songs were still being created
Within eighteen months of our starting, the singing tradition screeched to a halt when the Travellers got portable televisions and the singing and songmaking stopped
There's been a bit of a revival since, but that's what it is - a revival
While we missed the best, we did have the opportunity of working with people who had been part of a living tradition.

In the West of Ireland, the singing tradition all but died by the beginning of the 1950s, with the exception of the Gaeltachts.
till a lot of old singers and plenty of songs but not many venues.
Where Irish settled singers were remembering songs from a rich living tradition, the English singers were remembering songs which has been learned from forebears who were remembering them - second or third hand.
I don't believe you can re-define anything from those situations.

"Dirty Old Town"
MacColl denied that any of his songs were 'folk songs' - he made a point of doing so
He did believe that making new songs might eventually lead to the recreation of a tradition, but that never happened, a couple of his Traveller songs nearly got there, but the singing tradition died before they took root.

MacColl was a strong supporter of Lloyd's statement in the last chapter of his 'Folk Song in England':
"If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'."
So am I
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 11:40 AM

Can you re-define 'Elizabethan Madrigals' or 'Medieval Hymns' or 'Victorian Parlour Ballads'?

Are those definitions? Or are they categories?

Roud explains what he means by 'folk song' for the purpose of his book. He seems to have made a determined effort to try to find out what 'the folk' sang without being constrained by other people's pigeonhole labels.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 12:03 PM

Thanks for your contribution Jim.

I think I am coming to a view that I don't mind what definition people use so long as they accept it isn't the only one.


The MacColl example was an example of my own confused ideas on the subject. There will be many like me who are unaware that MacColl denied being a writer of folk songs.

In a general philosophical sense, might I suggest that the argument about defining something that no longer exists begs a question about what did exist, for how long, and whether it was in any meaningful sense 'the same' thing at all points during its existence. To put this another way, would the singers singing a song at all points along its theoretical long existence have said the same sorts of things about it?

As it happens, I am sure that historians do and continue to argue about the nature and significance of Medieval Hymns. That is human nature!

I will disagree with you about the places for singing disappearing, unless you qualify it. I had a great uncle who was a pub pianist (though non-musically-literate), one of those who played by ear in a pub for people to have a sing-song. This is in England, a largely Victorian pit village as it happens. Also regarding pubs:in my own local in the 80s, one front room had singers in on a Friday night: they sang World War 2 songs mostly, at least that was how I generally thought about it: I cannot list all the songs.   

I am quite happy for The Outlandish Knight and The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife to be named differently from eachother. They seem to reflect quite different social practices. However, the origins of both seem obscure (judging from a quick google search), and in the case of the latter, potentially unreliable. So on an 'origin' basis, I'm not sure we get much further.

And on the Red Flag: I suspect that the song 'The People's Flag is Deepest Pink (It's not so red as people think) may in fact demonstrate that whatever its origins it went some way towards becoming a 'folk song' according to Roud's definition, if not all the way, as it would need to have been passed on again to fit with it. I heard this version sung during a battle against pit closures, but cannot remember any more of it.

I don't think that Roud is claiming that anything sung by 'ordinary people' automatically and immediately becomes folk. He speaks of a 'process'. I am not saying you take a different view of Roud's definition, just trying to be clear about what it is.


Thanks for your contributions. Interesting debate.

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 12:10 PM

They are definitions of a specific art form from a specific period in history, I would have thought
"He seems to have made a determined effort to try to find out what 'the folk'"
Yet he doesn't use the term "folk" as it has been defined since the 1830s by William Thom and how it has been identified in many thousands of works of literature ever since
If we accept this re-definition we are no longer talking about the same thing as Child or Bronson or Wimberley or Geould or Broadwood or Kidson, or Gummere or Greig or Lomax or Wilgus or Studer........
Don't you find that a serious problem?
I'm afraid I find it insurmoutable
What do we say to anybody coming to folk song for the first time - "forget all that old nonsense" ?
Glad I'm not going to be around to have to sort out that one
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 12:27 PM

I did say "largely disappeared" Pseu
I used to go to pubs in Manchester where they had a pianist and one along the Stretford Road had an amateur night where the Guvnor would pay a prize (£5 I think) for the best performance
I was a regular at that one, but I never tried my hand - you'd be shouted off the stage if you embarked on Barbara Allen or Van Dieman's Land
These were more passively received entertainments' rather than song-swapping and reminiscing with people you knew
Regading definition, if we are going to communicate one with the other we need to do so using the same language
I believe it is a failure to do that that sent the folk scene spiraling down in flames in the 1980s
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 01:25 PM

I believe it is a failure to do that that sent the folk scene spiraling down in flames in the 1980s.
a debatable remark and one that is an over simpification.
MacColl may have denied that he was a writer of songs but he did not refuse royalty cheques,however Bert Lloyd did pretend that he had not written or added to songs but was concerned only with improving the tradtional repertoire.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 01:49 PM

"MacColl may have denied that he was a writer of songs
Who said he denied being a write of songs?
I said he didn't call the songs he wrote 'folk songs'
"but he did not refuse royalty cheques"
He was a professional singer and song writer - do you object to such people getting paid fro what they do?
You have no idea what Bert did - nobody does
Much said about is unproven speculation
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 02:37 PM

Should read
"Much said about Bert is unproven speculation
Jim Caarroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 02:37 PM

Should read
"Much said about Bert is unproven speculation
Jim Caarroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 03:26 PM

"Much said about Bert is unproven speculation"

On the other hand much else said about him is supported by reliable evidence.

Neither of which has much to do with either Steve's book or the argument about whether to define folk song by origin, practice or any of the other possible criteria.

Jim, you claim that Roud has departed from a previously widely accepted definition of folk song, but exactly what definition have you in mind, who used it and where did they state it? You can't mean the "1954" definition because that one is not restricted by origin.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 03:56 PM

Jim

I apologise for misreading the 'largely disappeared' in your post of 11.07. I thought you were using the disappearing venue as a reason for the decline in folk singing and the need for hearse chasing by Sharp.


I don't know enough about Child to comment on his theory of what folk music was; to judge from what Roud says about it, it was a) not entirely coherent b) elitist, as opposed to seeing folk as the song of the people. Yes, he was looking at old ballads/fables/ but I don't think he was necessarily claiming they originated or were transmitted by ordinary people ie medieval peasants. Not sure how he imagined they were transmitted. In his view, some of them don't seem started out in any historical form of the English language!


For me, as I understand it, one aspect of Roud's definition and discussion that might be one you are unhappy with is the idea that to count as 'folk' it has to be passed on. I don't have my copy in front of me, but he says something like 2 or three generations. That would mean that any songs written by travellers and collected within the same generation would not come within the definition.


On that criterion, Little Boxes Made out of Ticky Tacky could not yet be included, and may never be, unless people are passing it on now.

However, in the case of any such songs you had collected, it would appear that the songs are not in immediate danger of being forgotten as they are published.

I understand you are unhappy with various aspects of it, this is just one part that seemed relevant.

Also part of my point was that as a layman, not used to specialist definitions, I would probably have counted MacColl as a folk singer and Dirty Old Town as a folk song, using not sure what criteria. So my idea would have been in terms I guess of style, mostly as hinted above, relating to denim and guitars. The socks with sandals seem to have gone out of fashion. I was tring to spot some yesterday and there weren't any.)


Tzu.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 03:53 AM

"or were transmitted by ordinary people "
That was taken for granted by virtually all the early scholars, there was no reason for it to be said
Child's 'Popular' Ballads didn't refer to how far they got up the 19th century charts - it was the old usage of the term, 'of or belonging to the people'

Motherwell, in his introduction to his 'Minstrelsy', issued dire warnings about interfering with the way the 'common people' sang their songs.
James Hogg's mother accused Scott of ruining her songs by writing them down - hardly the words of someone who had received her songs from print.

Child dismissed the broadside repertoire as inferior dross - "veritable dunghills' - the poets were noted for being poor versifiers, "hacks".

We have a large number of published broadside collections here, Ashton, Euing, Roxborough, Rollins, Ebsworth, Holloway and Black...
What distinguishes them all is, in contrast with the traditional repertoire, there's hardly a singable song in any of them.

I find it very difficult to believe that our beautiful, economically streamlined folk songs sprang from the same school as 'The Cat's Meat Man' or 'The Tragic Case of the Lady Who Plunged to her Death from The Monument' - it's not a case of individual songs; rather it's the overall style which is the greatest giveaway



WE don't know who made the songs but we need to examine all the evidence, instead of discarding it like you would an old pair of shoes to replace them with a pair 'in fashion'

One of the big problems with all this is that too many people don't seem to know the difference between tradition and repetition.
To continue to sing a song doesn't make it traditional - it's farm more complicated than that, but that seems to be what Roud's book is based on.
All our folk songs may not be 'good' but they are nearly all unique in various ways

One of biggest 'finds' over the years at collecting wasn't 'new' or 'more beautiful or important versions' of songs - it was the large number of anonymous locally made songs that were made, largely in the lifetimes of the singers on every subject you cam imagine and every aspect of the human condition - hundreds in this county, now it transpired, common throughout Ireland

Rural working people, and, to a a lesser degree, urban workers, were natural poets with a desire to set down their feelings and experiences in singable verse - for the sheer hell of it - not for money (as one of the advocates of print origin suggested
This is a serious fact to be taken into consideration when we are attempting to assess who made our folk songs

'Ordinary' people have been making songs at least since The Venerable Bede complained about drunken cattlemen passing around the harp and singing some time in the 8th century
Illiterate Shepherds were reported to have been singing 'The Frog and the Mouse' in 16th century Scotland
Some of our folk songs may only date back as far as a little over a century but the motifs in many of them are not only older than literacy but predate the invention of print, some going as far back as far as Homer and Biblical times.

The influence of print is very much 'a new kid on the block' - that is a serious point to be taken into consideration when we are assessing who made our folk song   
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 05:00 AM

To continue to sing a song doesn't make it traditional - it's far more complicated than that, but that seems to be what Roud's book is based on.

Perhaps your concept of "traditional" or "folk" is simply irrelevant to what Roud is investigating? He's looking at the songs people actually sang, and the social praxis of singing.

If you want there to be a book about the songs you classifiy as "folk", perhaps you'd better write it yourself rather than complain when other people spend years of their lives and a great deal of original thought writing about something entirely different, and which a lot of us out here want to know about.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 05:00 AM

I don't think Roud says anything to deny the creation of songs from within the community itself. I agree he could perhaps have placed more emphasis on this, but I think he is trying to challenge the assumption that most folk songs originated this way, whereas he is trying to show how popular songs from a variety of sources entered the repertoire of 'folk singers'.

One of the problems with definitions is that they are too definite. Perhaps when talking about folk song we should be looking for guidelines, rather than definitions. I am happy to agree with Jim that many of the popular songs from music hall etc should not be considered 'folk songs' even though they are widely found in the oral tradition and in the repertoire of 'folk singers'. They have not undergone sufficient change through the 'folk process' and can be clearly differentiated not only in style but also in emotional content. But what word should we use to describe those songs which can be traced back to a composed origin but which have been transformed in the hands of folk singers? I am happy to regard those as 'folk songs' and I think the 1954 definition supports this view. I'm not sure Jim agrees, although I will happily concede that I'm not sure I'm understanding him correctly and I'm not trying to put words in his mouth.

Coming back to Roud, the waters are possibly muddied by his "Folk Song Index". This label is a convenient shorthand but is I think misleading. It records and indexes songs collected from the oral tradition, and includes many popular songs as well as true folk songs.    I don't think it should be interpreted as claiming that anything collected from a folk singer is therefore folk song, and I don't believe that is Roud's intention.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 05:26 AM

"Perhaps your concept of "traditional" or "folk" is simply irrelevant to what Roud is investigating? He's looking at the songs people actually sang, and the social praxis of singing."

My point exactly Jack.
Roud deliberately chose Loyd's title for his book, indicating they are on the same subject - they are not
That is misleading and it is exactly this that has been taken up by reviewers - that out folk sons were not made by the folk
What point would there be in adding to that condusion
Roud has cornered the market on the term 'folk song' - he is rightfully highly regarded for his work - now he has shot off at a tangent by lumping folk and non-folk material into this numbering system
His numnbering system is limited to his own personal tastes and will continue to be until 'Oobla Dee, Oobla Dah' and 'The Birdie Song' are given Roud numbers - that's what 'the folk' are singing now
If you believe that is not what he is doing, I think you need to say what you think he is doing.
The fact to phrase what people are sayin as "I don't believe that is Roud's intention' is an indication to me that what he IS saying wasn't stated clearly enough in the first place
There really shouldn't be any room for doubt or misinterpretation in a book of that size and importance.
Folk song scholarship needs to be an assembled assessment of all the work, not the constant replacement of past knowledge with new thoughts - as this one spectacularly is
Definitions on dead subjects need to be 'definite' unless and until new information comes to light otherwise they become opinions based on personal taste of something none of us played a part in the making of
No way to run a piss-up in a brewery, never mind something as important as folk culture
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 08:02 AM

If a reader is interested in the songs people actually sang, and the social praxis of singing (as Jack Campin succinctly put it) they don't neccessarily want yet another assembled assessment of all the work. Roud has clearly read all the previous work and acknowledges that it has helped him; we can read it ourselves if we want to. He has given us an assembled assessment of the 'raw material' that he has been able to source.

It is not an academic treatise. It is his book, giving us examples of his sources and setting out his thoughts.

If it were to have a subtitle more acceptable to those who claim owenership of the term 'Folk Song' what should it be?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 08:09 AM

Perhaps your concept of "traditional" or "folk" is simply irrelevant to what Roud is investigating? He's looking at the songs people actually sang, and the social praxis of singing.
Roud deliberately chose Loyd's title for his book, indicating they are on the same subject - they are not
That is misleading

If you're buying a book that big and expensive, you read the cover blurb, the foreword and maybe a review.

I work in a charity bookshop and have to deal with literal-minded volunteers who file The Photoshop Bible in the religion section. The title doesn't mean Adobe claim to be a religion. (The same people would put both The Secret Garden and The Perfumed Garden next to Alan Titchmarsh). Titles don't matter if you have a clue.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 08:58 AM

"If it were to have a subtitle more acceptable to those who claim ownership of the term 'Folk Song' what should it be?"
Nobody "claims ownership over the term folk song" - well over a century's documentation and research has made that totally unnecessary

In my opinion the book would have been far better named 'A History of Popular Song'
When I was told that over 90% of our folk-songs originated as commercial commodities to be sold, 'no different than today's pop songs' that was the title that was suggested to me.
Using that description would have prevented these disputes and enabled us to judge the work on its own merits

I believe the folk Song revival lost its way because the term 'folk song' lost its meaning - I hope scholarship doesn't go the same way

"Titles don't matter if you have a clue."
We are a dying breed and desperately need new blood - most incomers don't have a clue
The present Irish Traditional music boom was launched on a carefully constructed foundation based on past work
Incomers can do and are doing what they wish with the contents of that foundation, but they will always have a reference point to return to
I never thought I'd live to see that point reached
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 09:10 AM

How does a title prevent something being judged on its merits?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 09:49 AM

"How does a title prevent something being judged on its merits?"
By claiming to be what it isn't
That's covered by the trades descriptions act
Jack is right if we are only concerned with those already in the know; we can already see the effect that it has had on those who are not
We can slog it out between us until we reach a conclusion or agree to disagree
That isn't going to help us win or win back those who have been confused by the ambivalence
At one time, if somebody asked me where they are sure to find folk songs I would unhesitatingly point to Roud's numbering system as starting point
I wouldn't do that now and that, for me, is a sad loss

Isn't 'The Perfumed Garden' a book on horticulture Jack? - That explains why I thought I was getting funny looks from Pat!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 10:29 AM

Jim takes a very passionate but purist view, and I entirely see where he is coming from. However if only songs which originated from within the oral tradition can be admitted, that leaves out a vast number of songs which by most criteria would be considered folk songs. The inconvenient fact is that singers picked up songs from wherever they could find them, and the songs they sang don't always fit in with our ideas of what folk song should ideally be.

A definition of folk song which disallows songs like "The Wild Rover" and "A Farmer's Boy" because of their composed and printed origins seems to me to be somewhat wide of the mark.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 11:32 AM

I think the mention of Child cropped up allegedly in the context of Roud re-writing a definition that has held for a century or so.

It has been pointed out that Child called his volumes 'Popular ballads'. What did he mean by this?

Assuming what Roud says about Child is correct, and I suppose he will have looked into this, Roud says Child never wrote the General Preface that people hoped for. Child doesn't go into all this in volume one, where one might expect to find such an introduction.

Roud says on page 112 that 'A small cottage industry developed in articles that tried to reach Child's definition of the genre and his selection criteria by extrapolating from the general text of the volumes, but there has been no agreement on their selections.'

Now that is worth knowing, so thank you Roud.

Roud then says Child did write an article on Ballad Poetry for an encyclopaedia, but himself said not to take this as definitive.

'The crucial point is that for him ballad poetry was the forerunner of art poetry and belonged to a period when there was no or little distinction between popular and art culture.'

Roud on page 113 quotes Child as follows:

The primitive ballad then, is popular, not in the sense of something arising from and suited to the lower orders of people. As yet, no sharp distinction of high and low exists, in respect to knowledge, desires and tastes An increased civilisation, and especially the introductin of book-culture, gradually gives rise to such a division; the poetry of art appears: the popular poetry is no longer relished by a portion of the people, and is abandoned to an uncultivated or not over-cultivated class - a constantly diminishing number...


From what has been said, it may be seen or inferred that the popular ballad is not originally the product or the property of the lower classes of the people. Nothing, in fact, is more obvious than that many of the ballads of the now most refined nations had their origin in that class whose acts and fortunes they depict - the upper class.


Roud (p109) reminds us that Child's interest in ballads arose from a general interest in English Literature, including Chaucer. Child was not interested in the pieces as music. Nor, says Roud, was he interested in performance. Roud says that for some Child pieces there is no evidence that they were ever sung or recited. He saw the ballads as 'literature'.


I have been reading Kittredge's introduction to his selection of Child. He says:

"They belonged, in the first instance, to the whole people, at a time when there were no formal divisions of literate and illiterate; when the intellectual interests of all were substantially identical, from the king to the peasant."

"The homogeneous folk — that is, the community whose intellectual interests are the same from the top of the social structure to the bottom — is no fiction; examples in abundance have been observed and recorded."

I don't believe a word of this. Nor do I share Kittredge's belief that this is clear and unarguable. I would on the contrary be wanting proof that such an intellectually monolithic culture ever existed.

But my main point was that definitions of 'popular' vary and don't seem to be getting me much further.

Now, some have complained that Roud includes a section about writers about folk, but it seems to me that maybe, in view of information like this, it is worth knowing about these writers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 12:21 PM

"A song was just a song to me. I never even heard any song called a folk song. After all, every song is a song by the folks and for the folks. I don't recall ever writing any songs for cows, chickens, fish, monkeys nor wild animals of any kind."

Woody Guthrie March 8, 1948

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 12:21 PM

Sorry the quotation marks are a mess in the above. But Child definitely wrote that the upper class wrote the ballads.

Roud's reference is to an encyclopeia article reprinted in the bumper edition 1994 Journal of Folklore Research. Sorry again

I like the idea of songs from an early age being passed down through an oral tradition, and I'm firmly convinced that people who are non-literate can also be capable of producing very good songs, but I'm not sure how we could ever prove a theory of origin one way or the other.


Once a song has been written down, whatever its origin, it becomes very difficult to argue that any later manifestation of it sidestepped the B road written version and took the A road via the oral route.

Even literacy/non literacy are not as straightforward as you might think. My ancestors (due it seems to tuberculosis, widowerhood, the invention of the lathe and other stuff) went from Blacksmith to Parish Clerk/Sexton to illiterate coal miner in one generation. Evidence, cross on certificates. And some people in some eras could read a bit but not write, and some communities had 'scriveners' and so on.

I think Roud made a reasonable decision in deciding to tell us what is known via contemporary evidence about what people did actually sing. Sorry, even if his definition isn't perfect, he does at least discuss the problems of definitions, to be fair to him. I still think this book is full of gems and well worth reading.


The Perfumed Garden! Yes, excellent example. But is it 'folk?' (ducks).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 12:47 PM

"'Popular ballads'."
Of the people - I posted this earlier (01 Oct 17 - 02:49 PM ) - sorry - I post too much
Child appeared to lose interest in the ballads after their publication and much of what he believed is still shrouded in conjecture.
There is no evidence as far as I have ever come across that his 'common origins' belief ever changed, nor is there any evidence that he ever changed his contempt for broadsides (as has been suggested in previous arguments)   
A great deal of information lies in his correspondence with other scholars
Child was of his time and background, with all the restrictions that implies, but on the other hand, he wasn't alone in his belief that these songs belonged to the countryside rather than the towns
Much work has been done since, none of which changes that view in any way apart from the unsubstantiated suggestion that the rural poor were incapable of producing the ballads.

Typical of these was Phillips Barry's note to 'The Lake of Col Finn, in the Vermont collection, 'The New Green Mountain Songster' in 1939:
"Popular tradition, however, does not mean popular origin. In the case of our ballad, the underlying folklore is Irish de facto, but not de-jure: the ballad is of Oriental and literary origin, and has sunk to the level of the folk which has the keeping of folklore. To put it in a single phrase, memory not invention is the function of the folk".   

Everything I have experienced in working with singers has confirmed this to be offensively inaccurate   
Sorry to repeat this as much as I do but I find it cathartic
Ironically, Barry displayed exactly the opposite attitude to other songs in the cllection

As I said before, once we accept that country people were capable of and inclined towards song making, then surely it is logical to accept that they could and probably did make a great number of them, if not most
The the familiarity with the subject matter and the use of vernacular language weighs heavily in favour of that probability.

Howard
My view is no more 'purist' than that of the majority of singers and researchers up to comparatively recently
Up to now, folk song has always been regarded as 'The Voice of the People'
The Topic Records major series drew its title from this description, Lloyd assembled a thirteen programme series of international folk songs entitled 'Songs of the People' back in the 1970s without a hint of protest from anywhere... this is what people thought and believed without question.

The term 'purist' is a revival, one as is 'finger-in-ear' and 'folk-police'
They all came to prominence when the club scene appeared to become bored with the old repertoire and began looking elsewhere.
I've never come across a major opposition to the fact that Topic and Leader Records more or less confined their output to a certain definition.

The first time I ever came across it was when we issued a cassette of Irish Traveller songs and a reviewer complained that there were no Country and Western items included.
The inclusion of Victorian and early 20th century popular songs within the definition really is a new kid on the block

It really isn't a matter of excluding or disallowing anything
MacColl's Song Carriers statement is fairly inclusive of published songs that have been absorbed into an oral tradition
I don't know anybody ever disallowing Wild Rover, though Walter Pardon once said about 'Farmers Boy', "That song was written by someone who couldn't tell the difference between wheat and barley"

It never has been about where singers picked up their songs; rather it is about what they did with them when they got them, particularly how they took ownership of them and treated them as their own
Are there significantly differing versions of 'When the Fields Were White With Daisies or 'Bird in a Gilded Cage'
It's awfully difficult to take ownership of a song with somebody else's name on it and a damn sight more difficult when it has a (c) next to the title.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 12:59 PM

Sorry Pseu
Cross-posted
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 01:10 PM

The earliest written record of the song is under the name "The Lucky Farmer's Boy" in an 1832 catalogue of street ballads printed in London by James Catnach.[1] In 1857, the compiler of a book of "Songs of the Peasantry of England" wrote; "There is no question that the Farmer's Boy is a very ancient song; it is highly popular amongst the north country lads and lasses. The date of the composition may probably be referred to the commencement of the last century... The song is popular all over the country, and there are numerous printed copies, ancient and modern."[2] Frank Kidson the English musicologist and folk song collector wrote in 1891, "Even now, the popularity of 'The Farmer's Boy' is great among country singers". Although he said that there was little variation in the text, he included three melodies and a fourth in an appendix, none of which is the most widely known one today.
The Baptist Church at Little Leigh where Thomas Fownes Smith preached. He is said to have been the original "Farmer's Boy"

A legend in Little Leigh, Cheshire, suggests that the song is based on the life of the Reverend Thomas Fownes Smith (1802-1866) and was written by his brother-in-law, Charles Whitehead (born 1792). Smith was the minister at Little Leigh Baptist Chapel for more than 30 years, where a plaque in his memory is located on the inside rear wall.[4] It is one of three folk songs traditionally sung by participants ahead of the Haxey Hood, a traditional mob football game held annually in North Lincolnshire at Epiphany
Jim Crrolls quote of Walter Pardon does not proves anything, and in the context of the background of the song illustrates Walters ignorance about the song and its authorship.
2 an article by martha bayles this is interesting for many reasons it illustrates thst the term purist was used in folk music before the 50s uk folk revival, it is a fascinating article., from the michigan quarterly review.
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THE STRANGE CAREER OF FOLK MUSIC
MARTHA BAYLES
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Volume XLIV, Issue 2, Spring 2005
Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0044.212
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It is a quiet evening. The stars are bright, and the meal has been eaten. The city, if there is one, is far away. There is no electricity, no media. It is not yet bedtime, so someone picks up an instrument and begins to sing. The song is old, but nobody has ever written it down. Rather it has been transmitted orally through many generations, with many different versions, some preserved and some lost. No one knows who first created it. But everyone can and does sing it.

Is this a folk song? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears, does it make a sound? Folk music has existed for ages, but to the people who first played it, it was just music, without an adjective like folk to distinguish it. To be folk it has had to be heard, self-consciously, by an outsider. And so, in a curious turn, the story of folk music is never really about the folk. It is about the outsiders. And in this country at least, that has meant not just the musicologists marching into hill country with their dusty recording devices, but a variety of highly opinionated listeners, by whose attentions folk music has come to be defined.

It was Europeans such as the English music transcriber Cecil J. Sharp (1859-1924) and the Hungarian collector and composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) who first worked out the basic definition of folk music. Roughly, they understood folk music to be (1) rural and slow to change, not urban and dynamic; (2) continually varied, with no definitive version; (3) simple, straightforward, and plain; (4) transmitted orally, not through formal training or writing; and (5) focused more on group sharing than on individual expression.

These criteria were never strict, but their influence lingers. For example, the Folk Song Society of Greater Boston (FSSGB), a forty-five-year-old organization devoted to traditional folk repertory, mostly British and British-American, ignores the first, treasuring many songs from urban settings. But the members do adhere, more or less, to the other four.

This emphasis was on display recently at a home in Concord, Massachusetts, where thirty or forty members of the society, mostly people who looked as though they could remember the 1960s counterculture, showed up for an FSSBG house concert. They were there to hear Louis Killen, a native of Gateshead-on-Tyne in the industrial northeast of England, tell dialect tales, sing, and accompany himself on the English concertina. Killen introduced one old chestnut as a song he'd collected from a Northumbrian shepherd.

Is this an accurate portrait of the contemporary folk scene? Not really. Groups like the FSSGB have always been part of the scene—as one member commented, "We were here first." But unlike Boston's WUMB-FM ("folk radio") or the folk-oriented Club Passim in Harvard Square, the FSSGB does not look all that kindly on what is now the dominant figure in contemporary folk music: the singer-songwriter.

According to member Ruth Perry, who is also a professor of literature at M.I.T. and (together with Northeastern University musicologist Judith Tick) teaches a graduate seminar on British and American folk music, "The best folksingers are interested in preserving for people and passing on the music that is their free and common heritage. . . . People used to sing more than they do now. And what they sang and traded around and learned from each other is folk music." Indeed, some of the members present that evening took a very dim view of the whole singer-songwriter movement. To them it has negative connotations—of ego and (as one person put it) "navel-gazing"—that cut against the grain of folk music as community expression.

Is this fair? Every art form has its characteristic vice, and if one were pressed to describe the vice of the singer-songwriter, navel-gazing would not be far off. But the singer-songwriter tradition has many virtues as well, not least of which is a voracious openness to musical sounds.

Consider the lineup of performers appearing at the 2004 Boston Folk Festival. Most are singer-songwriters, but that phrase does not begin to describe the music. Some are identified with a particular style: Sam Bush with bluegrass (and "newgrass"); Cephas & Wiggins with Piedmont blues; Mark Erelli with Western swing; Natalie MacMaster with traditional fiddle music. But none is a strict traditionalist. And most range widely, as reflected in these thumbnail sketches of other acts listed in the festival program: "pumping new life into traditional bluegrass, old-timey, and roots music"; "drawing on jazz, rock, and pop"; "span[ning] the genres of honky-tonk, acapella, and swing"; and "fusing the traditional music of Ireland with American ballads and the dance tunes of French Canada, Cape Breton, and Normandy." If adherents of folk music have any doubts that the music continues to grow and evolve, these musicians should put them at ease. While respecting the tried and true, they also fly free, avoiding all pigeonholes.

Americana, roots, and acoustic are all terms folk performers and critics have devised for folk music in this country. And, of course, each term suggests a different understanding. Americana keeps it within the United States, while roots extends to music from around the globe. Acoustic excludes any music in the other two categories that uses electric instruments. No wonder, after forty-five years of devotion to the subject, Sing Out! magazine editorialized in 1995: "Our community vehemently refuses to take responsibility for defining folk music."

Yet this has not caused Sing Out! to cease publication. The idea of folk music proves amazingly persistent. Why? For many folk music buffs, the answer is bound up with politics.

The appropriation of folk music for political purposes dates back to mid-nineteenth-century Europe, where folk songs became a means to express nationalist sentiment. During the twentieth century, European ideologues across the political spectrum laid claim to the music of the folk. In Germany the left created many highly political songs based on folk music, and so did the right. Indeed, when the Nazis came to power in 1933 they put the folk song, or Volkslied, at the center of their public spectacles celebrating the superiority of the "Aryan" race. They also, in process, poisoned the well for future generations of German folkies. (As one young Berliner said to me a few years ago, "Around the campfire we sing mostly American songs.")

Communist regimes took similar advantage. From the 1930s forward, folk music was exploited as a way of defining—and controlling—the various "republics" making up the Soviet Union. In the 1970s the American ethnomusicologist Theodore Levin traveled in Central Asia to observe this ongoing process. While Levin found a subterranean musical life that was "complex, alive, and intimately linked to the innermost lives of people," he also measured the gap between that and "the glitzy professional folk troupes that became the official cultural ambassadors of the Central Asian republics." One aspect of the gap was the elimination from official folk music of all religious references.

No one on the American left ever manipulated folk music on such a grand scale. But most labor and other activists believed that music was very important. As Mike Gold of the Daily Worker wrote in the early 1930s, "Songs are as necessary to the fighting movement as bread." The only question was, which songs?

In the 1920s, any song would do, as long as the tune was familiar enough so that people could sing it with new lyrics. The master of this trade was Joe Hill of the communist-led Industrial Workers of the World, who added political lyrics to all sorts of American songs, from hymns to Broadway show tunes to popular ballads. ("Nearer My God to Thee" became "Nearer My Job to Thee," "Everybody's Doing It" became "Everybody's Joining It," and "Down by the Old Mill Stream" became "Down in the Old Dark Mills.") This same art is still practiced today by the octogenarian Joe Glazer, "Labor's Troubadour."

This casual approach changed in the early 1930s, when the official party line, straight from Moscow, said that artists must create a whole new "proletarian culture." It was never clear what this meant, but as the musicologist Judith Tick explains, one thing it did not mean was "Broadway, or commercial music tied to the Capitalist economic machine," as the Daily Worker put it. In New York, reports Tick, a group called the Composers' Collective worked on what they called "mass song," a new type of art song combining modernist technique with "militant protest lyrics." Several of these efforts were published in the collective's Workers Song Books, with titles such as "Lenin! Who's That Guy," "Mount the Barricades," and "Song of the Builders," by a Harvard-trained composer named Charles Seeger.

In 1935 the party line changed again, and the idea of modernist "proletarian culture" was discarded in favor of the Joe Hill philosophy—it's OK to use anything, as long as it helps the cause. The cause, of course, being the fight against fascism in Europe. This phase of leftist strategy was called the Popular Front, and its impact on American music was profound—and, thanks to the efforts of two families, one named Seeger and the other named Lomax, profoundly positive.

In 1935 Charles Seeger went to work for the federal government. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal was underway, and one of its many projects was to have experts go into the field and record all sorts and conditions of first-growth American folk music. Prominent among these were Charles Seeger and his wife, the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger; their children Peggy, Michael, and Pete; and the father-and-son team of John and Alan Lomax. Neither family was from the folk—indeed, they came from fairly privileged backgrounds. But like their nineteenth-century European counterparts, they respected the folk and tried to preserve its precious musical heritage when it was in danger of being lost.

What is most impressive about the Seegers and the Lomaxes is their refusal, in countless ways over many years, to subordinate music to politics. They were all consistently leftist in their views, and whenever they got the chance they would repeat the sentiment expressed by Alan Lomax in the preface to the 1941 edition of Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads: "Most of these singers are poor people, farmers, laborers, convicts, old-age pensioners, relief workers, housewives, wandering guitar pickers." But Lomax, who started collecting folk songs with his father at age eighteen, loved and respected his singers too much to even think of forcing their music into an ideological mold. Indeed, if Lomax had a fault, it was that he was too purist about the way people performed these odd, quirky, rough-hewn songs.

And therein lies a tale. Without the efforts of Alan Lomax, the so-called Folk Revival of the 1940s and 1950s would never have occurred. But Lomax's reaction to what he saw as the commercialization of the music was quite negative. Today, of course, a lot of the music recorded by him and others is preserved in the Smithsonian Institution and available on CD from Rounder Records. Here are just a few of the titles you can order: "Negro Blues and Hollers," "Railroad Songs and Ballads," "Afro-American Spirituals, Work Songs, and Ballads," "Anglo-American Ballads" (2 volumes), "Cowboy Songs, Ballads, and Cattle Calls from Texas," and "American Fiddle Tunes."

But back in the 1940s and 1950s, when most Americans were just beginning to discover folk music, it was harder to get them to appreciate the original, raw version. The tendency, deplored by Lomax at every turn, was to sweeten the sound, so that it sounded like commercial "pop," meaning recordings by such polished veterans of the big band era as Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Ella Fitzgerald. Today these singers are considered the gold standard of American song. But back then, many people on the left dismissed pop as "commercial music tied to the Capitalist economic machine." For Alan Lomax, the issue was less political than musical: "When a so-called folksinger, with no respect for or knowledge of the style or the original emotional content of the song, acquires the shell of the song merely and leaves its subtle vocal interior behind, there is a definite expressive loss."

The trouble with this view is that it does not allow for change—including change brought about by the folk themselves. For example, the 1940s was when a lot of Americans discovered the blues, a type of music that previously had been considered low entertainment. The left embraced the blues largely because of Lomax's tireless showcasing of such masters as Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter. But here the rejection of "commercial music" played a role, as many people on the left, taking their cues from Lomax, found only one type of blues acceptable: the "country blues," played by solo acoustic guitarist-singers and focusing on hard times—or better still, on protest.

The darling of the protest blues was Josh White, a native of Greenville, South Carolina, whose first political album, Southern Exposure (1941), contained such political titles as "Jim Crow Train," "Bad Housing Blues," "Defense Factory Blues," and "Uncle Sam Says" (about segregation in the armed forces). Curiously, White's protest blues did not attract a large black audience. This was because, as Elijah Wald of the magazine Living Blues writes, "By the 1940s. . . blues had become a band form, the Chicago sound of Walter Davis, Big Maceo, and Sonny Boy Williamson, the Kansas City shouts of Jimmy Rushing and Joe Turner, or the smooth combo style of Louis Jordan and T-Bone Walker." In other words, the popular black audience was embracing the urban blues, played by electrified bands focusing on good times—while the predominantly white folk audience rejected this type of blues, on the grounds that it was (guess what?) "commercial music."

This leftist purism was skillfully manipulated by Big Bill Broonzy, a Mississippi native who grew up playing acoustic blues but then recorded small combo jazz for the Bluebird label in Chicago. According to music historian Robert Palmer, Broonzy sized up the growing audience for the Folk Revival and changed his act, with the result that "a left-wing and generally naive young audience accepted him, along with Leadbelly, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee as true folk artists. Broonzy's dozens of Bluebird records with bass, drums, and jazz-band backing were conveniently forgotten, and he played the role of the folk bluesman fresh from the cotton fields to the hilt."

When asked about his authenticity, Broonzy's standard reply was: "I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing 'em."

A similar story could be told about other folk styles. For example, it has long been an article of faith among song collectors that one of the oldest folk traditions in America was found in the southern Appalachian Mountains during the first decade of the twentieth century, when a number of song collectors, many of them women, uncovered a rich deposit of Scots-English ballads preserved there in communities that had existed in relative isolation since the eighteenth century. The discovery attracted none other than Britain's Cecil Sharp, who visited the area in 1916 and, with Maud Karpeles and Olive Dame Campbell, produced the magnum opus English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians.

The story of the Appalachian musicologists is nicely dramatized in the movie Songcatcher (2000). But, as the movie suggests, not even this music was totally "pure." For one thing, it was ethnically mixed. The African-American musician Taj Mahal makes a cameo appearance in Songcatcher as a banjo master—a reminder that this much-favored instrument originated in Africa, not Britain. Also in the movie, the song-collecting heroine decides at the end to start her own record label—a reminder that this music was swiftly commercialized. As Tick observes, "The record labels were in the mountains at the same time as the collectors."

Here we encounter a major complication on the American scene, one that has been there from the beginning: America has never had folk music in the classic European sense. How could it, when its people are descended from Indians, settlers, slaves, and numerous different immigrant groups, rather than from peasants who have tilled the same soil, spoken the same language, and sung the same songs for generations? Some folklorists, notably the late Gene Bluestein, accept this fact about America and argue for a different term, poplore, to describe America's dynamic blend of ethnic traditions and its wide-open market for entertainment.

The concept of poplore becomes more compelling when we look at what happened in the 1960s. Here we see the other folk dynasty, the Seegers, helping not only to preserve a legacy but also to make it popular—and profitable. Indeed, Charles Seeger was the father (and Ruth the stepmother) of a new paradigm: the outsider as commercially successful folk singer.

In 1936, when seventeen-year-old Pete Seeger was about to enter Harvard, he traveled with Charles and Ruth to Bascom Lunsford's Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina. In her biography of Ruth Crawford Seeger, Judith Tick writes that for Pete this was "like visiting a foreign country." And when he and Ruth first heard the five-string banjo, they vowed to start "learning this idiom." Needless to say, no born-and-bred folk musician would have put it quite that way.

Pete Seeger also learned the idioms of bluesman Leadbelly and Oklahoma-born Woody Guthrie, both authentic folk in the sense of coming from hardscrabble backgrounds and singing traditional material. But significantly, both Leadbelly and Guthrie also added political lyrics to old songs and wrote their own songs. It was not long before all three were commercially successful recording artists. And the same was true of the Carter Family, Jean Ritchie, and many other leading lights of the Folk Revival. As celebrities who freely adapted traditional material, wrote their own material, and achieved solid recording careers, these people are the embodiment of American poplore.

With this background in mind, it is fascinating to recall how hostile the Folk Revival of the 1940s and 1950s was toward rock'n'roll. Having rejected pop as "commercialized music," many folkies took the same dim view of the raucous blend of country, rhythm & blues, and gospel that came roaring out of the South in the mid-1950s. Some record company executives felt the same way, and as soon as the original rock'n'rollers quit recording (Elvis because he went into the Army, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry because of sex scandals) the labels began to push what they saw as more dignified alternatives. The first was calypso, a brief fad starring Harry Belafonte that quickly fizzled. The second, wildly successful, was folk music.

But this was a different kind of folk music—not pop, exactly, but equally inauthentic. Alan Lomax (who actually liked rock'n'roll) described it this way: "Under the smooth bland surface of popularized folk song lies a bubbling stew of work songs, country blues, field hollers, hobo songs, prairie songs, spirituals, hoedowns, prison songs, and a few unknown ingredients." To him, the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, Judy Collins, and Joan Baez were nice college kids with pretty voices who just didn't get it.

This attitude had a lot to do with the sudden rise of Bob Dylan. All of these early 1960s folkies were more political than any rock'n'rollers. But to the older generation of leftist folk adherents the fact that a bland folkish song like "Tom Dooley" could become a number one hit (for the Kingston Trio, in 1958) was an embarrassment. The older folkies kept the pressure on, and in 1962 a new magazine, Broadside, began to publish pacifist, union, and civil rights songs under the editorship of the once black-listed musician Sis Cunningham and her husband, the leftist journalist Gordon Friesen. Along with the older Seegers, Cunningham, and other Folk Revival veterans such as Malvina Reynolds, Broadside also gave a platform to younger protest voices: Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Janis Ian, and Dylan.

All of these young performers had solid followings, but Dylan was the only one to become a superstar. His singular accomplishments, unrecognized at the time and still not well understood, were that he understood and deeply appreciated the fact that American music is poplore, not folklore; and that like the Lomaxes and Seegers he followed the music instead of the party line.

Dylan's first album of acoustic, original material, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), contributed four classics to the folk canon: "Masters of War," "Ballad of a Thin Man," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and "Blowin' in the Wind." His next, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1963), carried him to triumph at the Newport Folk Festival as the unchallenged bearer of the Guthrie-Seeger mantle.

But then a strange thing happened: the mantle-bearer became a turncoat. First, he stopped singing protest songs. His next album, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), contained songs about personal relationships, which irked the editors of Sing Out!, who accused him of "selling out." Second, Dylan gave up his original acoustic sound and took up with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, a young white group who played the fully electrified Chicago blues style identified with figures like Muddy Waters.

Most music fans know, or think they know, that by appearing with the Butterfield band at the 1965 Newport Blues Festival, Dylan scandalized his elders and forged a brave new link between folk music and rock. The story is a bit more complicated, actually. The electric blues was pretty well accepted by then—in fact, earlier in the program Alan Lomax had appeared onstage discussing the fine points of that and other blues styles. Some in the crowd booed the electrified Dylan; Pete Seeger declared himself and angry"; Sing Out! issued another denunciation. But this time, the purists were outnumbered. Most listeners welcomed the new sound, and Dylan's career took off.

Yet it's worth noting that throughout that career, Dylan's greatest contribution has been to swim against the rock current. Most people think of him as the artist who merged folk with rock, and this is true if rock means the blues-based music he played in the 1960s. But Dylan did not sire hard rock, psychedelic rock, art rock, shock rock, heavy metal, glam metal, thrash metal, speed metal, death metal, punk metal, or any other of rock's squealing progeny. Indeed, the true measure of his standing as an American folk artist is how consistently he has returned popular music to its roots.

In 1968 hard rock was reaching its apogee, psychedelic rock ruled the drug scene, heavy metal was starting up, and the last thing the hippies and radicals cared about was country music. So what did Dylan do? He made two country-influenced albums, John Wesley Harding (1968) and Nashville Skyline (1969). A new genre was born, country-rock, which despite its later blandness did reconnect popular music with some of its roots. In the late 1970s, it became fashionable to pickle Dylan as a countercultural relic, holy and dead as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. But once again he defied the spirit of the age by announcing that he had become the most uncool thing imaginable: a born-again Christian. He began to make gospel albums, the best of which, Slow Train Coming (1979), impresses even secular critics with its musical quality. In 1999 he told Newsweek: "I find the religiosity and the philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else." As a credo for America's best-known folk singer, this keeps the focus where it belongs: on the music.

So what is folk music today? As always, the definition is somewhat arbitrary. Hip hop, for example, is not considered folk, even though it grew out of a certifiable folk tradition ("dub" music and verbal "toasting" in the West Indies). Perhaps because it is both high tech and highly commercial, hip hop has little or no appeal to the keepers of the folk flame.

Indeed, if there are any authentic folk left, playing orally transmitted music in isolation from the world, it is only a matter of time before they are sniffed out by the ethnomusicologists, followed closely by entrepreneurs waving record contracts. For better or worse, folk music today is part of the commercial mainstream.

But the old criteria—some of them, anyway—still have meaning. Let's look at how well they describe contemporary folk music:

(1) Rural and slow to change, not urban and dynamic: As mentioned earlier, the rural aspect went by the boards a long time ago. Many cities, like Boston, have become centers of folk music, while whole stretches of rural America seem, sadly, to have lost all connection to it. And the dynamism of modern commerce drives folk almost as much as other forms of popular music.

(2) Continually varied, with no definitive version: This still applies, to the degree that folk musicians place more emphasis on songwriting than on record production. Unlike hip hop, electronica, or a dozen other production-heavy genres, most of folk is still based on songs rather than on particular recordings.

(3) Simple, straightforward, and plain: The idea of folk music as simple was discredited eighty years ago, when musicologists began to observe the subtlety and complexity of the music most highly prized by the folk themselves. But this criterion continues to mean something. Much of what now might be called contemporary folk sounds like country, soft rock, even New Age. But every now and then, somebody gets the urge to strip away all the frippery and restore the original grain. The MTV Unplugged phenomenon in the 1990s, distinguished by acoustic performances from rockers like Nirvana and the Pretenders, reflected this urge. And so does the popularity of the soundtrack to the film O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), the first track of which, "Po Lazarus" by James Carter and the Prisoners, was recorded in 1959 at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Lambert by none other than Alan Lomax. (It would doubtless delight Lomax to learn that, according to Nielsen/Soundscan, that CD has sold seven million copies to date.)

Holding up quite well is (4) Transmitted orally, not through formal training or writing: Most folk musicians, even those who are fully music literate, learn more by listening than they do by reading. Recordings make listening easier, but they continue to be distrusted by folk musicians, who see them as a discouragement to natural variation and as the means to slavish imitation.

(5) Focused more on group sharing than on individual expression: This is tricky, because it seems to set up a dichotomy between music that evolves through some sort of anonymous communal process and music that is created by a single person. Probably this dichotomy fuels the low opinion of singer-songwriters among traditionalists.

But this dichotomy should be set aside. It is the product of late nineteenth-century thought, in which the new idea of Darwinian evolution was pitted against the older romantic cult of individual genius. The trouble is that very little folk music—or art of any kind—has ever been made in either of these extreme ways. Most art is created by individuals enjoying the benefits of association with other individuals. Tocqueville wasn't thinking about folk music when he wrote, "Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations." But his words certainly apply.

Each year, the National Endowment for the Arts gives an award, the National Heritage Fellowship, to a dozen or so folk artists. (Just to keep it all in the family, the initiator of that award was the founder and long-time director of the NEA's Folk & Traditional Arts Program, Alan Lomax's sister, Bess Lomax Hawes.)

The vitality of the American folk music tradition—and the room for growth within it—can be summed up by a partial list of recipients over the last twenty years: Cajun musician Dewey Balfa, bluegrass master Bill Monroe, Detroit bluesman John Lee Hooker, zydeco king Clifton Chenier, Irish-American fiddler Martin Mulvihill, Appalachian singer Doc Watson, mariachi impresario Natividad Cano, Memphis bluesman B. B. King, gospel singers Clarence Fountain & The Blind Boys of Alabama, Cuban mambo bandleader Cachao Lopez, Puerto Rican bomba star Juan Gutierrez, the klezmer group the Epstein Brothers, new gospel's Pops Staples, Tennessee fiddler Ralph Blizard, and Jean Ritchie, who almost single-handedly brought the dulcimer to popularity in the 1940s and 1950s.

All these people made their careers in the modern world, not in some remote unspoiled rural setting. They've all listened to the radio and gone to the movies. They've all watched television. Some have had a more than passing acquaintance with high culture. Their accomplishments attest to the fact that folk is no longer a term for "pure" music discovered by outsiders. Rather it is a self-conscious designation, a tree that can hear itself falling. But maybe that's good. Because when it comes to bringing forth new growth, self-consciousness can be a blessing in disguise.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 01:39 PM

You didn't write any of that, garbled it badly, and didn't say where you got it. Links would have been more appropriate.

Wikipedia

Martha Bayles

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Guest John Bowden
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 02:02 PM

From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 01:39 PM

"You didn't write any of that, garbled it badly, and didn't say where you got it. Links would have been more appropriate".

Oh really?

From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 01:10 PM

"an article by martha bayles this is interesting for many reasons it illustrates that the term purist was used in folk music before the 50s uk folk revival, it is a fascinating article. from the michigan quarterly review.
   
THE STRANGE CAREER OF FOLK MUSIC
MARTHA BAYLES
Volume XLIV, Issue 2, Spring 2005
Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0044.212

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 02:15 PM

Jack, you appear to have an agenda.
I stated quite clearly
"an article by martha bayles this is interesting for many reasons it illustrates that the term purist was used in folk music before the 50s uk folk revival, it is a fascinating article. from the michigan quarterly review.
   
THE STRANGE CAREER OF FOLK MUSIC
MARTHA BAYLES
Volume XLIV, Issue 2, Spring 2005
Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0044.212

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 02:26 PM

Jim wrote:-
As I said before, once we accept that country people were capable of and inclined towards song making, then surely it is logical to accept that they could and probably did make a great number of them, if not most.

I have been enjoying the more thoughtful approach that Jim Carroll has been bringing to his recent posts but though they require a more considered response, there are still some things that I must disagree with in what he writes.
I'm afraid that my copy of Roud is currently on loan to a friend so I cannot quote pages here as Pseu has been doing so effectively but I remember clearly that somewhere near the beginning of the book, he writes that his arguments in the book will be based on evidence and that if he cannot back up what he says with any evidence then he will not be saying it.
It follows from this that any criticism of Roud should carry the same weight of precision of thinking and writing. To my mind this renders a statement that includes surely it is logical to accept that they could and probably did make a great number of them, if not most. inadmissible because rather than being logical, it actually carries a degree of speculation.
I seem to remember that I made this point several hundred posts ago but it seems to need reiterating here.
I would say that some years ago, I would have found very little to argue with what Jim says above but as a result of reading a number of books in recent times by the likes of Gammon, Roud and Graebe that I try now to bring more rigour to what I write (though I am likely as the next person to lapse into humour when It seems to be needed!)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 02:52 PM

"actually carries a degree of speculation."
It does, I suppose, but I think that in the circumstances anything anybody claims is based on speculation, most certainly attributing any song to print origins if you have no proof as to whether it appeared in an earlier form
I have never claimed that any specific accepted English folk-song began orally - I know many Irish ones must have.

Martha Bayles:
She is/was an American academic from Boston College - her usage was Ameican and referred to Lomax and later to Pete Seeger's alleged attack on Dylan's (or should that be Zimmerman's :-)) sound system
My reference was to the use of the term in the British revival
Can we leave it at that please?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 02:54 PM

I started this post several hours ago, responding to one point of Jim's, but then got multiply sidetracked. So there will be more to say, but let's do this bit first.

Jim said
"Roud has cornered the market on the term 'folk song' - he is rightfully highly regarded for his work - now he has shot off at a tangent by lumping folk and non-folk material into this numbering system.
The Roud index has not suddenly changed its scope around the time of publication of the book. If it errs on the side of being too broad, including some songs with dubious claims to being "folk" songs, that's surely better than being too narrow and failing to assign numbers to songs that we may wish to investigate and discuss. Inclusion in the index indicates that a song is putatively a folk song according to some criteria but surely does not constitute a claim that "This is a folk song and anyone who disagrees is wrong".

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 02:55 PM

Jack, you appear to have an agenda.

You bet.

Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich klar sagen; und wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss man schweigen.

It's even been set to music.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 03:22 PM

OK, next point.

Jim quoted Phillips Barry:
"Popular tradition, however, does not mean popular origin. In the case of our ballad, the underlying folklore is Irish de facto, but not de-jure: the ballad is of Oriental and literary origin, and has sunk to the level of the folk which has the keeping of folklore. To put it in a single phrase, memory not invention is the function of the folk".   

Jim then comments "Everything I have experienced in working with singers has confirmed this to be offensively inaccurate."

Blame Phillips Barry for a false claim but please don't attribute the same to anyone here. Steve Roud makes no such categorical claim in his book, nor has anyone made it in this thread. We agree with MacColl's summary that Jim has quoted: all sorts of people have made songs.

The collectors of a hundred-odd years ago were selective in their collecting, because they were specifically seeking certain attributes in the songs and mostly had little or no interest in the singers except as sources of the songs that they wanted. Collectors in recent years have taken much more interest in the singers, and that has generally meant collecting whatever the singers chose to offer. In both eras the singers themselves have been selective, both in which songs they have chosen to learn and in which of those they have offered to the collectors.

I don't think Jim has answered my question from yesterday, so I will repeat it.
Jim, you claim that Roud has departed from a previously widely accepted definition of folk song, but exactly what definition have you in mind, who used it and where did they state it? You can't mean the "1954" definition because that one is not restricted by origin.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 04:22 PM

Jack wrote:-
"Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich klar sagen; und wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss man schweigen."

I know that this was directed at Dick, but the way I translate this, it would seem to be in agreement with what I wrote at 04 Jul 18 but more succinct, better expressed and in a different language.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 04:25 PM

i.e. at 04 Jul 18 - 02:52 PM

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 05:31 PM

JACK ,go and visit specsavers,"an article by martha bayles this is interesting for many reasons it illustrates that the term purist was used in folk music before the 50s uk folk revival, it is a fascinating article. from the michigan quarterly review.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 06:17 PM

The Roud Indexes are tools for finding information. Like Child's work in ESPB they are inclusive rather than exclusive. They do not follow any debatable or proscribed definitions. They deal in published and unpublished collections of songs that someone has nominated as 'folk songs' in the English language. Despite what one person has stated, we all who are interested use these indexes and are deeply grateful for them. We can disagree as to what should or should not be included but that would not diminish their usefulness.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 03:34 AM

" but that would not diminish their usefulness."
That depends how you use it Steve
I would have been totally lost without Steve's list when I was annotating our website - I am now putting together a possible book of Traveller songs and Stories and again, it is proving invaluable (I find myself wishing he'd done the same job on traditional stories)
He has given many of the songs we recorded Roud Numbers, some of them are the only ones under his number.

To say they are not selectively chosen is inaccurate - at one time the list didn't include parlour songs and Victorian tear-jerkers - it does now.
I seem to remember that he (rightly) didn't include a couple of our songs earlier on because they were not traditional - he hadn't reached the (everything that the singers sang' stage then.

For this side of his contribution I am not belittling Steve's list in any way
I was a fly on the wall at a Sheffield Conference when my friend, Prof., Bob Thomson met Steve and discussed his list - Bob was as staggered at Steve's work as we ll were - I still feel the same

Having said that, one of the other uses I made of Steve's list wa, when I was asked for examples of folk songs I would automatically say - "go and work your way through the Roud Index; that's an excellent overview of what a folk song is".
I can't do that any more with all honesty - I don't want people thinking 'Put a Bit of Powder on it Father' is a folk song - that would not be accurate

Richard
Can we drop this 'origins' bit - we don't know for certain where any of these songs originated, we can only guess - that is my point
It would be insane for Roud to choose his songs by origins - it would contain very few songs if he did

Can I make clear why this subject is so important to me
I have always considered that our folk songs represent the emotions, aspirations and experiences of 'ordinary people' (horrible phrase, but 'working people tends to raise hackles among some) - 'the voice of the people' as it has been known for a long, long time.
To attribute 90+%those songs to a commercial industry returns those people to the place they have occupied throughout history 'voiceless' repeaters of something that has been sold to them
I am not prepared to accept that without being given sound evidence that that is the case.

I know beyond reasonable doubt that Irish rural dwellers were producing songs as a reaction to what was happening around them in their many hundreds right into the middle of the twentieth century
They did so under the most unimaginable conditions - starvation, mass evictions, forced emigration, land wars, fights for independence, bloody civil war... all produced masses of songs
On top of this, they made songs about local railways, drownings, drunken sprees, enforced marriages, the weather, everyday work.... all recorded locally in song throughout Ireland
I was told by a 'print origins' advocate that 'The English were too busy feeding their families to make songs"
I don't believe that for one minute - do you?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 03:43 AM

Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich klar sagen...
Don't have German Jack - do I have this right ?
"If you have something to say, say it clearly - if you can't do that, don't say it"
Google is a crappy translator
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 03:43 AM

Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich klar sagen...
Don't have German Jack - do I have this right ?
"If you have something to say, say it clearly - if you can't do that, don't say it"
Google is a crappy translator
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 03:59 AM

Jack, take heed of your own advice,get some new glasses and learn to read properly.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 04:18 AM

JACK, As requested saying it clearly and another thing hopefully that is clear if you have an agenda ,take it somewhere else

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 04:23 AM

I didn't intend my description of Jim as a "purist" as a criticism, but he has stated very clearly his point of view and his motivation for it. I respect his desire not to see the creativity of "the People" diminished, but I feel there is an element of wishful thinking there. I don't deny for a moment that the People were capable of creating songs, but the Songs of the People came from a variety of sources. The dispute appears to be over their relative contributions to the total repertoire.

A fairly cursory glance through the track listings for Topic's "Voice of the People" collection (the Musical Traditions website has comprehensive indices and notes) shows that a large number of the songs were found on broadsides. Jim disputes the percentage Roud gives for the contribution broadsides made, but that claim is based on evidence. Jim has produced nothing to counter that evidence, and his objection appears to be based more on his wish that it were not so rather than the production of facts.

It is a bit too easy, and anyway unprovable, to say that broadside writers were all hacks and anything of quality must have been taken from the People. However even where the broadsides were recycling existing folk songs, this perhaps explains how these songs could have become so widely disseminated.

The VotP track lists also include a fair number of what Jim prefers to call 'popular songs', from music hall, minstrelsy and other sources. I agree that "Put a Bit of Powder on it, Father" and "Down the Road" are not 'folk songs'. But when they were sung alongside folk songs, by the same singers, in the same context and for the same purposes, and quite possibly were passed on by oral transmission, then it seems to me that they cannot be ignored. Perhaps, if we still had a properly functioning oral tradition, in a hundred years or so they might evolve into folk songs.

Roud takes the wide view to look at the totality of what the People sang. Jim prefers a more focussed view. They are both valid ways of looking at the same thing, and each gives a different perspective. One point of view should not be seen as an attack on the other but complementary to it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,John Bowden (not a typo!)
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 04:25 AM

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 03:43 AM

Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich klar sagen...
Don't have German Jack - do I have this right ?
"If you have something to say, say it clearly - if you can't do that, don't say it"
Google is a crappy translator
Jim

Pretty much, Jim - it's the last line of Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", usually just known as the "Tractatus", and is usually translated as: "What can be said at all, can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Not sure why Jack decided to quote the original, knowing that many mudcatters won't know German, when the English translation is (fairly) well known, and I'd be very surprised (and impressed!) if he'd read the Tractatus in the original German! There's another Wittgenstein quote which might be apposite: "When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote"!

The word "Klugscheißer" springs to mind!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 04:26 AM

What's wrong with having an agenda here, provided the discussion remains civil?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 04:33 AM

The quote is the punchline of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Jim's translation gets the basic meaning but it has been done more elegantly - best to just google the whole phrase rather than feed it into a translator. (The musical setting is by Elisabeth Lutyens, her "Wittgenstein Motet").

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 05:09 AM

"Jim disputes the percentage Roud gives for the contribution broadsides made,"
I dispute that the figure represents folk song in its entirity, which is what was implied when I was accused of "starry-eyed" naivety when I quoted MacColl' final song carriers statement
THat claim seems to have shrunk to those songs collected in the late 19th?early twentieth century songs
Even so - appearance in print is in no way prooof that that version is the first
Steve Gardaham has described the folk/broadside process as a two-way street but given the 90+% (and at one angry stage) 100% claim, this appears to be little more than lip service
Let us be clear - the only way this claim can be substantiated is to prove beyond any doubt that the printed version was the first one
Until that happens, we know nothing and we have to work it out by common sense

Can I suggest that, for the sake of peace and quite, Dick should be left to his own devices.

Talking of agendas, I began to suspect one, possibly unfairly, when this 905 plus claim was extended to folk tales and tunes
I still feel more than a little uneasy that this might become the new - new kid on the block

Thank you Jack and John - you have both helped extend my skill with languages beyond 'voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soire'
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 05:35 AM

Didn't quite finish Howard
I have always accepted that Broadsides played a large part in the passage of our songs, and have been happy to accept that some of those songs originated from them
I also agree that their influence increased in the latter half of the 19th century - it has always been an accepted fact that the advance of technology and literacy played a major part of the shift when our singers became listeners rather than performers of our songs - passive observers rather than active creators
To judge the dying embers of our tradition with it at its most active is not unlike judging the performance of a racehorse after it has been turned out to stud.
I think I've already said that more than once, butt it's worth repeating in my opinion
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 08:59 AM

On Jim's voulez vous...

I am at the age when Ou sont les toilettes? is a more useful phrase. I have it in three languages.


I rather like the horserace analogy, but this just brings us to the equally tricky questions of evidence and dating.


Changing the subject, in the musical chapters Julia Bishop discusses how various folklorists have applied the concept of 'modes' to folk songs. For example, one person decided that anything in a major key was ionian and modal, rather than, let's say, 'scale-based', possibly from a belief that modes were older and there was a desire to provide old origins for tunes. Then somebody suggested that the concept of separate modes did not really fit the data, which was in any case somewhat floored for various reasons, including practical ones.
I thought of discussing this on one of the mode threads, but these are various and I cannot see an apt one. Some get too technical for me.

It interests me because half a lifetime ago, before I had any understanding of modes (I now have some basic understanding of what they call 'church modes), somebody told me that folk music was modal as if this were a well established fact. Yet Roud's book seems to challenge this idea. Need to go back and re-read, but finding it a valuable and interesting part of the book as a whole. My guess is that somebody with little musical knowledge could get to grips with it if they persevered. It seems quite well explained.   

So if anybody wanted to discuss this should it be here or a new thread or one of the existing mode threads.

?????Wittgenstein in this heat?????

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Mr Objective
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 09:19 AM

The problem with having an agenda is that it tends to illustrate that the person with an agenda has pre judged the post before they have read it. This is illustrated beautifully by Jack Campin, who stormed in all guns blazing, without reading carefully the post by The Sandman

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 10:16 AM

I thought there might be a picture of Wittgenstein on a summer holiday but I don't think there is. Did get this though:

If a banjo player could speak, we would not understand him.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 12:00 PM

Dick Miles's sockpuppet writes:

without reading carefully the post by [Dick Miles]

Of course I didn't read it.

Nobody here did. It wasn't formatted in such a way as to be readable, and most of the content quoted was completely irrelevant to this thread.

So I found a better source for it (maybe not the same one Dick used, but he's never going to tell us) and read it there, at the links I gave (at least the bits that seemed to be on-topic).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 12:55 PM

Of course I didn't read it.

Nobody here did"
guest John Bowden, did stop telling lies

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 02:32 PM

Just for clarity as the water seems to be constantly being muddied, and misquoting me seems to have become a regular pastime for some: The corpus I have constantly commented on is that body of traditional song collected and published in England between 1890 and 1940.

FACT: My own researches demonstrate that 89% of the songs in that corpus first appeared in some form of urban commercial enterprise (eg., street literature, musical theatre, glee clubs, coal cellars, sheet music).

MY OPINION: Approximately 95% of that corpus originated in that way.

I also have plenty of evidence that a relatively small percentage of broadside ballads was taken from oral tradition.

I have also given examples of songs from the corpus that very likely originated in rural oral tradition but this is a very small percentage of the corpus.

This has been my stance for at least the last decade and is based on 50 years of detailed research. It has not changed one iota in that period and remains the same now.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 03:22 PM

CAMPIN ,I gve the source before,stop being a time waster
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 01:10 PM

"an article by martha bayles this is interesting for many reasons it illustrates that the term purist was used in folk music before the 50s uk folk revival, it is a fascinating article. from the michigan quarterly review.
   
THE STRANGE CAREER OF FOLK MUSIC
MARTHA BAYLES
Volume XLIV, Issue 2, Spring 2005
Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0044.212

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 03:25 PM

To my knowledge I have never misquoted you Steve - if I have, you are welcome to show me where and I will apologise unreservedly
I find it said that your arguments defeding your conclusions have been so contradictory

First - all folk songs (The Song Carriers), next only 19th century ones.

Child changing his mind about broadsides - I've never come across that one
Schools of Broadside writers

If you still claim this percentage, where is your two-way street?
It sounds very much a case of very much one-way with a couple of cars going against the traffic

Folk tales, dances and music originating elsewhere other than from the common people

Sorry - until you start producing consistent prook the origins of folk song remain a total enigma
Jim Carroll
I would very much welcome the opportunity to apologise for misinterpreting you

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 04:21 PM

JC >>>>THat claim seems to have shrunk to those songs collected in the late 19th?early twentieth century songs<<<<

Nothing has 'shrunk'. My stance has always been on that corpus on numerous threads and in my published work.

JC >>>>Even so - appearance in print is in no way prooof that that version is the first<<<<                                                                     You are here referring to MY OPINION which is at least as equally valid as yours.

JC >>>>(and at one angry stage) 100% claim<<<< Have you got the thread, the date and time on that one?

JC >>>>Child changing his mind about broadsides<<<<

Any comment I made on Child's attitude to broadsides was based on his multiple use of them; many of the ballads he chose to include are only extant as broadsides and many others have their earliest versions on broadsides.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 04:22 PM

With apologies 1100.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 05:37 PM

The levity helps, Steve - and this is 1101. This thread has become a bit grumpy. Lighten up, folks. I really don't want to have to start closing threads.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 05:39 PM

At the risk of continuing a topic where there is clearly passionate disagreement:

I cannot resolve this percentages disagreement in my own head: I lack the data and I'm not clear about how one could conclude that a broadsheet/print origin was a fact. Just because a printed version is the earliest known version it does not mean there were no oral versions before this. I guess this is maybe where the Wittgenstein bit comes in.

Not quoting pages numbers this time, but I think Roud does acknowledge that there may be oral origins for some of these, but says if so how we can we know? The quality of language/aesthetic judgements have been suggested as one way of deciding, but this is a very subjective area.

But unless I am wrong, Roud's book is intended to apply only to a 'corpus' collected up until the mid 20th century, and collected mainly by the people whose stories Roud tell us, and the percentages apply to this corpus, as represented mainly by the songs within that category to which Roud has given numbers. Have I got this right?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 05:58 PM

This rumbles on while good old songs are still being sung all over, by some singers who don't care of the origins.........There is nothing else to be said, and opposites here will never agree...Nothing is wrong!

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 06:34 PM

Apologies, Joe
I have genuinely tried hard to stay out of this one but when someone is constantly misquoting you and twisting your words it's quite difficult not to defend yourself.

Pseud, when I wrote 'FACT...……...first appeared' it should actually say 'earliest extant version' which is what I have published. Obviously this cannot guarantee that there wasn't something before that, which is why the following statement is only an OPINION, but nevertheless based upon examining hundreds of thousands of examples of all related genres.
This included studying the actual ballads themselves and what we can find of their evolution, contemporary accounts of interviews with ballad writers, named authors, stylistic characteristics and many many other clues contained within the texts themselves such as datable events, historical and social clues. Then of course there is the added weight of other scholars who have studied the material in detail and independently have come to the same conclusions.

Part of the problem of the romanticist outlook is these people have not studied the material in any detail.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 06:39 PM

Tim,
I can't believe you wrote that in seriousness! Of course songs are there to be sung. I do as much of that as anybody and I'm sure Jim does too. Are you really suggesting we shouldn't talk about their history?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 06:47 PM

'opposites here will never agree'. Is there some law that says that we have to?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: RTim
Date: 05 Jul 18 - 07:08 PM

Steve - What I wrote is fact - many don't care about the history - that does not mean I am one of them....as I am sure you really know!

Unless you are like Steve Roud and make a living out of all this research etc., you only use the history when you introduce a song you may sing, or you are asked about it afterwards.
When we sing from such a rich and varied catalogue of songs, sometimes we use songs that have been composed - and should I choose to sing one - then it is as important a song to me as a song collected only ever once from a traditional singer who happened to have been born close to where I myself have been born.

Yes - History is important - but so is continuing to sing- anything, and This thread has got out of control and drifted from reality. My last words - I hope.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 04:16 AM

"Nothing has 'shrunk'. My stance has always been on that corpus on numerous threads and in my published work."
Then why did your derisive comments follow ten programmes which covered the entire corpus which dated back to our earliest folk songs?
"You are here referring to MY OPINION which is at least as equally valid as yours."
No - I am referring to the definitive and often condescending way in which your opinion was delivered - even your eventual "perhaps I should say I.M.O." was delivered in a condescending manner
"(and at one angry stage) 100% claim"
I'll dig it out if you wish (I have already done so, with references), but I really don't want to want to descend this discussion to that level - we've done that too often between us.
In an apparent fit of anger you said something like "arguing with you had raised my estimation of the figure to 100%" - I've accepted that was an angry outburst
"Child's broadsides"
Child used broadsides throughout his work - at no time did he indicate that he changed his "dunghill" contempt" for them -
That is shown without a doubt by the fact that his description of them has continued in use up the the present day - even some feller who writes for Musical Traditions even uses it as a pseudonym !!
Would he have allowed it to be included in his collection if he didn't believe it?
Even if 'the scales had fallen from his eyes' it wouldn't matter; bad poetry is bad poetry - the proof of the pudding lies in the volumes of unsingable songs that litter our shelves

I owe you no apology Steve - at no time have I "misinterpreted" your arguments, yet you have said on several occasions that I have.
I suggest we put this distasteful bickering to bed (both of us) and approach this serious subject seriously - it really is worth the effort.
Like Steve Roud's I have respect for the work you have done - I disagree strongly with some of your conclusions
I don't suppose it is of any comfort that I feel the same about Cecil Sharp :-)

Pseu
"I lack the data and I'm not clear about how one could conclude that a broadsheet/print origin was a fact. "
The data to enable us to reach such a conclusion does not exist and it never will
All the earliest printing date proves is that was when the song went into print - everything else has to be common sense
The fact that working people were capable om making songs and had the will to do so is a major factor as far as I am concerned
Our observations of how the singers from living traditions regarded the songs from printed page - the limitations of, or sometimes total lack of literacy. the suspicion of, the way songs were regarded as creations of their communities - "Norfolk songs", Traveller's songs", "me daddie's songs"... and a whole host of hints to be thrown into the melting pot.
James Hogg's mother, the ballad singer, provides a view from the heart of a thriving ballad tradition

"‘there was never ane o’ my songs prentit till ye prentit them yoursel' and ye hae spoilt them a’ togither. They were made for singin’ an’ no for read in’, but ye hae broken the charm now, an’ they’ll never be sung mair’"

We are indebted to the Travelling communities of Ireland and Scotland for some of our best and rarest ballads - largely pre-literate.

What it boils down to is, once you accept that working people were capable and desirous of making songs, they have a major claim to having made our folk songs - those songs dealt with their lives and experiences and they did so displaying knowledge of the subject matter described and the passion of people who underwent the experiences described
I don't believe the hacks were capable of that and even if they were - why should they bother ?
They weren't social reformers setting out to change the world - they were hard-driven writers of verse out to make a few pennies.

One of the things that has disturbed me the most in all this is that, if we are to accept this theory we will have to re-estimate the work of centuries, often by people who were alive when the broadside presses were churning out their songs and singers were singing their folk songs
Surely someone would have noticed that these songs were town products rather than the 'country songs' everybody referred to them as?
Our own researches have to be a sum of all ideas and not donned and discarded like shoes
There has been far too much throwing the baby out with the bathwater to make room for the latest academic fad - it's about time we learned to respect the pioneers, for all their limitations, rather than using the Dave Harker-like 'hit-list' approach to scholarship   
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 04:49 AM

Come on, Joe, surely this thread isn't deserving of closure? I can remember ferocious 'what is folk?' discussions on here in which people were calling each other mentally ill and threatening physical violence!

I think Pseudonymous has made some very useful contributions by approaching the Roud book without preconceptions. I notice that he(?) mentioned the review by Clinton Heylin in The Spectator. Heylin is not exclusively a folk/rock specialist, having written a well-researched if sometimes tendentious book about Child 243, entitled 'Dylan's Demon Lover', a few years ago. However, his review of Roud is incoherent, factually inaccurate in several respects and full of petty point-scoring. He actually attempts to be patronising in his dismissals of Roud, which is rather like a toddler kicking a professional rugby forward on the shins.

When Heylin states "when a man has written at such length on English folk song and still has the chutzpah to pronounce that ‘origins do not matter’", he is damning Roud for being open-minded. It's been well-established on this thread that we cannot be certain that a given broadside is the origin of a particular song, only that it is the earliest extant version - though of course we may hold strong and informed opinions on the matter. All Roud is doing in saying that "origins do not matter" is trying to avoid the kind of intractable dispute we have seen here. What interests him is how the songs were used in popular culture.

Heylin believes that "the more interesting story, which still needs to be told" is that of "the centuries when English folk song was part of a vibrant, largely oral, British tradition". By this I assume he means the centuries prior to the 17th, when the earliest recognizable ballads begin to appear in print. However, those centuries represent precisely the era for which we have little conclusive data, and aren't likely to get much more.

Personally I find the matter of 'what people actually sang' two or three hundred years ago of great interest, whether or not it conforms to my or Cecil Sharp's definition of whether it was 'folk song'. I do think, though (and I attempted to raise this near the beginning of the thread) that Roud tries to have it both ways in accepting on the one hand that (as Pseudonymous again noted above) a song needs to have been passed on through a couple of generations to be considered 'folk', while on the other, criticizing Edwardian collectors for ignoring (say) Music hall material that was of recent origin.

Both of the folk revivals of the 20th century more or less accepted the corpus of songs as defined by Sharp and others. The point about that corpus was that it wasn't defined simply by whether the songs had passed into participatory popular culture (as things like football chants undoubtedly have), but also by a time period. Sharpian folk song derives mostly from a period from (maybe) 1750 to 1850. It has its own textual and musical characteristics, and it simply sounds different from the music of a later era like Music Hall or minstrelsey. Many - though by no means all - of us who have been part of the second folk revival recognize those characteristics and warm to them. Some Mudcat debates over the years might have been simplified if that had been acknowledged.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 05:01 AM

Regarding Pseudonymous's question about modes, the Edwardian collectors and later revivalists like Lloyd did get rather over-excited by the concept, especially by the regular occurrence in collected melodies of scales that weren't the regular major.

What we know now, thanks to the availability of many sound recordings from which we can make our own judgements, is that the intervals that define the different modes (i.e. the flattening of the sevenths, thirds and sixths) are often precisely the intervals that traditional singers pitched with a degree of ambiguity. So to try and force every melody into a modal category like 'dorian' when the thirds or sevenths may be either flat or sharp within a single verse, or possibly hit on the quarter-tone, is to over-simplify a complex phenomenon.

A further issue is that early collectors like Sharp (and Lloyd in Penguin 1) expressed a bias towards non-major tunes. Roud and Bishop's Penguin 2 tried to correct this - but that had the result that some folkies found a lot of the tunes rather bland since so many of them were major.

Personally I love my Mixolydian and Dorian, and am almost certainly biassed towards them in my own song selection, but then I'm a product of the Folk Revival and not a country pub singer of the 1920s.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 05:04 AM

Yeah, Brian, but there are still very interesting posts being added to this thread - yours, for example. I'm still trying to convince myself that I ought to read this tome. I don't appreciate the grumpiness of certain Mudcatters, but there is still a lot of interesting stuff here.
But to those of you who dwell on being insulted and on insulting others to pay them back - that stuff is really, really boring. This is a thread about a book and about music. It's not about grumpy, old men.
-Joe, grumpily-

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 05:07 AM

I tried a while ago to get to the bottom of the "100%" but it led me to another thread and got too confusing so I gave up. I believe the only place it has appeared in this thread is in posts from Jim attributing it to Steve G. I don't think anybody has ever really claimed 100% print origin even for the classic corpus, let alone for the totality of folk song. As for that figure being "extended to folk tales and tunes"; I missed that, but clearly such a claim would be nonsense.

The Carroll doth protest too much, methinks.

Picking up the separate matter of modes, raised by Pseudonymous: Sharp wanted the tunes to be ancient, so seized on and gave prominence to ones that seemed to correspond to the old church modes, but I reckon Grainger's interpretation was the right one.

Another instance of variability is in Cecilia Costello's alternative cadences for The Grey Cock, implying major or minor.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 05:38 AM

"whether or not it conforms to my or Cecil Sharp's definition of whether it was 'folk song'. "
It really is time this one was put to bed Briain
Whatever Sharp thought and whatever mistakes he made, we are discussing what we all thought up till recently - including you, no doubt
If he was wrong, so were we all
I find what people sang centuries ago interesting too - that doesn't make it folk

"I don't think anybody has ever really claimed 100% print origin even for the classic corpus, "
Please don't make me trawl through all the threads again Richard
I don't make things up - I've never seen the point in sdoing so
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 05:48 AM

...we are discussing what we all thought up till recently - including you, no doubt... If he was wrong, so were we all

Well, Jim, I'm sure I have been wrong about many things. I took Lloyd's FSE as gospel for many years and, although as most of us acknowledge it's an exhilarating read, there are things in there that I no longer believe. I also think it sensible to take account of recent research and not accept all of Cecil Sharp's ideas as the last word on the subject.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 05:58 AM

Fine Brian
Then it has nothing to do with what Sharp believed than
I think it's a long time since he was regarded as having 'the last word' on anything - by anybody
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 06:01 AM

If Roud's choice if title, deliberately echoing AL Lloyd's, was meant to be provocative, he has certainly succeeded.

Leaving aside any implications in the title, Roud is clear that he is writing a social history setting out the context in which what we broadly term 'folk song' existed. That included other forms of song which existed alongside and in some cases became transformed into folk song. He acknowledges the difficulty, indeed the impossibility, of finding a hard-and-fast definition of folk song, while at the same time finding that some sort of definition is required. Like everyone else, he has had to fudge it, because like any genre of music it is incapable of precise definition.

The overheated debate about broadsides has perhaps obscured the real point. Whether the broadsides were original songs or recycled folk songs created by the people, the broadside printers would not have bothered publishing them if they did not believe there was a market for them. Irrespective of the origins of the songs, this suggests that broadsides played a significant part in disseminating the songs more widely into the oral tradition, whether they had originally come from there or from other sources. The unsingable ones, by definition, would not have made it into the tradition.

I don't think anyone has seriously disagreed with Jim's point about the ability of the folk to create their own songs, and I take his point him that the songs of social commentary in particular are most likely to have been composed by the folk themselves. However there are other songs in the canon, and many others may well have originated on the stage or written for broadside publication.

It is I think well established that the creativity within folk songs comes not only from original composition but also how singers moulded and changed songs once they came into their possession - some would say the latter is the more important. Folk music can be considered 'the voice of the people' because it incorporates both elements. The creation of a folk song is an ongoing process in which the original composition is only the start. The difference between an 18th century stage song which has been absorbed into the tradition and a 19th century music hall song is that this process has not had time to work on the latter. Given time these too might have become folk songs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 06:14 AM

The difference between an 18th century stage song which has been absorbed into the tradition and a 19th century music hall song is that this process has not had time to work on the latter.

Sensible post all round, Howard, and the above is true but not necessarily the whole story. I don't claim to be any kind of an expert, but my understanding is that Music Hall compositions were using new tricks like chromatic melodies and modulation, which weren't a part of those older songs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 06:22 AM

Brian wrote:-
"I also think it sensible to take account of recent research and not accept all of Cecil Sharp's ideas as the last word on the subject."

... and, of course, Brian is right. Further, we also need to accept that modern academic standards in a wide range of disciplines has become much more rigorous and discerning and that there is much more emphasis on detailed research discipline than there was previously. In addition there is far more recognition that whatever your socio-political beliefs you will be hounded by your peers for bringing preconceptions to your work. For example, I doubt if another E.P. Thompson could emerge today and bring such an overbearing influence to historical academic practice as he did in the 1960s and 1970s. I would give Roud's book as a good example of these qualities of being extremely thorough and careful.

I need to add that some of these thoughts have been provoked by reading Penelope Lively's essay Reading and Writing in her 2013 book Ammonites and Leaping Fish which I have just finished this morning. Successful as a novelist, she also had a very precise intellect, the sort of outstanding thinker that gets chosen to be on the Board of Governors of the British Library as she was.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 06:32 AM

Sorry Howard - this in no way addressed the 90-odd% claim and its implications
None of what you say is relevant to the fact that, to accept those percentages is to undermine the role of 'people' as composers
Songs of social commentary are more likely to have originated on the broadside presses
Songs dealing with the everyday effects of what was happening in the wider world - wars, land enclosures, the changes in the countryside due to industrialisation, the necessity of using marriageable children as steps up the social ladder.... most of the events covered in our folk songs, are far more likely to have originated with the people who faced the problems
The love songs are universal - they effect us all
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 06:42 AM

Songs of social commentary are more likely to have originated on the broadside presses"
your opinion can you please back that statement up with facts or statistics? if you cannot then your opinion counts for little.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 07:00 AM

Steve

Thanks for the clarification on corpus, and for the points about methodology.

Tim

Tending to agree that we won't reach a consensus, but sad that other aspects of Roud's book aren't addressed. Because I think it's fascinating. But I am just a newbie on these threads and to this topic on anything other than a superficial level.


Jim

On Harker: I haven't read him first hand so I cannot comment much. He took a particular Marxist approach to the Victorian collectors. Roud doesn't appear to agree with his analysis (!). But at least anybody reading this thread and wanting to know who Harker was would be able to consult his Roud and find the answer. Roud likes to take what he calls a 'balanced' approach, though he fully acknowledges how middle class collectors have been. Roud, understandably, doesn't think there is anything wrong with being middle class.


On all that earliest printing proves is earliest printing. I think everybody agrees with that. I don't think anybody is denying that ordinary people can contribute songs to a tradition/genre already in existence. Thanks for explaining your reasons for preferring 'oral' origins. But maybe it would need to be argued on a case b case basis for the corpus in question.


On Child: On the basis of what has been said, it seems to me that in his collecton he included a number of dunghills. However, the full quotation appears to be to the effect that one can find jewels within the dung hill. I think I have found a source for this quotation in case anybody else is interested in seeing it in context.

Child 1872, in Hustvedt 1930: 254

I found this in a piece by E David Gregory. I think (happy to be corrected) that Roud describes him as American, but he is from Hitchin and went to Keele and Sussex Universities.


E David Gregory has described Child's later approach to broadside ballads as


" ambivalent, even schizophrenic. He heartily disliked them, yet he soon realized that he could not avoid them entirely. So he devised a rule of thumb in dealing with them. If he concluded on the basis of other evidence that a ballad was traditional, then he would print any broadside variants that he had come across. But in almost all other instances he rejected broadside texts out of hand"

          This is from a pdf online called jewels_left_in.

On Hogg, by coincidence we read one of his novels recently, and so looked at his life.

The quotation attributed to Margaret Hogg (nee Laidlaw) was actually written by James Hogg, who was a story-teller, and a professional one, long after the event. He is interesting because he tried to make a career out of being a 'peasant poet'. I am not sure that Hogg was a reliable narrator. I suspect that Margaret would have been literate as the Presbyterians held literacy in high esteem. I am not saying she did not also have an oral tradition, just that as usual things are complicated. She was married to a stock dealer and tenant sheep farmer who went bankrupt. Her son was first taught reading by a local churchman. They sent him to a small private school. Margaret clearly valued literacy. My understanding is that Hogg worked for Walter Scott collecting oral ballads, though his approach and Scott's to the material differed as Hogg felt more 'inside' the tradition, though he tried to make a living within literacy society as a 'peasant poet'. Incidentally I am sure that I came across a hint that Hogg himself wrote some of the songs he supplied to Scott; he did write songs and play music, having reputedly been inspired by the poetry of Burns!

If as "Margaret" claims writing ballads down led to their disappearance then logically we'd have none left. So this quotation does not seem to reflect a historical truth. "Margare"t is right that songs are for singing, and that aspects of performance cannot be captured in print. This is something mentioned by Roud, who comments that collectors often did not deal with this aspect. In fact some of them would not collect in pubs.

Just saying that things are complicated.

Personally I don't want any babies to be thrown anywhere.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 07:02 AM

The broadside presses were there to sell broadsides and make money what indications or records are there songs of social comment[ depending on what you mean by social comment] , sold more than songs about murder or coinfessions at the gallows. can you be more specific about what exactly you mean by social comment.
the term social comment these days refers generally to songs criticising the political establishment and the ruling class.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 07:13 AM

"He took a particular Marxist approach to the Victorian collectors."
Not particular
As far as I know, Marxists never had an approach to Sharp (I've read enough Marx to come under that description - not strictly true)
Dave' hatchet job was all his own
"The quotation attributed to Margaret Hogg (nee Laidlaw) was actually written by James Hogg, "
The quotation is reported in Walter Scott's journals as being said to him by Mrs Laidlaw - her son may well have repeated it - I'm sure he did - I would have done.
Our folk songs are based around the firesides, not the pubs
Try singing a twenty verse ballad in a crowded pup sometime and see how welcome you are made.

"if you cannot then your opinion counts for little."
If you persist in your bad manners I suggest you go elsewhere Dick - you and yours have just managed to close a thread by attacking a dead man
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 07:50 AM

Please answer the question, it has nothing to do with manners then kindly explain exactly what you mean by songs of social comment, because nowadays the term is often used to describe songs criticising the political establishment.
or do you mean songs about highwaymen executions or what please clarify . be kind enough to refer to the topic in question, as you have already managed to evade answering a question about providing copies of a tape. I would appreciate a civil reply unless your intention is to close this thread in the manner you closed the last thread.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 08:00 AM

money what indications or records are there songs of social comment

Erin go Bragh

A very quick look round similar broadside archives anywhere in the UK, Ireland or France will show any amount of comparable stuff.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 08:01 AM

Jim, the "90%" claim is purely quantitative ie that a percentage of songs in oral tradition can be found in print. I don't have the book in front of me, but I don't recall it claiming that these were all by professional composers (although many of them were).

Whatever the origin of a song, singers and their audiences would only take it up if they felt it related to them in some way. Whether that is because it came from someone with direct experience of the subject or from an imaginative professional songwriter, once it had been taken up and turned into folk song it became the voice of the people. If the sentiments of a song expressed their own feelings, why should it matter who originally composed it? It almost certainly didn't to the singers, or the songs wouldn't have entered the tradition and been passed on.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 08:09 AM

Another instance of variability is in Cecilia Costello's alternative cadences for The Grey Cock, implying major or minor

They imply no such thing. The modality of a tune is not determined by the pitch it ends on.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 08:23 AM

" my understanding is that Music Hall compositions were using new tricks like chromatic melodies and modulation, which weren't a part of those older songs."

True Brian, what I was trying to refer to was their acceptability to enter the folk tradition, rather than their musical styles which are clearly different.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 08:25 AM

Sorry Howard - the claim is that they originated in print
I would have no problem with your interpretation whatever; other researchers, like Bob Thomson, who first drew out attention to the up-to-then underestimated number - his thesis was largely based on it.

You seem to be avoiding why you believe these songs were made for money than the natural result of people's experiences
I never get tired of repeating singer Joe Coneeley's statement, 'If a man farted in church in those days, somebody made a song about it".
Joe and his generation had a rich oral tradition to draw on for his song-making template
His repertoire included four rare Child ballads and a host of other songs, including the extremely rare in Ireland, 'Girl With a Box on her Head'
His immediate area contained a treasure trove of big classical storytellers
A far cry from the rapidly declining English scene of the early twentieth century
Jim Caarroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 09:32 AM

Try singing a twenty verse ballad in a crowded pup sometime and see how welcome you are made.

Outside of a puppy there's nothing that grabs your attention as much as a good narrative ballad.

Inside of a puppy you can't find a seat to sing it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 10:41 AM

THaanks for spotting the hilarious typo - I was very tempted to comment on it myself but I would probably made a dog's breakfast of it.
I meant to respond to your comment
"Erin Go Bragh" is what I was attempting to describe, songs commenting on effects rather than advocating change
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 10:48 AM

Jim. Re your 7.13 am message.

Thanks for corrections. Note taken.

Somewhere I had picked up the idea that Harker's 'Fakesong' was written from a Marxist perspective (and there are various such perspectives), and that this perspective was applied to the Victorian folk-song collectors.

Do you have a ref for the Scott version of the anecdote?

Thanks again.

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 11:03 AM

"Do you have a ref for the Scott version of the anecdote?"
We have a two volume set of the Journals here
I'll try to find it when I get time
Jim
Just checked on net - can't find the Journal reference, but a fascinating description of the meeting can be found here on page 122.

(clickety compliments of Joe Offer)

Far too long to blue clickie, I'm afraid
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 11:08 AM

Surely "Erin Go Bragh"/"Duncan Campbell" is advocating change?

Come all you brave fellows that here of this song—
I dont care a farthing to where you belong—
For I'm from my shore, in the Highlands so braw
But I ne'er took it ill when called Erin-go-Bragh.

I'm pretty sure the anti-bigotry message there is what Dick Gaughan had in mind when he revived it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,The Tailors Goose
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 11:44 AM

He would nae understand that

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 12:27 PM

Re Brian's remarks on modes (eg July 6th, 5.01)

The background sort of explains how it came about that I was given simplified info like 'folk song is modal'.

I agree about liking dorian and so on.

Not sure I agree that modulation was 'new', but the poster probably meant 'new to commercial popular music'. You get it in Tin Pan Alley songs as well. It's meant to add musical interest.

On a lighter level: I have certainly heard 'modulation' in some live performances, if not approached via whatever introductory chords 'art' music would find appropriate. In fact it is my own tendency to 'modulate' that prevents me from singing much. :)

The other interesting point, for me, as a beginner, in Roud was that it is believed early performances were not accompanied, leaving it an open question about which chords to choose for a harmonised version.

On cadences, I think the Bishop chapter in Roud does convince a reader that some singers sang the same song in what could be analysed as different modes. Also that using some versions of modal analysis, more than one mode seemed to feature in any one song. I think some early Sharp comments reflect this.

Also, my theory is limited but as I use it, the term 'cadence' refers to more than the end note of a song. It refers to the approach to the end, whether melodic or harmonic (ie with chordal backing). But the theoretical point that the end note need not reflect the mode I wouldn't argue with.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 12:29 PM

"He would nae understand that"
Wha', me Jimmy?
My old man was born in Glasgow and spent his life with the nickname Scotty, even though you couldn't burn you way through his Scouse accent with a blow-torch

I'm not familiar with Dick's text, but I still think it's a complaint about and a reaction to prejudice rather than a campaign message against it
Maybe splitting hairs - I do that a lot
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 02:55 PM

I said
"Another instance of variability is in Cecilia Costello's alternative cadences for The Grey Cock, implying major or minor"

Jack said
"They imply no such thing. The modality of a tune is not determined by the pitch it ends on."

Perhaps I should have said "suggest" rather than "imply". The note that a tune ends on is a very strong indication of the tonic. The same notes with different tonics strongly suggest different modes/scales.

But perhaps a better comment on Cecilia Costello's alternative versions is that it illustrates the variability.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 04:13 PM

Tim,
I didn't really doubt you. It just seemed a strange statement for such a thread.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 04:38 PM

"He took a particular Marxist approach to the Victorian collectors."
Not particularly:
As far as I know, Marxists never had an approach to Sharp (I've read enough Marx to come under that description - not strictly true)
Dave [Harker]'s hatchet job was all his own.

Dave Harker was SWP, and no friend of the CPGB or the likes of Lloyd and Maccoll. In the final sentence of 'Fakesong' he states: "How far he [i.e. Harker himself] succeeded in doing so, and whether the effort was worth it, will be best judged by his comrades in the Gorton Branch of the SWP and those in other socialist parties."

I had an interesting chat recently with one of Mr Harker's former SWP colleagues in Manchester, who had been horrified by his assault on folk song and found his methods lacking in proper Trotskyite analysis, so it would appear that, even by its author's preferred criteria, 'Fakesong' wasn't an unbridled success.

Having spent some time examining Dave Harker's work, it's clear to me that, while he is well-researched in terms of having examined much relevant source material, his representation of it is biassed and tendentious. Following some of his footnotes back to their sources often reveals that they are misquoted or presented in an inaccurate context, and he quotes very selectively in order to present his targets in the worst possible light. Compare for example his account of Baring-Gould's relationship with source singers with that provided recently by Martin Graebe in his excellent biography, which gives a far more detailed and sympathetic analysis of the reverend's motives.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 05:23 PM

Just going back for a moment to my remark about Cecil Sharp not having had the last word on the subject, it's nonetheless interesting that both Lloyd and Roud in their respective takes on 'Folk Song in England' actually accept quite a few of Sharp's ideas.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 05:40 PM

The distinctively modal feature of "The Grey Cock" isn't its finalis - it's the missing note. It's hexatonic, somewhat ambiguous between D minor/dorian and F major/lydian (though D seems to be implied more often than F, since C rarely occurs).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 06:24 PM

I don't know The Grey Cock.

D Dorian D E F G A B C D
F Major F G A Bb C D E F
F Lydian F G A B C D E F


This singer sings a flat third for 'my dear love' at about 50 in. So that bit sounds minor.

https://www.8notes.com/scores/4735.asp

This also ends with a flat 3rd, major 2nd 1. That sound minor.

Haven't looked at the rest of it. For Lydian in with this 'tonal centre' wouldn't we need E – F# – G# – A# – B – C# – D#?

Too late for more thought on the subject. Too many ledger lines for comfort.

Brian: 05.23 Yes.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jul 18 - 09:10 PM

"Dave Harker was SWP, and no friend of the CPGB "
I know that Brian
Just before I left Manchester the SWP were planning a show to commemorate the Peterloo 150th anniversary and contacted me through a fiend of a friend to advise them on songs
I met up with them with a list of suggestions, only to find they didn't have a clue about folk songs - they ended up with a fifth rate rock band - they really don't have a line on folk song, neither does the left in modern general even though they played a major paaaart in getting the ball tolling with the Worker's Music Association and the early days of Topic records -
MacColl was forever falling out with the various organisations
We have an interesting radio programme on the history of Topic here called 'Little Red Label' - well worth a listen
Bob Thomson gave a lot of help to Harker when he was preparing Fakesong - he was furious at the outcome
Bed-time - we have a solid week of diddley-di music and song to face from tomorrow onwards
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 03:03 AM

Interestng, that, Jim, not least because the 200th anniversary of Peterloo is coming up very soon, and I'm involved in a project to commemorate it. Won't be 5th rate rock music, though - you really should have known better to put your trust in a 'fiend of a friend'.

There's a book coming out shortly about Peterloo-related broadsides - of which there are many.

Enjoy your diddly and singing.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 03:32 AM

Don't know whether you are aware of the Peterloo song I was given by Salford Historian, Eddie Frow when I was involved in the earlier project
I gave it to Sam Richards and Tish Stubbs for their "English Folk Singer" - I think they used the tune I put to it.

"Fiends"
Actually, the S.W.P. people I was dealing with were a fairly friendly and articulate crowd - just ignorant, as far as folk-song was concerned, and somewhat short-sighted as far as working-class culture was concerned -isn't that always the way
I got to meet Vanessa Redgrave (sighhhhh) while I was in contact with them; her husband was running the project
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 04:15 AM

Don't know whether you are aware of the Peterloo song I was given by Salford Historian, Eddie Frow when I was involved in the earlier project

I'm not, and I will look it up, thanks.

The broadsides of the period are often very wordy and require editing, but they convey a deep sense of bitterness and injustice. An old school friend of mine mentioned the other day that, in his youth, his grandfather would often mention a real sense of outrage over the events of 150 years earlier, particularly the notorious and much-reported slashing of a woman protester's breast by a yeoman's sabre.

I also found out recently that a newspaper reporter of the time, whose honest account of the day's events had been spiked by his pro-authority employer, walked away from his job and founded the Manchester Guardian.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 04:42 AM

Forgot a link to the sung version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqrW65xdeZw

But there seem to me to be some microtones in this ?????

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 05:35 AM

I looked up what Roud had to say on Harker, and lost the post.

But it is interesting, even if Roud dislikes what he calls 'facile Bourgeois bashing. So once again, Roud has something to offer.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 05:51 AM

There seems, perhaps, to be a long-standing feud between left factions, as illustrated not just by this thread, but also perhaps by this introduction to an early Lloyd piece which cites Harker in the references.

The tone varies but this bit is provocative

...Lloyd offers a combination of opinions that would fit snugly into the columns of The Sunday Telegraph or Daily Mail...

One can perhaps see why Jim expresses negativity about Harker.

Now Roud, while being plain about his view of some aspects of Harker's approach, does (p175) acknowledge the work of David Harker as making a contribution to the field through his research. especially into the NE.

I have learned a lot through this thread and through Roud. So well worth the money, I think, even though just maybe from time to time a bit of facile bourgeois bashing is good for the soul.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 06:02 AM

I have no Brief for Harker or his politics and was infuriated by his attitude to the old collectors, but I find Roud's attack on Harker's expressing a political view offensive and no less "facile"
It has always been recognised that there are social and political implications to folk song (see Brian Peters previous post)   
We would have had no Folk Song Revival if it hadn't been for the politically/socially motivated Workers Music Association and Topic Records
I would describe myself now as a Socialist Humanist with Marxist leanings - does that mean my views are worth less than those who disagree with me?
I have already been accused of "having an agenda" in some of these arguments
About time we put a cork in this one, I think
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 06:14 AM

We would have had no Folk Song Revival if it hadn't been for the politically/socially motivated Workers Music Association and Topic Records.
spot on, and the efforts of Communists like Ewan MacColl,TedPoole,AlLoyd and all the club organisers of the sixties

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 06:19 AM

Got it largely wrong about "The Grey Cock" - all 7 notes do occur, but the B flat is only just perceptible. (It sounds odd if you put in a B natural instead, which suggests it isn't genuinely hexatonic as I thought).

X:1
T:The Grey Cock
S:Penguin Book of English Folk Songs
M:3/2
L:1/8
K:DMin
 G|        A2  A2  f6    ed |[M:4/4] c2  e2 (dc) A2-|A6
F2|[M:3/2] A A3    f6    e2 |       (dc) e2  d6
de|        f2  d2  c2 d4 B2 |        A2  G2  A2 D4
E2|        F2 (Ac) d6   (AG)|        F2  E2  D6    ||\
                                   "^original"\
                                     F2  G2  F6    |]

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 06:19 AM

My long experience of watching Left politics are the unnecessary divisions ,Iremember the poll tax protests i was involved in nottingham in 1989? and the revoloutionary communist party refusing to march with the socialist workers party, when i suggested at a meeting that we should forget our divisions and unite i was branded a trotskyite deviationist

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 06:26 AM

The point about Ewan and Bert is tha though both were'of the left' - Ewan particularly, when push came to shove, the Traditional songs always came before their politics
Song-making is a different matter - everybody makes songs about things the believe to be important enough - they always have done
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 06:28 AM

The fact that most of the new academic work came from the political left is no surprise. That was the mood of the time, and the right wing has never been known for its intellectual capacities. Simply by taking seriously the experiences of the common people and researching their lives branded you as left of centre anyway.


Harker successfully uses histories of the region and the mining industry and books on local dialect to explicate the song's meaning. But given the fact that it was not written by a collier or even by a working man its accuracy as a social document is unclear. It turns out that while historical sources can shed a great deal of light on the song and its contents it is much harder to argue that the song itself can be used as an unproblematic historical source.

One may disagree with Roud, but this does not appear to be 'facile', nor do other discussions he has of Harker's work, the value of which he acknowledges.

Jim: I did not intend to imply that I held your views as less important that those who disagree with you. I was just trying to 'contextualise'. I have no objection to using politically motivated songs: …. struggles for examples: I bought a download of Ding Dong the Witch is Dead. Does that count for anything? :)

But please have the last word on this...(ducks)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 06:37 AM

Is it time for a joke?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 06:41 AM

I would describe myself now as a Socialist Humanist with Marxist leanings - does that mean my views are worth less than those who disagree with me.
no , but views or opinions should always be backed up by facts or stats to make them more valid ,you do not always do this , if you did your opinions would be of more importance, when you do your views have more credibility, for example you on occasions are on this forum pontificating and dissing the uk folk revival as it is at the present moment or very recenmt past, yet you are not really qualified to make a serious judgement because your experience latterly is limited to the occasional visit from ireland

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 07:08 AM

Pseu
My remarks were aimed at Roud - not you
You'll know I'm annoy with you when I put a d at he end of my abbreviation of your chosen name!

"Is it time for a joke?
Just made one - but here goes:
How many folkies does it take to change a light-bulb?
Three- one to change the bulb and two to discuss how much brighter the old one was

I'm not getting involved in your vendetta Dick and I suggest nobody else does
This has been a fruitful thread, if fraught on occasion - let's keep it going in the direction it is taking
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 08:15 AM

"ducks"
You do realise that this was a common endearment used by elderly English working class ladies :-)
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 08:27 AM

However Jim if you took notice of my remark about not making unqualified statements[ not a vendetta, but an observation or even constructive criticism].it might make discussing subjects easier and more civil

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 09:31 AM

why do you would be academic ethnomusicogists take yourselves so seriously? No one else does & the music will carry on without all this-- by the way, it wasn't much of a joke anyway, so lighten up & let's have some more jokes....

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 09:39 AM

For the same reason you troll anonymously to a thread you obviously have no interest in - it entertains us
If people hadn't thought about this music then got off their bums and gone off to find it for us we wouldn't have had a pit to hiss in
Why do you people do this?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 01:11 PM

Well said Jim at 0939.

The 'facile bourgeois bashing' (I'll take Pseudonymous's word that the quote is accurate) referred to by Roud concerns - I suspect - Harker's overriding argument that the very act of song collecting is in itself theft of workers' culture.

It is true that Harker has carried out good research on NE broadsides, and at least arguable that 'Fakesong' was a useful corrective to what had up to that point been a more or less unquestioning acceptance of everything that Sharp wrote. Unfortunately it is flawed in its scholarship (see Chris Bearman's counter-arguments as well as my own opinion) and too agenda-driven to be taken seriously as impartial academic research.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 01:12 PM

I'm struggling to follow GUEST,Pseudonymous's post from 06:28 AM today. The first paragraph is a direct quote from the book, page 176, though not identified as such. Is the next paragraph also quoting from the book? Which page? Which song is it referring to?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 01:17 PM

Incidentally I'm sure no-one here describes themself as an 'academic ethnomusicologist'. All of the contributors that I know anything about are singers and musicians who are 'carrying on the music' in just the way that our anonymous 'Guest' seems to think is somehow impossible to achieve while maintaining a healthy degree of curiosity about it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 03:28 PM

"Harker's overriding argument that the very act of song collecting is in itself theft of workers' culture."
Concur absolutely - he seems to be a very odd character who could never decide his first love - workers culture or politics - the two could go together comfortably, but not,apparently with Dave
I remember him saying at one point (Sheffield again) that he had stopped speaking at public gatherings because of the number of challenges to his ideas.
I'm really not really comfortable with this, but Dave was special.

He wan't the only one - Pat once had an uncharacteristic blazing row with one rising lady star when she was told that collecting was an "intrusion into people's privacy"
She said she preferred to jot down overheard conversations in a notebook - I am not making this up)
She has since risen to the top of the folk milk jug as a new-age academic.

We got tired of our work being dismissed because we weren't members of the 'club" (ur choice of course) - again, we were told by.... (well too close to this particular discussion to name) that we had it all wrong about Traveller songs because she had done a college course on the subject.
I got more respect from some of my most wealthy customers when I spoke about the folk songs they heard me singing around their houses at work, than I did from some of these people (even if it was a little 'dog walking on its hind legs' at times.

I came into a part of the scene that was based on sharing, instant friendship and constant encouragement, no matter what you knew and how good a performer you were
That attitude put enough petrol in my tank to keep me going for the rest of my puff

Sorry about that - grouse over - there's some of the finest Irish music and song happening up and down the length of our one street town for me to waste time talking to you bunch of scruffs!
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 03:46 PM

Richard (01:12) is right to pull me up on the post from 6.28.

I gave two quotations from Roud with the intention of demonstrating that his comments on Harker were not entirely 'facile', or simply about Harker expressing political views. The adjective 'facile' was applied by Roud to some aspects of Harker's work (p178), and had in turn been applied to Roud. Perhaps I should have marked these clearly as quotations, rather than, as I intended, letting this become clear as the post continued.

I had 'lost' a better post (honestly, it was better!!), and then I got lazy.

The 2nd quotation was from p578. It relates to a song called 'The Original Bob Cranky', which stayed in print for a long time. According to Roud, it first came out in 1804. The earliest known version states that it was written by a 'Gentleman of Newcastle' ie John Selkirk, who attended clubs where singing and songwriting were in fashion. The song is from a collection made by Bell, whose manuscripts Harker and a colleague produced an edition of. I'm sure a) the ironies here (Harker's use of a text which in some sense turns out to be 'fake') were not lost on Roud and b) the 'just because the earliest edition was print doesn't mean it wasn't by the ordinary people' argument may be brought to bear on the example.

For example, Roud disagrees with Harker's (alleged) assessment of the work of William Chappell. Roud disagrees that the work of this man, which took half a lifetime to complete and probably wasn't cheap to carry out, was done just to make money. I don't think this section by Roud is oversimplified. Others may, of course disagree.

On page 580, Roud quotes an idea of Harker's and the argument behind it with interest, so I don't think he just dismisses everything Harker had to say (in case anybody had got that idea from my posts).

I also get the idea that Roud isn't wholly opposed to people making money from working on folklore, that he feels if this had not been done, much more of the material might have been lost.

I think Roud, while not agreeing with everything Harker says, acknowledges his work eg in the NE.

But those who are interested can buy the book and judge for themselves. Roud describes it as an exercise in evidence gathering. As a relative newcomer to books about folk in England, it suggest to me not only places to look for songs but also places to go to read more generally.


Jim 9.39: It entertains us. Amen.

Most recent joke I read was about why Eeyore was looking down the loo, but I won't insult your intelligences by providing the answer.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 03:56 PM

Jim's endpiece -
"there's some of the finest Irish music and song happening up and down the length of our one street town for me to waste time talking to you bunch of scruffs!
Without doubting that Miltown is a very special place when it comes to knowledge of the tradition, could you tell us which of the contributors to this thread you would include in this 'bunch of scruffs'? It seems to me that your targets in the post above in what I would call a rant and you call a 'grouse' are entirely outwith those who are contributing to this thread - and if I am right, why the insult to those you have been discussing with here?

or was it a joke which I have failed to appreciate?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 03:58 PM

Given that Joe Offer has already given a yellow card to this thread, we ought to be treading a bit more carefully.

---

True. I don't like the drifts into nastiness, but I still find the thread very interesting. -Joe-

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 04:19 PM

I think Jim was just trying to rhyme his last 2 paragraphs!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 05:43 PM

'bunch of scruffs'

Jim can of course answer for himself, but this sounds to me like a Scouse term of affection.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 06:31 PM

A few days away from Mudcat, and there are almost too many messages here to catch up.
One comment I noticed (and if it's been responded to and I missed it, then apologies) regards the title of Steve's book.
It was not deliberately chosen to be provocative by being the same as Bert Lloyd's 1967 book title. Steve suggested different titles, but the publisher insisted, in spite of the duplication with Bert's book. Steve has said this in public when talking about the book and subject. I can't remember his preferred title ... something like A social history of traditional song in England.... but don't quote me on that!
Derek

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 07:06 PM

the publisher insisted, in spite of the duplication with Bert's book.

Hmmm. Does the author of a book really have no say in the published title? Why would a publisher be so insistent on this particular form of words?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 07 Jul 18 - 07:16 PM

Does the author of a book really have no say in the published title?

Not usually.

Why would a publisher be so insistent on this particular form of words?

Because they think they can sell more that way.

In some genres, the publisher even gets to decide the author's name. Desmond Bagley had to fight to keep his own name when his publisher thought it would result in his books being stuck inconspicuously at the top left of the shelves.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 02:55 AM

Because they think they can sell more that way.

By using a pre-existing title rather than, say, the snappier 'English Folk Song'?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 04:06 AM

"Jim can of course answer for himself, but this sounds to me like a Scouse term of affection."

It was exactly that - it is beyond me why anybody should think otherwise
I'm sorry - I thought I'd made a reasonable assessment of the friendly and sometimes flippant nature of this discussion - it seems I was mistaken and will have to choose my words more carefully in the future
Sorry if I have given offence - it was not my intention

My comments on the writers I mentioned was not a "rant", by the way, it was an account of our own experiences as non-academics and some of the 'freemasonry' we encountered; maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it It is certainly not typical of what we were used to from fellow researchers and music-lovers
My comments on the writers I mentioned was not a "rant", by the way, it was an account of our own experiences as non-academics and some of the 'freemasonry' we encountered; maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it
It is certainly not typical of what we were used to from fellow researchers and music-lovers
Here in Clare I used to get mildly inebriated a couple of nights a week in our local with one of the finest and most generous minds in traditional song scholarship until he died - he and those nights are sorely missed

In fact, my whole attitude to the Summer School is somewhat ambivalent - as fine as the standard of music is, Pat and I tend to stay away from it because the town is overcrowded and uncomfortable - last night was the first and there was neither the space nor the necessary attention to sit and enjoy the music - we'll wait for the recitals, concerts and talks for that
The strength of the event is that it is a school - dozens of daily classes and discussions on all the instruments, all crammed full of youngsters - and now (at long last) a few more on singing   
It is very much part of the foundation that has now been established to ensure Irish Traditional music has a future - 46 years old this year
Personally, we can listen to good live Irish music in town`4 or five nights a week throughout the year - in comfort

Regarding the title of the book - I think it was chosen deliberately as an 'antidote' to Bert's book of the same name - two books with exactly the same title cannot be a coincidence, nor can it be based on ignorance of the other.
Rather than addressing Bert's most important point in the last chapter, Roud rides over it roughshod by ignoring it.
In doing so, he leaves us with a major decision - what do we call our songs now 'Knock 'em in the Old Kent Road' is a folk song, or is there really no difference between that and 'Tifties Annie'?
And how do we categorise that century-plus body of work that deals with that 'other type' of song?
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 05:52 AM

Jim said
> Pat once had an uncharacteristic blazing row with one rising lady star when she was told that collecting was an "intrusion into people's privacy"
> She said she preferred to jot down overheard conversations in a notebook - I am not making this up)
> She has since risen to the top of the folk milk jug as a new-age academic.

Whoever that lady was I have some sympathy with her statement. People sang the songs that we're discussing in various situations, but mostly either in private or among their fellows. Singing for an outsider who is visiting partly or solely for the specific purpose of collecting is significantly different. The extent to which it is an intrusion depends on the personality, skill and attitude of the collector. Jim and Pat clearly made friends with the people they were collecting from. Some other collectors have established a rapport, right back to Baring Gould in an age when the class system was much more rigid than it is nowadays. But it has not been universal. Harker's view of the collecting process was an exaggeration but not entirely without foundation.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 05:58 AM

I also took 'bunch of scruffs' as light-hearted. Given the present weather, 'sweaty scruffs' might have been closer to the truth! Or is that just me - the sweaty bit?

It has been suggested that Jim Carroll should write a book, and for me the anecdotes he gave in that post are worth recording and could be in it. For they seem important to me. Though a publisher might not be happy about the tone being quite so scathing. Sorry to speak about you in the 3rd person Jim.

As I have said before, I came to Lloyd's book recently, about five years ago, so I did not have the experience of being inspired by it that many posters here have described. But I can see that some of the ways I think about 'folk' music are influenced by the post-war left 'revival' that the book was part of.

So I have thought a couple of times while involved on this thread that it is useful to have the two books together. I don't think Roud 'replaces' Lloyd. If the publishers wanted us to think that it did, it won't wash. Roud is plainly attempting something different.

Leaving the definitional disagreements to one side for one moment (partly because I cannot being to answer Jim's question on this) I am honestly interested in the information Roud provides about the whole range of songs that were actually sung by ordinary people through the centuries he covers.

I'm not sure how we should categorise the century-plus body of work mentioned by Jim (8th July 4.06 and elsewhere), but if a person wants to know more about that work, Roud is as good a place as any to start.

Also, writing as he does later than Lloyd, Roud brings the story of that work up to date. It's sort of like a 'literature review', I have thought. And his references are undoubtedly better than Lloyd's, so you get a good idea where you can go for more on a topic or by a writer.

For examples of Roud bringing things up to date

1 He lists p175 people who have produced academic work (eg Gammon, Atkinson, Boyes, Harker)

2 He lists p176 non academic people who have continued to collect material and to work in the field (eg Palmer, Gardam,Purslow, Davis, Carrol, Mackenzie, Howson, Stubbs).

NB Currently I'm Sunday morning scruffy, which is ... well .. you really don't want to know.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 06:05 AM

For an entirely different assessment of the book's value, see here.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 06:54 AM

I'm afraid that Jim's (and Pat's) experiences in his 'not-a-rant' are far from unique. Over the years, I have heard of or from quite a few people - including one who has contributed to this thread - who have been bad-mouthed by so-called well qualified experts who have told them that they should not say that they are collecting songs or call themselves collectors because they did not have the the academic background to do so.

Actually, I could also give an example of the opposite being the case. Tina and I were tentatively sharing our recordings of Sussex singers with none other than the person who is at the centre of this thread. I was explaining to Steve that we were enthusiasts and not collectors and he told me not to speak bloody nonsense; that what we had was very valuable. Not long sfter he asked us to give our presentation on Gordon Hall to the joint Sussex Traditions/TMF conference day in Lewes.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 06:58 AM

"People sang the songs that we're discussing in various situations, but mostly either in private or among their fellows. "
Is that how you regard collecting - recording private conversations?
Certainly not in our job description
We spent thirty years sitting in farm kitchens and caravans, face to face with the people we recorded and actively questioning them on their songs, often intensely
We did so at their invitation and mainly with their encouragement
What little we know about traditional singing is based on that approach.
What the lady with her notebook and pencil was doing was eavesdropping - her accusation of "intrusion into people's privacy" was exactly what she was advocating.

"For examples of Roud bringing things up to date"
Your two lists from Roud are interesting
All the people on list two have produced articles on the material they were ollecting
I'm not aware that any on the top list (not sure about Vic) spent any real time questioning traditional singers face-to-face - if they have, I have come across no accounts of it.
One of the largest gaps in our knowledge is a total lack of input by the people who actually gave us these songs (with few notable exceptions), yet all, in our experiences, had plenty to say, when invited to do so.
This redefinition is based on the opinions and tastes of largely desk-bound academics

Jeannie Robertson's missed opportunity of a book is a good example
Hershel Gower makes a magnificent job of painting a picture of this important singer's life using her own words.
The analysis of the songs and their function is left to James Porter.
There is nothing wrong with Porter's analysis as far as I can judge, but for me, it lacks a certain.... something

For all the criticisms against it, I found MacColl and Seeger's book on The Stewarts far more satisfying - there was a far greater input by the family members - in fact, the authors got into hot water for putting too much in.

It has been suggested before I write a book - I doubt if that will ever happen
My object it to make available what we have collected, especially what the singers had to say, and make sure all the recordings we have gathered over half a century will go to somewhere that will guarantee their survival as an archive - we're nearly there in Ireland with that one.

I have become somewhat obsessed with the idea that the Irish singing scene needs some attention if it is going to reach the heady heights of the instrumental situation - hence my project on Irish Child Ballads
The next step is try to shift singing classes away from handing out song sheets to something a bit more substantial - we'll see what happens with that

The only 'book' I have in mind is a collection of Traveller songs, stories and interviews - now a possibility
As a retired electrician I still have a full and busy life in front of me, if not a long one
I have been working on a far-too-long article in fits and starts, possibly entitled 'Hack or Haymaker - who made our folk songs', but I keep wondering if it's worth taking time over - why not let people make their own minds up?

I have recently archived scripts of the forty-plus talks we have given as researchers since we started
One of the things I am most proud of is that they all give precedence to what the singers, storytellers and musicians had to say rather than what we had to say about them
That's worth putting your name to as far as I'm concerned.

"Currently I'm Sunday morning scruffy, "
Wear your uniform with pride
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 07:04 AM

Richard Mellish wrote -
"Singing for an outsider who is visiting partly or solely for the specific purpose of collecting is significantly different. The extent to which it is an intrusion depends on the personality, skill and attitude of the collector."

Exactly so! I can remember feeling very uncomfortable in the audience of a concert where a prominent singer talked about a ballad that he had recorded in recent times from an Irish traveller. He sounded very pleased that he had acquired this real gem but I felt that in the process of obtaining the song, the poor informant had been hounded and stalked.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 07:21 AM

With Jim 100% on the lady with the notebook as described above.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 07:24 AM

Sorry, spelled Carroll incorrectly at 5.58. Blame the heat! Sorry again.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 07:25 AM

"For an entirely different assessment of the book's value, see here."
Nice one Richard
It looks as if the effort of reading it has put the reader into a catatonic state
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 07:31 AM

I said "People sang the songs that we're discussing in various situations, but mostly either in private or among their fellows. "

Jim asked "Is that how you regard collecting - recording private conversations?"

Sorry, you have misunderstood. I was referring to how the songs were usually sung, in the absence of a collector, and then going on to the collection situation where the collector might or might not have a personal relationship with the singer.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 07:44 AM

It looks as if the effort of reading it has put the reader into a catatonic state
Careful, Jim. Remember the cat could be reading this. You don't want to upset its felines.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 08:13 AM

That would of course be a CATastrophe

Maybe the cat is saying it's 'purrfect'?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 08:57 AM

cataclysmic, or perhaps a cacophony of caterwauling

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 09:08 AM

Is it a mudcat? Saying 'Got you covered'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 09:18 AM

About time we puss this one to bed, I think

Can I just explain how we worked
We started recording at the beginning of the school summer holidays; one of our colleagues, Denis Turner, was a schoolteacher.
By the end of those holidays, we had a list of potential singers that would take at least a year to get through (even if we found no more) so we stopped and took stock of how we were to proceed
We didn't re-start for eighteen months for various reasons; we had come to the conclusion that if three people (eventually reduced to two) with full time jobs were going to do a proper job we would have to be realistic
Instead of 'head-hunting songs, we decided to attempt to give them a context by talking to the singers at length by spending more time with them
Most of them we got to know personally and some, like Mikeen McCarthy and Mary Delaney, became close friends
We eventually arrived at a situation where, when they were inevitably evicted from their they would phone us to tell us where they were.
We met first met Mikeen MacCathy on the outskirts of West London and last recorded him on the Hackney Marshes, to the extreme East
Eventually, when John Major's Government abandoned their responsibility of providing sites for Travellers, which sent them all scattering to the four winds, we continued to record Mikeen, first in Norfolk and eventually on the outskirts of Bristol, where he died in 2005
We were recording friends - if we hadn't been, we could have got five times the number of songs, but a fraction of the information they gave us
We don't regret having taken the decision we did - almost as good as not voting for Tony Blair!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 10:13 AM

I think the cat is gingering up the discussion.

Because they think they can sell more that way.
By using a pre-existing title rather than, say, the snappier 'English Folk Song'?

That alternative would open a can of worms about ethnic ownership that Roud would have not have wanted to get tangled up in.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 11:20 AM

the cat is gingering up the discussion

OK, Jack, I get your point, and the previous one about publisher power, and I don't wish to cast aspersions on anything Derek has told us here, or Steve Roud has said. It's just that the title has struck me as odd ever since the book launch. If it had been my book (and I do realise it never could have been) I think I'd have done everything in my power to avoid using the same title as Lloyd, and quite probably Steve did, to no avail. Let's leave it there.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 11:36 AM

"What the lady with her notebook and pencil was doing was eavesdropping"

I was about to quote the story of Percy Grainger hiding under an elderly singer's bed to collect a song surreptitiously, but on checking it proves to be a myth, debunked amusingly by C. J. Bearman in his article on Grainger.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 03:17 PM

Lovely pic, Richard!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 03:43 PM

"but on checking it proves to be a myth"
Apparently as was the one about Kennedy asked an elderly lady singer if she has ever been bedridden, received the reply "Yes, and table-topped"
Don't you just wish these stories were true!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 04:40 PM

Ethel Grinsdale was one of our favourite singers with a sparkle in her eye and a large repertoire. She sang us her singular version of 'An Acre of Land' very popular in the area. We told her we recorded a completely different version from John round the corner a couple of doors away. When we went back a few weeks later she sang us the same song but with extra verses. She'd been round the corner and pinched some of John's verses.


I'd just recorded a version of Lord Bateman in Hull so naturally I asked Ethel if she had heard the song. Without pausing for breath she sang us, 'Lord Bateman was, he was, he was, Lord Bateman was, a bloody fool!'


Many of our singers had not had any audience for their songs for 30-40 years or more and were unanimously delighted to have someone take an interest, and even more delighted that their songs were going to be recorded for posterity and sung to audiences again.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 04:46 PM

I know this is cheating but...…..

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 04:46 PM

1200

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 05:14 PM

Re Gammon, Atkinson, Boyes & Harker, Jim wrote: "I'm not aware that any on the top list (not sure about Vic) spent any real time questioning traditional singers face-to-face - if they have, I have come across no accounts of it."

None of the above is a song collector, so this is hardly surprising - you could say the same of F J Child, but that wouldn't disqualify him as a ballad scholar.

Dave Atkinson has however published some fascinating material regarding the 'backstories' that singers interviewed by collectors used to contextualize their songs. His account of the 'Shakespeare's Ghost' version of 'Unquiet Grave' is intriguing and rather moving.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 08 Jul 18 - 05:59 PM

Vic Gammon has always performed. That seems important.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jul 18 - 02:09 AM

"but that wouldn't disqualify him as a ballad scholar."
No, of course it wouldn't Brian, but it would limit his scope of information, as it would all academics
My point has been, from the beginning, that our assessment of folk song has to be based on a sum of all knowledge and opinion
If we don't attempt that, the further in time we move from our living traditions, the less becomes the likelihood of reaching a satisfactory conclusion
I've always been amused by the "a camel is a horse designed by I committee" saying, but I've never really believed it.
I can't help but remind people that Child's scholarship has come into question here when it has suited people's arguments to do so.

I believe that a great number of opportunities have been lost by treating our understanding of folk-song as a fashion item and replacing one theory by another, rather than incorporating them all into a grand whole - I think that the former my be what is happening here.
An example; when Sharp and his colleges were doing their bit for folk culture, a popular concept was the 'communal origins' theory - 'Some Conclusions' advocates it to a degree, shortly afterwards, Gummere wrote about it at length.
Next minute - pouf - it was gone
Three quarters of a century later groups of Irish Travellers were found to be composing their own folk songs communally within a still living tradition - the same appears to have been the case in rural Ireland

For me, this is the importance of MacColl's 'Song Carriers' statement; all aspects of song-making need to be examined
Once you start insisting on definititive 90% plus origins based on one single theory of song-making, advocating for any other aspect is pissing in a very high gale.
I think it's time to move on from single-minded theories and unassailable academics and genuinely start to co-operate to pool our ideas.

"Vic Gammon has always performed. That seems important."
I agree absolutely Pseu; I think it is when you put the songs in our mouth and actually taste the flavour, it is then you come to realise the thought and emotion that is gone into their making

I think that, had Bert Lloyd come onto the research scene later, when younger singers in the revival were actually thinking about the songs they were singing, he would have been a better scholar than he was; as it was, he was one of the best popularisers of serious folk song I ever came across.
MacColl got a lot of things wrong about his songs, but he got far more right about them - he did his homework and he put the results into their singing

I found some of the booklets of notes that came with the early albums - Folkways, Riverside and to a lesser extent but still high up the scale, Topic, almost as enjoyable as the albums themselves.
On the other hand, I know of researchers who sing who leave me cold, sometimes on both aspects of their work

Must go - shower - breakfast - Codeword and off to a singing workshop
Have a great day all
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 09 Jul 18 - 08:20 AM

Once you start insisting on definitive 90% plus origins based on one single theory of song-making

That isn't based on a theory (unlike the "everything was created by the common people" dogma). It's based on all the available evidence.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jul 18 - 08:54 AM

The claim is that that percentage was created outside the communities - there is no evidence whatever to even begin to back that up
Our knowledge of the oral tradition dates back only to the end of the 19th century
I have no problem with the suggestion that that many songs appeared on broadsides but that doesn't prove that they first appeared there
Steve Gardham has accepted thaat broadside makers were taking songs from the tradition, but there is little sign of that in his claims
We actually recorded a ballad sheet seller who described taking his father's songs to the printer and reciting them over the counter so they could be sold around the markets
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 09 Jul 18 - 10:28 AM

I keep, occasionally, dipping into this thread. And something recently caught my eye. One of the reasons that I stopped collecting songs (and began working in the so-called art-world)was because of a conversation that I had with a couple of academics. Basically they said that as I had never studied folk music at university I was not qualified to speak on the subject and that I should cease do so. The same applied to my writing about the subject. Frankly, I felt rather let down by people who I believed should have shown some encouragement. Over the years I have been approached by several people who were working on university degrees in folk music and I have always tried to help them - by allowing them to use some of my recordings in their dissertations etc. Now, if anyone rings me, I just put the phone down! This probably sounds like sour grapes, but it is really a sadness that things have come to this. When I first started getting interested in folk music the experts were Ewan MacColl and Bert LLoyd, both self-taught. I got to know Bert very well - a lovely, friendly and ever helpful man. But he was no sooner in his grave before people started criticising him. Over the years I have watched the folk scene turn into something very different from what it was in the 1950's, when I first became aware of the subject. I suppose that this should not surprise me, as change is a condition of all living things. But, like I say, it does sadden me.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Jul 18 - 10:55 AM

Over the years I have watched the folk scene turn into something very different from what it was in the 1950'
i blame agents and the attitudes of some performers who treat the songs and performing as if the only thing that matters is the furtherance of their own career.
Howver,Martin Carthy encapsulated the attitude IN A COMMENT when he described how he was travelling on a train[ in the late fifdties or early sixties] and pete stanleys sister was playing freight train and refused to show him how it was played.So it seems that even back then not everybody was helpful and not everybody shared information or techniques

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Jul 18 - 10:57 AM

to continue, today, in 2018 there are some wonderfully helpful tuition clips some brilliant people who are trying to hwlp otherswith you tube tuition clips, apologies for thread creep

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 09 Jul 18 - 01:04 PM

Is it likely that music-makers in the past were very much different from those today? Of course music-making (as opposed to passively consuming music) has become restricted to a much smaller proportion of society, but that still spans all social classes. Entirely empirically, it seems to me that far more people perform songs which have been written by others than are composers themselves. Whilst composition can be learned, up to a point, it takes a certain spark which not all singers and musicians have, and I would say most do not. We only have to look around us to see that whilst we may all be capable of turning out the occasional song or tune, only a handful are doing so on a regular and consistent basis.

I have no evidence for the actual ratio, but to say that maybe 5%-10% of all singers and musicians are composers seems about right to me. I don't believe that essential spark would have exhibited itself any differently amongst previous generations. This suggests to me that the majority of singers, across all classes, have always been reliant on a small number of composers to supply them with songs.

Looked at this way, the claim that most folk songs were written by outsiders is less surprising. Otherwise we would have to believe either that the working classes were somehow isolated from other musical influences and could rely for songs only on what could be created from within their own communities, or else that they were somehow disproportionately gifted when it came to composing songs. Roud shows how the first was not the case, and the second seems unlikely simply on normal statistical distribution grounds.

I don't think such a ratio would be thought surprising for the music played by the middle and upper classes. Although there would have been some who composed for themselves, most of what they performed would have been by professional composers. Why should the sources of folk music be different? What characterises folk song is not where it came from but what then happened to it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Jul 18 - 01:57 PM

Although there would have been some who composed for themselves, most of what they performed would have been by professional composers"
OCarolan springs to mind, a composer who relied on upper class patroinage

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,uniformitarianit
Date: 09 Jul 18 - 02:33 PM

Is it likely that music-makers in the past were very much different from those today?

Way, way back in this discussion (4 Nov 2017) I asked

Do those who make an academic study of these things have anything similar to the geologists concept of "uniformitarianism"?

If so the recent evidence that those at the 'humblest' levels of society do write songs allows us to ask "do we have any evidence that 'ploughboys, milkmaids, weavers, etc, ' didn't write songs?" rather than having a strict requirement for evidence that they did.

I can't remember how far I was through the book at that point, but on finishing it I was left with the feeling that music-makers were much the same in the past as now.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jul 18 - 03:38 PM

What Mike says - than really needed saying
Thanks to Ewan, Bert, Bill Leader and Mike himself, our generation were given access to a world we would never have known existed - and we got great pleasure from if (some of us who survived what came after, still do)
I
t was Mikes generosity when we both lived in Manchester that awoken my desire to learn from the old singers and they, in their turn convinced me that their claim to the songs they sang were fully justified
Nobody hes conceded one inch that the old singers might have made the songs yet have offered no explanation why they didn't
It seems to me that some people don't want them to have made them - all I can say is that it's a pity people were never able to spend time with them

By the way - regarding 'music making' - this tends to ignore the fact that as far as songs are concerned, we are being invited to share ideas and experiences, not watch musical performances
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 05:54 AM

"Nobody hes conceded one inch that the old singers might have made the songs yet have offered no explanation why they didn't"

I am quite happy that old singers might have made the songs.

But I also think that people singing songs *might* not always be clear about the origins of those songs. An example may be some friends of Irish origin who sometimes sing The Mountains of Mourne and I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen because their parents, who were born in Ireland, sang these songs. They regard them both as Irish. And given the context in which they were passed on, perhaps they were.

The first was written by somebody from an Anglo-Irish landlord family called Percy French. His family appears to have bought land from the Trustees of Irish Forfeitures. According to wiki he also wrote Abdul, Abulbul Amir.

The second was written, again according to wiki, by Thomas P. Westendorf in 1875. (The music is loosely based on Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Flat Minor Opus 64 Second Movement).

In spite of its German-American origins, it is widely mistaken to be an Irish ballad. ... It's in the form of an "answer" to a popular ballad of the time, "Barney, Take Me Home Again," composed by Westendorf’s close friend, George W. Brown, writing under the nom de plume of George W. Persley.

I found out about these origins accidentally while searching for chords to accompany the songs.

I have to disagree with Jim's final comment on 'music making'. These occasions were not poetry recitals or storytelling demonstrations. For me, the clue is in the word 'song'.

It is clear to me that music can and does express ideas and experiences, though how we interpret its messages will be culturally determined, and vary through time. I guess that how much people care about which tune they are singing will change over time. As Roud and Bishop point out somewhere, certain sorts of tune became associated with certain sorts of topic over time.


If you make up a song, it has to fit to some extent to a new tune or you have to improvise a tune for it. And if you are singing something based loosely on Mendelsshon, then the music gives a clue about dating.

I cannot help also wondering whether, if a friend with a clear interest in song lyrics enjoys hearing lots of lyrics, this is what you will offer them. If that friend's interest had been in tunes, you might offer something else. Just wondering.

Some of the early collectors were rather more interested in music and tunes than in words. Whereas, as I understand it, Child had little or no interest in words, being an expert in philology and medieval English literature, including Chaucer. I think Sharp may be an example of a collector interested in the music. There are some interesting passages in *Roud's book* about the relationship between words and music as discovered by some song collectors. For example, some tradition bearers, it seems, simply could not hum the tune, they had to sing the song. Some had to be moving about doing various jobs before they could/would produce the words.

Howard's point about early singers being isolated within their communities is interesting, but I guess we don't know. My thought is that in Medieval England (I am English, so I focus on that) there was a feudal system and 'peasants' were tied to their feudal lord, who might have been one of the powerful monastaries which owned and managed the farming of much of the land. I'm guessing that in the latter case they might have had some religious music around them. I'm guessing that servants in the great halls would have heard whatever music went on at banquets. They'd move about a bit if participating in some power struggle or other, I guess.

Also, the terms 'ploughboy' and 'milkmaid' seem to me somewhat romantic. I would be thinking a song with these characters in might be post-medieval or at best very late medieval (?). I imagine it took a strong man, rather than a boy, to handle a medieval plough, and ploughing was just one of many tasks to be done over the year. Not saying Howard is romanticising, just aware of how words conjure up images which may muddy our thinking.


This, just maybe, is one area where, say, an academic with an interest in history can clarify matters, by sharing with us what is known about social and economic history.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 06:33 AM

Jim wrote -
"It seems to me that some people don't want them to have made them"

... and by his first them he is referring to the 'traditional singers' and by the second them he means the 'traditional songs'.

My main objection to this would be that we are are not dealing with what people want to believe. Roud's book makes it clear that he is following the modern academic approach to historical study when the researcher concentrates on evidence that can be quantified and not on any conjecture or personal preference. If anyone approached this subject saying, "I want to believe...." etc.etc. then they would find that their position would be difficult to maintain. The gap between "Belief" and "Knowledge" is a wide one based on different approaches to learning.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 07:13 AM

Vic: I agree generally that Roud is trying to focus on what we have evidence about.

On the interlinks between non-literate and literate in terms of traditional singing, I recently came across a piece which demonstrates convincingly (to me, anyway) that a song collected from a non-literate traveller, whose father was also non-literate originated in a Broadsheet.

http://www.mustrad.org.uk/letters.htm

The piece provides examples of the range of methods used to reach the conclusion, which I found interesting, as I had been wondering about these. An example is good to see, and hopefully, relevant to the debates on this thread.

Maybe, since this is a controversial subject, Roud might helpfully have spent longer discussing the methods behind some of the quoted percentages. Sorry if I said this before. Trying to bring the discussion back to Roud.


I discovered the mustrad site recently; bit of a mixed bag, maybe, but vast amounts of fascinating material is there.

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 08:58 AM

"originated in a Broadsheet. "
Is there any evidence that the broadside hack didn't get the song from the oral tradition?

"the modern academic approach to historical study"
I'm afraid that very phrase has set my hackles rising
This seems to be exactly what Mike and I experienced - "I am an expert and my methods are unassailable because my methods are......."
As we are dealing with something centuries old, that requires taking into account all past research, not screwing it up and throwing it in the waste-paper basket, as seems to have happened far too much here
Until somebody provides firm evidence that these songs either didn't or couldn't have originated from the people whose experiences are described in the song. this remains an unproven theory - nobody ever has
No more convinced than I was at the beginning
Some people have always wanted to believe that the folk were incapable of making the ballads - that has now been extended to the songs

I've just returned from a head-spinning workshop on Irish language singing and song-making
Even apart from the few Child ballads that have passed into Irish tradition, the parallels of uneducated peasant poets making some of the most complex and beautiful songs, and the transmission of those songs if staggering.
One graat morning - another four to go
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 09:13 AM

“ploughboys, mikmaids, miners and weavers” is a quote from Roud. In the context it is used I think it could be read as something like ‘the common folk’.( am not going to stirr the pot with a full quote...)

‘Medieval ploughs’ - with the sort of ploughshare you could beat a sword into - are still used behind oxen in the developing world. Sometimes by boys.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 09:24 AM

Forgot to say that medieval peasants had to go to church. How much music that put them in touch with would depend on time and place.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 09:32 AM

Pseu
Can I suggest you look out Steve Gardham's script - I think he distils the argument down pretty well
It's linked above - I'm sure Steve or someone with guide you to it
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 09:54 AM

originated in a Broadsheet.
Is there any evidence that the broadside hack didn't get the song from the oral tradition?

One reference point is whether the existence of the song was ever noted before it was published.

This does sometimes happen, as with "The Braes of Balquhidder" or the song that was the model for "Johnny Cope", but it isn't anywhere near as common as the situation where nobody at all had ever heard of it before Stationer's Hall did.

And I don't see why you want to insult someone like John Hamilton (who wrote the first known version of "The Braes of Balquhidder") by calling him a "hack".

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 10:08 AM

Jim wrote:-
"Is there any evidence that the broadside hack didn't get the song from the oral tradition?"
No there isn't - not in many cases anyway.
Is there any evidence that the broadside hack did get the song from the oral tradition?
No there isn't.

Therefore until this can be settled one way or another, why don't we stick to what we do know for certain which is that a high percentage of what was passed on and developed in the oral tradition was in print at a very early stage in the circulation of what we now call folk songs. Surely, this could summerise the thinking behind the book under discussion?

In addition, I would say that you are confusing and conflating two attitudes expressed in this thread towards academia:-
1] That you and Mike and others that I could mention have met with objections and obfuscation by degree-qualified 'experts' to your considerable song-collecting achievements. To me and I would imagine to others who have posted here this attitude is despicable and smacks of jealousy and smugness.
2] That modern academic approaches call for a rigour and backing of evidence in contemporary research and that whilst respecting the achievements of pioneers in their field, that the same levels of severe examination should be applied in reassessing and evaluating earlier publications and attitudes. To me and I would imagine to others who have posted here this is entirely admirable.

Pseu wrote
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/letters.htm

The piece provides examples of the range of methods used to reach the conclusion, which I found interesting, as I had been wondering about these. An example is good to see, and hopefully, relevant to the debates on this thread."

Pseu's link to Musical Traditions (which I have made clickable) takes us to a short series of posts under the title of Old Songs. If this is what he is referring to, I am not sure that that it reaches any conclusion, surely that we were just sharing information on a particular song in the way that also happens on Mudcat (with Jim Carroll being a notably useful contrubutor to these).
Also my description of the MT website would substitute "essential" for your "bit of a mixed bag, maybe,"

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 04:52 PM

Hi Vic,
I assume what Pseu meant by 'a mixed bag' is that there is a wide range of articles by a mixture of academics, scholars, enthusiasts. None of the people involved pretend to be experts and the papers are not peer-reviewed in the normal sense of that, a bit like Wikipedia perhaps, or the DT.


Jim, Not sure what you mean by 'Steve Gardham's script' but thanks for the plug anyway. If I can be of any help I will be. Probably the most lucid explanation I have written on the subject is the intro to the new edition of 'The Wanton Seed' 2015. Unfortunately it's now OOP until the publisher decides there's demand for a new run. There is something like it, with examples, on the TSF website, Tradsong.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 05:04 PM

I was wondering about that link to mustrad letters. I think that can't be the dicussion that GUEST,Pseudonymous intended to point us to. Please come back here and try again.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 05:43 PM

“ploughboys, milkmaids, miners and weavers” is a quote from Roud. In the context it is used I think it could be read as something like ‘the common folk’.

If that isn't a direct quote from Lloyd (I don't have the reverence material in front of me) then I suspect it's a case of Roud paraphrasing him. Incidentally, I'd always assumed 'ploughboys' were young men in their physical prime, who would have had no difficulty manipulating agricultural equipment.

Agree 100% with both comments of Vic's re the academic approach.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 08:48 PM

"by calling him a "hack"."
The common name for broadside sellers - you mean
I am not referring to one individual writer - not have I ever implied that no songs produced on the broadside presses were hacks
This asise, you put the situation in a nutshell Jack with your phrase "the first known version" - does that mean there were no previous versions?
Ay - there's the rub.
"Braes of Balquidder" is an interesting example - the MacPeake's claimed ownership of the song and said it originated with their family, they believed it so strongly that they took the case to court.
I'm not suggesting for one moment they were right, but it is an indication that these songs were claimed
This is one description of the tangled history of the song (which I always attributed to Tannehill)

"Wild Mountain Thyme" (also known as "Purple Heather" and "Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go?") is a Scottish folk song that was collected by Francis McPeake 1st, who wrote the song himself for his wife. The McPeake family claim recognition for the writing of the song. Francis McPeake is a member of a well known musical family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The lyrics and melody are a variant of the song "The Braes of Balquhither" by Scottish poet Robert Tannahill (1774–1810), a contemporary of Robert Burns. Tannahill's original song, first published in Robert Archibald Smith's Scottish Minstrel (1821–24), is about the hills (braes) around Balquhidder near Lochearnhead. Like Burns, Tannahill collected and adapted traditional songs, and "The Braes of Balquhither" may have been based on the traditional song "The Braes o' Bowhether"."
The implication here is that it was adapted from the oral tradition and passed though numerous adaptations.
Your Jacobite poet takes us back to Steve Gardhams original reaction to the entire repertoire from 'Frog and the Mouse' to a song about an Irishman killed in the Birmingham Blitz during W.W.2. - Steve has now adapted his argument to those song made in the latter half of the 19th century
What are we talking about here - all the repertoire or Just Steve's adaptation.?

Vic
If you want firm evidence there isn't a shred of it either way, so all the modern scientific methods have nothing to work on apart from tracing first printed versions unless you have any way of showing these to be the first, first printing means nothing whatever.
That the broadside writers were poor poets is beyond question - I assume that Ashton, Ensworth, Hindley, et-al chose to fill their collections with the best current examples - the common feature of all these collections is that they are overwhelmingly clumsily unsingable doggerel - that's why their creatrs were referred to as hacks(said to be adapted in the 18th century the description of the overworked 'hackney carriage' - "tired, overused, unoriginal, trite; (similar to jaded and nag)
(Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins)
Child put this somewhat more succinctly and less diplomatically when he described the outpourings of these people as "veritable dunghills"

Were such writers capable of making our folk songs ?
Not in my opinion, they weren't

One of the features of writers writing on subjects outside their own experience is to produce pastiche - plenty of examples in the broadsides and from the songs of the stage and pleasure gardens - Dibden made his name producing such dross.
Victorian parlour ballads, the Tavern songs listed in the diaries of Charles Rice (1840/50), music hall compositions and the sentimental syrup that has now been given Roud numbers are more of the same.
Comparing these with our folk songs is the only "evidence" we have - circumstantial but far lass so than early published dates.

Adaptation by the oral tradition has been put forward as an explanation/excuse, bu even that is a double edged argument
If the people were capable turning sows ears into silk purses, is that not evidence that they possessed poetic skills capable of making songs?
The subject matter, the familiarity with the vernacular, the apparent 'insider-knowledge' the adversarial sympathies for the characters and their travails... all further circumstantial evidence in favour of common composition.
As far as I am concerned, if working people were capable of making their songs (some of you have paid lip-service for them being able to) then they probably did.

We haven't even begun to tackle th complicated and often contradictory subject of literacy and the attitude to it.

The Irish rural poor apparently produced many hundreds of songs describing their lives, emotions and aspirations - in the worst of circumstances
What was wrong with their English and Scots counterparts that they didn't do the same?

It seems to be very much a case of some people here being reluctant to believe they did - nothing more
Enough - off to bed
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 12:36 AM

The Irish rural poor apparently produced many hundreds of songs describing their lives, emotions and aspirations - in the worst of circumstances
What was wrong with their English and Scots counterparts that they didn't do the same"
Jim, since i came to irelnd many years ago m,I have been struck, by how literate many ordinary working class irish people are compared to their corresponding English counter parts,I am not sure of the reason but it is a phenomenon, could it stem from the days of hedge schools?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 02:58 AM

"I have been struck, by how literate many ordinary working class irish people are compared to their corresponding English counter parts"
In pockets of rural Ireland the native spoken language was Irish, which was forbidden or discouraged in many areas
Within the lives of several people we knew we were told of a practice of 'the stick', where a child in an Irish speaking area had a short stick hung around their neck, which was notched with a penknife by the teacher each time the pupil was heard speaking Irish - at the end of the week it would receive that many strokes of the cane.

During the Famine, education became a religious weapon in some areas; 'Souper" schools were set up by some chuchmen
The Children would receive a bowl of watery soup if they could persuade their parents to attend non-Catholic schools
There's such a school within sight of our house - it's now (rather symbolically) a business for changing worn tyres.

After independence there was a concentration of education, which is now considered pretty important - most kids learn are educated bi-lingually though there is a running debate on whether Irish is important enough a subject to continue teaching it.
We were discussing the hedge-schools yesterday in the song-workshop, and their influence in Irish song-making
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 03:40 AM

Sorry
That should read "persuade their parents to attend non-Catholic schools"
"persuade their parents to attend non-Catholic services

Re. Braes of Balquither
Tannahill, who was linked to the song, was a weaver
Regarding my calling John Hamilton a hack, I found this interesting piece of correspondance on the song
Craig Cockburn has dealt with "Auld Lang Syne". "The Wild Mountain
Thyme" was claimed as original by Francis McPeake; in fact he did no
more than slightly adapt "The Braes of Balquhidder", a song by Robert
Tannahill from the first decade of the 19th century using a tune called
"The Three Carles o' Buchanan". That song was repeatedly anthologized
throughout the next 150 years. *But*, what nobody seems to have noticed is that Tannahill's song is an adaptation of one in John Hamilton's
"24 Scots Songs" published by Watlen in Edinburgh in 1796. Hamilton doesn't say outright that he wrote it himself, either; his more than usually muddled notation suggests he didn't and was transcribing someone else's work. So my guess is that it started out as a Scots folk song of the late 18th century by a now-unknown composer from somewhere in Stirlingshire not so very far from where Craig hails from.

That fits in pretty well with the idea that folk songs were regularly making their way into print, I think
Sorry about the mess - in a bit of a rush
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 04:27 AM

I wrote the stuff you just quoted from Craig Cockburn. You and/or Craig left out something else I pointed out at around the same time, that there was a "Braes of Bowhether" fiddle tune published by Bremner around 1750. So something related was floating around before Hamilton was born.

Burns has a few examples of material which must long predate him - "Parcel of Rogues" was first used as a tune name in the 1740s, though the tune itself predates 1700.

But these examples doesn't show that folksongs were "regularly" getting into the broadside press, rather the opposite. They're rarities. If it happened regularly there would be many comparable examples (like, say, the list of sailors' calls in The Complaynt of Scotland). If a song was significant in the culture of the time, it would get mentioned in letters, diaries, chronicles and fiction. (Or in lawsuits, as Roud says).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 04:55 AM

Richard

Sorry if the link did not work or was wrong. As requested I have come back to try again. I can get to the piece by googling. It is called 'From Journalism to Gypsy Folk Song. The Road to Orality of an English Ballad' and it is by Tom Pettitt. I first encountered it on Mustrad but it seems to me on various sites.


Trying a blue clicky: http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/warwick.htm

Pettitt argues convincingly that the words of the song derived largely from newspaper accounts of a specific crime, in 1818 Nuneaton. Pettitt narrows it down to a particular written source by noticing an error on both versions. It was an odd case because the thieves pleaded guilty, thus ensuring a harsh verdict. The song was much later collected from the Brazil traveller family who sang many variations of it. Pettitt can therefore study the history of the song and the way that the collected versions vary, and draw conclusions accordingly.

Pettit says '...the original song, “The Lamentation of W. Warner T. Ward & T Williams,” was a broadside ballad, indeed a classic crime-and-execution news ballad opportunistically presented as a “last goodnight,” ostensibly comprising the confession, regrets and valediction of the condemned criminal(s) on the eve of execution'

Pettitt has traced contemporary newspaper accounts of the indictment and trial, and demonstrates how the writers of the ballad used these in their piece. This is why he calls the piece 'From journalism'.


If I remember aright, he credits Mike Yates for noticing that the Brazil song was more or less the same as the broadside.

This article is not based on 'first printing' data only in claiming a written origin for the song collected from the Brazil family.

When I mentioned ploughboys etc I was taking it from Uniformitarianit's post of July 18th, 2.33. This quoted an earlier post by the same poster, which referred to 'ploughboys, milkmaids, weavers'. I since googled the term 'ploughboy' and it seems to refer to the boy who guided horses pulling a plough, rather than the man who handled it.

This detail may help to date things as early ploughs used oxen, not horses. We could use a dictionary to get an idea of the earliest known use of the word 'ploughboy' but I'm not sure it would get us very far.

Just a thought. But songs about ploughboys and milkmaids, both young people, do suggest to me the romantic pastoral poetry for which there has at several points in time been a fashion. I also stand by my point that the use of the specific words 'ploughboys' and 'milkmaids' reflects romantic thinking about country life. When I did family history, the 19th family who had apparently owned some cows tended to die of tuberculosis. Not so romantic a life. And I am sure that the women of the family did a lot more than milk cows all day; and that ploughing was just one job to be done during a hard agricultural year: the terms smack of romantic views of what was a hard life through the ages. Though milkmaids were believed to be prettier as they were immune to small pox, having had cowpox.

On literacy in Ireland: https://www.nala.ie/literacy/literacy-in-ireland. It says one in six Irish adults has difficulty understanding basic texts. And on page 12 here you will find a comparative chart. Not so much difference between Ireland, Northern Ireland, and the UK then?

Did medieval English peasants really sing at all? Maybe Roud has some evidence on this topic? In which case, yet another good reason to buy this interesting book :) :)

"Your Jacobite poet takes us back to Steve Gardhams original reaction to the entire repertoire from 'Frog and the Mouse' to a song about an Irishman killed in the Birmingham Blitz during W.W.2. - Steve has now adapted his argument to those song made in the latter half of the 19th century What are we talking about here - all the repertoire or Just Steve's adaptation.?" Sorry, I could not quite follow this, but presumably the person for whom it was written will have followed it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 06:16 AM

I'm afraid that some of this continues to go round the same circles.

(from Jim) "That the broadside writers were poor poets is beyond question"

Many of them, yes, but not all of them. Some known poets turned their hands to broadsides on occasion. And the same poet might produce a gem one day, when inspired and having some time to perfect it, and a pot-boiler the next.

(from Jim) "One of the features of writers writing on subjects outside their own experience is to produce pastiche - plenty of examples in the broadsides and from the songs of the stage and pleasure gardens - Dibden made his name producing such dross."

Many songs that might be considered pastiche or dross nevertheless caught on and eventually got collected.

(from Jim) "As far as I am concerned, if working people were capable of making their songs (some of you have paid lip-service for them being able to) then they probably did."

It is not lip-service. Everyone here agrees that working people could and did make songs.

It is however undeniable that, whoever first made a song, if it was printed on a broadside it stood a much better chance of being widely disseminated and therefore a much better chance of eventually being collected than a song that never saw print. Therefore the songs that were collected were bound to be mostly songs that had been printed. That tells us nothing about who created them; and for most of them there probably never will be definite evidence.

There is internal evidence, in the style of wording, in the use of recycled text and in the subject matter, but that is not conclusive. A good novelist gets inside the characters, making them and the events of the story believable, whether or not based on the novelist's personal experiences. Why should it be different for a good broadside writer? Then again, many of the stories are obviously fictional.

(Now re-typing a chunk that disappeared) To throw in one further thought: there are plenty of songs about the press gang, plenty of "last goodnights", plenty about lovers kept apart by parents or getting together despite parents, umpteen broken tokens. There are songs (widely disseminated if not so numerous) about poachers getting caught or not getting caught. But how many about the Enclosures? There are songs about happy marriages and more about unhappy marriages, but how many about the joys and frustrations of parenthood?

There are songs about hardships at sea but how many about back-breaking toil on the land or in the mills and factories? There are songs about strikes (mostly from known 19th century writers) and mining disasters, but how many about routine work? (There are some.)

People have been building dry stone walls for thousands of years, but as far as I know the only extant songs on that subject are modern ones.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 07:10 AM

GUEST,Pseudonymous, thank you for the new link. I have started reading but need to get on with some other things for a bit.

But I have already noticed one mistake. Footnote 1 refers to "Hamish Hamilton": that surely must be Hamish Henderson.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 07:23 AM

If I understand the last part of Richard's post above 6.16 am, he is commenting that, though 'folk songs' are said to express the experiences of the 'folk', they don't tend to deal with the broad spectrum of life experiences.

I like the dry stone wall example, and at a guess the milkmaids and ploughboys, not to mention the 'bonny shepherd lads', may have built some of them!

So it would appear, then, that were some 'unwritten rules' to the effect that some topics were and some were not, suitable for making songs or ballads about. That it isn't simply a case of songs by the people reflecting the experiences of the people. I am thinking that these rules may have changed over time. So you won't find medieval songs about going on strike. Are there any songs about the Black Death?

Jack: Yes, I enjoyed the bit about lawsuits in Roud.

I worry about the aesthetics/folk poets thing. Partly this is subjective. Also because a lot of collected material is 'formulaic' in parts, with floating verses and floating 'bits', as Pettitt's piece makes clear. Also because if you go back to medieval times, ordinary people would have spoken in a variety of dialects, some more influenced by Viking language than others.

I'm thinking we would struggle to understand 'oral' versions of these, leave alone feel able to make aesthetic judgements about them.

And I'm not sure that Anglo-Saxon poetry/song even rhymed: it is said to use alliterative patterning, and to be highly rhthmical, which links to my point that 'music', which often makes use of rhythm, should be taken account of. And then there are the 'kennings'. But once again, we don't know, we can only guess.

I haven't time to link my points more clearly to the debates on Roud. Sorry.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 07:53 AM

Jim again:-
"Vic
If you want firm evidence there isn't a shred of it either way, so all the modern scientific methods have nothing to work on apart from tracing first printed versions unless you have any way of showing these to be the first, first printing means nothing whatever."
Are you not just rephrasing the points that I was making at 10 Jul 18 - 10:08 AM? The only thing that I would disagree with is that first printing means nothing whatever. It does, Jim. It means a lot. If we can trace the date of first publication (and increasingly, we can) then we know a) the latest date that the song was written and b) how the song has changed and developed in the oral tradition since that date. Both facts would be very helpful.

Jim again
"That the broadside writers were poor poets is beyond question - I assume that Ashton, Ensworth, Hindley, et-al chose to fill their collections with the best current examples - the common feature of all these collections is that they are overwhelmingly clumsily unsingable doggerel."
Just as most poetry anywhere is clumsy and pretty awful, but not all. It was the same with broadsides. Just as most newspapers today carry a lot that is totally ephemeral and is quickly forgotten, there are some articles that stick in the mind and are worth re-writing and reprinting. Some broadside writers had the ability to write something that struck a chord, literate singers learned them from the sheet, non-literate singers learned it from them. The song took on a life of its own and changed in the mouths of the singers. That process is what we can study. The broadsheets would only be reproduced if they sold so it was the ones that had the wider appeal that were re-printed and the ones that had somehow struck a chord that reappeared.

Jim again -
"Were such writers capable of making our folk songs ?
Not in my opinion, they weren't"
Once again, Jim, it is not your value judgements, nor your opinion that carries the discussion forward.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 08:41 AM

Wriitten and spoken English are grammatically different. Illiterate people would hear the former second-hand - in England maybe mainly from the King James bible and the prayer books.

People who don’t read or write much often write in an awkward style because they are more used to spoken English.

Is there anything gramatically distinctive about songs thought to have started in an oral tradition? I wonder if Jim’s Traveller songwriters wrote in their vernacular style or in something different.

It is fairly common for kids to have one form of English (or Scots etc) for the playground and another more standard version for the classroom.

Maybe the songs written by the common folk that persisted were written by common folk who were more skilled with language than their peers.

Can we tell anything from the style of language?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 08:54 AM

"it is not your value judgements"
Not "value judgements" Vic, and certainly not mine, but whether the songs are singable or not - that is everything
Their chalk and cheese comparison to our folk songs says everything that needs to be said as far as I am concerned
The overwhelming majority of broadside songs are unsingable - pore through the selected collections of (presumably) the most representative of them and see what I mean.
For the hacks to have written them implies a 'school of writers' attempting to write in a certain way - a geographical impossibility

Sorry Vic - you (and everybody here) is ignoring the uniqueness of fok songs and ignoring Bert's closing question - what are we going to call this bunch of unique songs - or maybe they are not unique
Would you like to be the first to say they are not?

"Some known poets turned their hands to broadsides on occasion."
90 plus percent of them? - I don't think so
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 09:15 AM

The overwhelming majority of broadside songs are unsingable

An even more overwhelming majority of songs created by complete amateurs are even more unsingable.

We know broadside songs were sung, because the street sellers sang them. They were good enough to get a paying clientele.


Can we tell anything from the style of language?

There are a few Scottish songs with a mangled-Gaelic refrain. This never goes along with Gaelic influence in the language used in the main text of the song, and usually the content in English/Scots has no relation to any known Gaelic song either.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 09:18 AM

Sorry Vic - you (and everybody here) is ignoring the uniqueness of fok songs
Would it be unkind to ask you to give a definition of what you mean by 'the uniqueness of folk song' - the sort of definition that we could all agree on?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 09:40 AM

" 'the uniqueness of folk song' "
Without going into personal preferences, I think Bert's question summed it perfectly for me.
Extend his examples to music-hall, Victorian Parlout ballads, early pop songs... and there you have it
I'm not sure whether we can ever agree, but there you have mine
Incidentally - my opinion of 'hacks' is contained in the very word 2hack", the historical description of the output of these writers
Child used the less-diplomatic term 'dunghill' - if I am wrong, I am in good company, and proud to be

"An even more overwhelming majority of songs created by complete amateurs are even more unsingable."
And the unsingable ones never became folk songs as far as I know
"We know broadside songs were sung, because the street sellers sang them."
Not necessarily true Jack
Broadside expert Leslie Shepherd suggested that many of them were never sung - Pepys had a huge collection - I've never read thay he ever gave forth vocally
Isaac Walton described in his 'Compleat Angler' their use as ornaments to be pinned to walls.
We know as little about what was sung and what was not on the streets as we do about pre twentieth century traditional singing - very little.

Sorry - must go; the lady pipers are calling

"Can we tell anything from the style of language?"
Absolutely - the familiarity with vernacular usage says much about the songs as does anything else - as does folk humour
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 10:20 AM

We know broadside songs were sung, because the street sellers sang them.
Not necessarily true Jack
Broadside expert Leslie Shepherd suggested that many of them were never sung

So what? Most of the ones we know about were, because the sellers sang them to get sales, and it was the ones that sold that ended up in libraries. The sales pitch was described by John Gay in a piece I quoted a few weeks ago, and much later (in grim detail) by Henry Mayhew.

Typically a song sheet had three songs on it, and the seller wouldn't have sung all of them, but they would have done the headline number.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 10:21 AM

Jim -
Sorry Vic - you (and everybody here) is ignoring the uniqueness of fok songs and ignoring Bert's closing question - what are we going to call this bunch of unique songs - or maybe they are not unique
Would you like to be the first to say they are not?

It would be helpful, then, to identify what Bert's closing question was - and the context he said it in.
Are you talking about the end of his Folk Song In England? He does not seem to be asking anything about the uniqueness of folk song there. To my mind the most telling sentence in that last paragraph is -

Rather than say 'the folk is dead' and attempt to keep folk song alive as something quaint, antique and precious, let us say, 'the folk is changing' - and song with it and then help what it is changing into.

I can go along with that concept of changing. One interpretation of it could be that this statement is anticipating the approach shown in Steve Roud's book.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 10:33 AM

"The overwhelming majority of broadside songs are unsingable"

I think this depends on the era, Jim. The kind of stuff found in the Pepys and Roxburgh collections of broadsides from the late 17th century is indeed unsingable, at least by today's standards. Excessively long and wordy, sometimes with lines that are very difficult to scan. 19th century broadsides, on the other hand, are much more concise, and often correspond very closely to texts collected in the field.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 10:48 AM

Above Guest was me. Buggered up the name box as well as the italics.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 02:22 PM

"I think this depends on the era, Jim"
Our collection covers the Pepys collection up to the end of the 19th century - pretty comprehensive Brian
You may add doorstep of a set, The Universal Songster to that - hardly a singable song amongst them
That applies ti=o Holloway and Black's 'Later English Broadsides' - a few of them would be poor examples of traditional songs if scrubbed up, but by then, the oral process was on its last legs.

It's been up several times Vic, but 'yer 'ttis again:
""If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'."
The television programme on the tradition made sometime in the eighties when they chose the title 'The Other Music'
That does it for me
If you don't accept that out folk songs are unique, I don't thin we have a point of reference between us

"Most of the ones we know about were, because the sellers sang them to get sales,"
We have very little record of what the broadside sellers sang Jack, or how they sang them - all we have are the published collections, all of which were taken from print rather than from street singers
We actually recorded Irish ballad singer - he took his father's traditional songs and recited them over the counter to a printer, then went off and sold the sheets in the fairs and markets
I can well believe some of the broadsides came from a similar source

This seems to be getting nowhere fast - nobody is giving a reason why they prefer to believe the hacks made them rather than the people
Maybe it's time to go our separate ways
I'm in the midst of people who are a generation away from a living tradition who totally accept that their songs are folk songs in the tue sense
Our music tradition has an ensured future and, hopefully, the song tradition will catch up with it
That hasn't been achieved by adopting the 'singing horse' theory or quibbling about what "folk song" means
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 02:31 PM

This seems to be getting nowhere fast - nobody is giving a reason why they prefer to believe the hacks made them rather than the people"
What are your reasons, Jim, for why you prefer YOUR idea, AND WHAT EVIDENCE DO YOU HAVE THAT YOU ARE CORRECT

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 02:49 PM

> The kind of stuff found in the Pepys and Roxburgh collections of broadsides from the late 17th century is indeed unsingable, at least by today's standards.

Maybe by period standards as well. Relatively few went into tradition (oral or otherwise), and it's likely that the vast majority were rarely (or never) sung at all - at least as printed.

The same goes for the 19th century broadsides, no?

Not to mention 99.99% of songs since.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 03:04 PM

"Jim, for why you prefer YOUR idea, "
It's not "my" idea Dick - it is the idea that has prevailed for centuries and has now done a nosedive among a few
I have selves full of history - what do you have to counteract that?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 06:34 PM

Pseu
I will be presenting a paper which looks at those Music Hall songs that were included in published folksong collections, at the EFDSS/TSF Folksong Conference in November. If you are not already a member membership of the TSF is now free. You can find more info on the Tradsong/TSF website. I have a large collection of original sheet music that relates in some way to folk.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 01:32 AM

I am asking for fact to back up your opinion. To date I have not been convinced by either sides arguments

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 02:54 AM

"The same goes for the 19th century broadsides, no?"
From my experience as a singer look for songs who trawled though interminable numbers of the collections, YES, YES, a hundred times YES
The bulk of them are trite, facile and totally uninspiring - a pale shadow of our traditional songs
This doesn't mean they are valuless - they most certainly are not - they are an important view of past tastes and events.

I have more and more come to realise through the course of these arguments that the suggestion that our folk songs originated from the writers of this (largely) doggerel is unsustainable.
Their relationship with the oral tradition came into its own when that tradition was in severe decline - when the supply of traditionally created songs were drying up and was being replaced by a bombardment of street literature
Add to this the rise of the Music Halls and a commercially produced 'popular music' and you end up with a people who received or even bought their culture as passive recipients - the final nail in the coffin was was the arrival of radio and television

We once went to look for songs in Sam Larner's village, Winterton, and were lucky enough to find a few, and a fair amount of background information.
While we were there, we met a non-singing local man sharing Sam's surname, Jim Larner, who we became friendly with
He told us a story which I think has something to say about this subject

Sam and his friends and fellow fishermen used to meet weekly in the local pub, 'The Fisherman's Return' to sing songs
One afternoon a retired fisherman went in for a pint and saw a strange gadget on the shelf behind the counter
Enquiring what it was, he was told it was something for bringing in talk and musc from London, a "wireless"
The old man reached across the counter with his walking stick and hooked the gadget down to the floor, smashing it to pieces, then he turned around, saying, "we don't want that messing up our Saturday nights"
The landlord got the message and the 'wireless' wasn't replaced.

From our own experiences, when we started to record Travellers, our recording sessions would invariably end up around an open fire where everyone on the site would gather to talk, bargain horses or goods, pass on information, tell stories or sing.
The sites were always a hive of activity, day and night (certainly up to the hour when people went to the pub)
We were forced to stop our work for a period - the night we restated, 18 months later, as we entered the site we were puzzled to discover there was not a soul in sight - not even children - all the vans were lit up with a strange glow - the Travellers had all got portable televisions
From then on, everything we recorded was being remembered from a past oral tradition rather than reccounted from an active one

We didn't spend the same continuous lengths of time in Ireland as our recording was done during annual trips, but we understand from what we've been told that the disappearance of the oral and musical traditions happened in a similar way, with the additional problem of Clerical opposition to folk culture supported by Government collusion.
The Dance Halls Act of the 1940s which replaced first the crossroads dances and later the weekly 'country house gatherings' with the commercial and clerically supervised 'Ballrooms of Romance' rang the death knell of traditional cultural activities.

I have become tired and more than a little insulted to be told that my views during this argument are what 'I wish was true' rather than what I believe to be true based on research and experience.

I believe it to be academic kite-flying to trace published songs to their earlies dates and take that as an indication of how these songs originated.
While print most certainly aided the transmission of songs, it brought with it the risk of freezing them in the form in which they were printed
The increase in the sales of broadsides gradually edged out natural songmaking until it eventually helped to kill it off altogether
The coup de grâce came with the formal seal of ownership being put on songs - the definitive little (c)

Dick - you asked me what evidence I have that I am right
I can't prove anything definitively - nobody can - but that is what I have based by beliefs on, first as a singer getting a taste of the songs by singing them, then as someone with a burning curiosity who was lucky to have met and been helped enormously by people with much more experience, ability and knowledge than me
Finally from thirty years research among field singers
Most importantly, all these experiences have been held together by half a century's reading up the subject

It really is going to take me more than one book which has found it necessary to move the goalposts to encompass songs that have, up to now, been considered totally different in nature and in function from our traditional songs, by some of our finest folk-song scholars for over a century hand a half.

I've shown you mine - now you show me yours - anybody
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 07:49 AM

Jim wrote -
'It's been up several times Vic, but 'yer 'ttis again:
""If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'."
Thanks very much for that, Jim, very helpful. It comes from page 410 of Bert's Folk Songs in England. I'm glad that when I asked you this at 11 Jul 18 - 10:21 AM I also wrote asking for "the context he said it in." because if you look at page 410 the sentence that follows the one that you quote above says:-

In any case no special mystical virtue attaches to the notion of folk song, grand as some folkloric creations may be.

Now, I am paraphrasing here, but I take this to mean that Bert is saying that folk songs do not have a unique quality and yet you have written:-
at 11 Jul 18 - 08:54 AM
Sorry Vic - you (and everybody here) is ignoring the uniqueness of fok songs..... what are we going to call this bunch of unique songs - or maybe they are not unique
and at 11 Jul 18 - 02:22 PM
If you don't accept that out folk songs are unique, I don't thin we have a point of reference between us

I am starting to think that we actually do have a point of reference here an that we are getting somewhere, but it is foundering on your use of the word 'unique' to reference to folk songs. We need to know what you mean by using this word to describe folk songs.
When you were asked:-
"Can we tell anything from the style of language?"
You replied:-
Absolutely - the familiarity with vernacular usage says much about the songs as does anything else - as does folk humour
....but it cannot just be the vernacular because that abounds in Music Hall songs and you would exclude these.
Can you see that if we are to make progress (and I feel that are getting somewhere) that we need you to tell as what in your thinking is unique to folk songs - a quality that is not found elsewhere.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 09:59 AM

The kind of stuff found in the Pepys and Roxburgh collections of broadsides from the late 17th century is indeed unsingable, at least by today's standards.
Maybe by period standards as well. Relatively few went into tradition (oral or otherwise), and it's likely that the vast majority were rarely (or never) sung at all - at least as printed.

And maybe were never intended to be. There is a recurring type of versified polemic which has a named tune, and where knowing the tune carries the ideas along, but which is far too long for any performance. Some of the best of these were by the Chartists in the early 19th century - I have in mind one tremendous attack on the alcohol industry from Northern England around 1840, when the temperance movement was entirely within secular social radicalism and was resisted viciously by the churches (who only picked up the issue a generation later). It's at least as good as anything the Wobblies did, but the guy who wrote it can hardly have expected all 40-odd pages of it to be sung out loud, not least because he was doing a long jail stretch for sedition when it was published.

Less attractively there is a shitload of page-long fine-print Jacobite rants from the early 18th century, which no doubt served a function as a memorable catalogue of grievances, but even the drunkest group of upper-class twats on a binge would have told you to STFU if you tried to air them in public.

It isn't an artistic failure if something like these didn't get into tradition - street directories didn't either, and you can sing them pretty well to psalm tunes.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 11:11 AM

Jack: I feel 'in my bones' that it may not be wholly right to say that 'the churches' 'viciously resisted' the temperance movement, even if the 'viciously' was omitted. Especially not when coupled with the statement that the early movement was 'entirely within secular social radicalism'.

I post as someone whose direct ancestor wrote at the end of the 19th century a lot of anti-alcohol tracts now in the British Library (not songs as far as I know), and his father was a 'chartist' to the extent of signing up to the land allotment thing they had going (but his number never seems to have come up and he didn't get his bit of land). So I sat up and paid attention when I read your post.

So the Seven Men of Preston are said to be the founders of the teetotal movement in the 1830s. I am thinking that at least some of these were in part motivated by religious considerations, even if not operating within the chuch. But if motivated by religious beliefs, then maybe not secular in the sense of 'unconnected with religious beliefs'.

So, though this is massive 'thread drift', interested in your reasoning here. Happy to accept that the long teetotal song you know of was unsingable.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 11:13 AM

I wrote: "The kind of stuff found in the Pepys and Roxburgh collections of broadsides from the late 17th century is indeed unsingable, at least by today's standards... 19th century broadsides, on the other hand, are much more concise, and often correspond very closely to texts collected in the field."

And Lighter repiled: "Maybe by period standards as well. Relatively few went into tradition (oral or otherwise), and it's likely that the vast majority were rarely (or never) sung at all - at least as printed. The same goes for the 19th century broadsides, no?"

Perhaps I should have expressed myself better. Of course I've seen scores of unsingable and generally merit-free broadsides from the 19th century. What I meant was that the C19 broadside versions of collected songs are often both singable and close to the texts as sung.

This doesn't necessarily bear on the issue of origins. However, I'll go back for a moment to my research on 'The Wild Rover', which I've already discussed far above:

Original, unsingable 13-verse C17 broadside is subject to a major edit, resulting in a much more singable 5-verse C19 broadside.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 11:35 AM

I'll go back for a moment to my research on 'The Wild Rover', which I've already discussed far above:

Original, unsingable 13-verse C17 broadside is subject to a major edit, resulting in a much more singable 5-verse C19 broadside.

The original may have been unsingable to an audience possessed of a flabby modern bum, but if you were used to six-hour sermons while seated on a hard pew, a song that kept the moralizing under ten minutes would have come as light relief.


it may not be wholly right to say that 'the churches' 'viciously resisted' the temperance movement, even if the 'viciously' was omitted. Especially not when coupled with the statement that the early movement was 'entirely within secular social radicalism'.

In many cases the churches were closely tied to the big brewers. They not only refused the temperance campaigners the use of church halls (so they had to rally outdoors like the Covenanters), they preached against temperance as an anti-Christian ideology. Maybe not everywhere, but certainly in the big industrial cities where the temperance movement first took off. Churchmen needed guts to take a stand for temperance, though of course some always did.

This continues to the present day, with the Coors family contributing to the American religious right.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 11:43 AM

> And maybe were never intended to be.

You beat me to it, Jack.

Strictly speaking, if a broadside doesn't prescribe a tune we can't be sure that the verses were intended - necessarily - to be sung.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 11:59 AM

What I had in mind is that the same might be true even when a tune IS prescribed. Reading a poem silently with a tune in mind is a different experience from reading it as pure text - and maybe an experience that conveys the meaning better.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 12:09 PM

Jack: I'm happier with 'in many cases'. For example, I found the example of Joseph Brotherton of Salford, mill owner and MP. He was in a nonconformist sect which involved renouncing alcohol.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 12:26 PM

Much of what we are discussing here seems to rest on the FACT that the great bulk of commercial songs should be considered as 'unsingable', 'doggerel', 'too long' etc. Having spent most of my life 'grubbing' through the dross to find the 'jewels' I can absolutely verify this.

However, what you MUST take into account is the obvious point that the bulk of this material was indeed discarded and not retained in oral tradition. You are comparing millions of commercial products with a few thousand that actually went into oral tradition, for a variety of reasons.

Brian makes an excellent point with 'The Wild Rover' and there are plenty of other similar examples.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 12:40 PM

Whilst we're talking about temperance songs, obviously The Wild Rover in all of its manifestations is indeed a temperance song, which gives a delicious irony to its usage as a rip-roaring drinking song even to the extent that it has been used in TV adverts to advertise drinking alcohol.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 12:51 PM

"In any case no special mystical virtue attaches to the notion of folk song, grand as some folkloric creations may be."
Bert does not deny the uniqueness of folk song, on the contrary, his quote underlines just that they are different from other forms - nobody has suggested anything "mythical" about them
On the contrary, they are creations of the "common" people rather that of music created by commerce for profit - that is what makes them unique

Vernacular as used in Music Hall and Stage songs is used for effect - often it mocks the subject rather than reinforces it - 'Oirish' or 'Cheekie-Chappie cockney' - it is usually effected or exaggerated
Music hall 'folk humour (sic) is designed to poke fun at the folk rather than represent them honestly
That happens in literature too, for instance, in the so-called 'Popular Tales' of Samuel Lover and the Black Country tales of G H Gough
Ashtons broadsides are full of such mockery - The Universal Songster is worse.
Quite often broadside caricature extends into outright 'black Sambo' racism
The characters described are caricatures, often bumkins or yokels
I am referring to the natural unexaggerated and often understated speech of our folk songs.

I go along with both Lighter and Jack about the broadsides that were never intended to be sung - I'm taking about those that obviously were

'Wild Rover unsingable 5 verse broadside'
I did a fair amount of research on the song 'The Blind Beggar' which appeared first in print, I think, in the 1600s and was included as a totally unsingable 60 plus verse, two part plus epic in Percy's Reliques
Percy's notes link the ballad to specifical historical events and Pepys writes about dining at an eating house run my the main character

A totally streamlined and cut down to six or seven verse version of this was to be found in abundance among non-litrate Irish Travellers
It has always intrigued me how this leap took place - the Travellers certainly didn't do it
I'm pretty sure later hacks cut down the song for convenience, though I'm not certain where such hard-dressed workers found the time to do so.
If they are the same song (the texts suggest they are), is it not possible that a hack took a popular traditional idea (the poor girl turning out to be not all she seemed) or was it originally a shorter song turned it into a self-indulgent epic?
JIm Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 01:17 PM

Music hall 'folk humour (sic) is designed to poke fun at the folk rather than represent them honestly"
generalising again, the following Music hall songs, in these hard times, the houses in between,theyre moving fathers grave to build a sewer,my old man, moving day. Do NOT poke fun at the folk but represent them honestly.
Jim, please stop talking poppycock. Folk songs are not unique in being not created for profit .Icould give you examples of country songs that were not produced for profit, you may find this hard to believe but it happens to be true, blackwaters, jean ritchie,dark as a dungeon merle travis.and Johnny Paycheck became one of the strongest voices for labor unions with his song “Take This Job And Shove It,” even showing up to labor protests and defiantly singing the song in support of the unionizers. Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill” and “Rated X” supported sexual freedom for women.
Jim you are over simplifying and generalisng again

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 01:18 PM

check mate, jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 01:20 PM

Music hall 'folk humour (sic) is designed to poke fun at the folk rather than represent them honestly

Who went to music halls? Not the 'the folk'?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 01:22 PM

>>>>If they are the same song (the texts suggest they are), is it not possible that a hack took a popular traditional idea<<<<

There are many examples of popular traditional ideas being turned into ballads. In fact this is what most of them are.


or was it originally a shorter song turned it into a self-indulgent epic?<<<<

The evidence points to the contrary when we look closely at the evolution of individual ballads over several centuries. However, the lengthening was very much an indulgence of the ballad editors like Percy, Scott, Buchan, etc.


Example of long into short. Marrowbones common on broadsides early 19thc becomes much shorter Music Hall song 'Johnny Sands'

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 01:31 PM

For a lot of people, country music and patriotism go hand in hand. Thanks to songs like Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless The U.S.A.,” country music earned a reputation as a flag-waving, blue-blooded bastion of American pride.

And they’re not wrong. But what few folks realize is that country music has always been a home to protest music and political rallying cries, too. In fact, country music champions individual liberties, equality and peace as much as it honors American troops and small-town living. Here is another political country song .
John Rich — Shuttin’ Detroit Down

John Rich co-wrote “Shuttin’ Detroit Down” after seeing repeated news stories about the decline of the auto industry in Michigan. He takes a strong anti-bank stance, aiming his pen at the banks who received federal bailouts under then-President George W. Bush. He contrasts it with all the people losing their jobs, particular auto workers and farmers. Kris Kristofferson and Mickey Rourke even starred in the video. Washington eventually bailed out the auto industry too, first with a temporary fix initiated by Bush and later with a comprehensive plan put into place by Barack Obama. Though unpopular at the time, the bailout eventually revitalized the United States auto industry.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 01:31 PM

"The evidence points to the contrary when we look closely at the evolution of individual ballads over several centuries"
So there is evidence that the song did not exist before the 17 century version
I always thing of the nonsensical 'Craigston' conceit of linking a song to an occurrence that is as old as history itself

Marrowbones 19th century
A folk joke that, again, is as old as time itself and appears in early fableu form

"Jim, please stop talking poppycock."
Dick - stop being so boorishly ill manners, especially when your contribution does not merit it
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 01:39 PM

Jim here is yet another social comment song that isnot in the folk genre, which disproves your statement about unique nature of folk song, yesJim ,for once admit you are wrong, and that your statment is not true
I am born today, the sun burns its promise in my eyes;
Mama strikes me and I draw a breath and cry.
Above me a cloud softly tumbles through the sky;
I am glad to be alive.

It is my seventh day, I taste the hunger and I cry;
my brother and sister cling to Mama's side.
She squeezes her breast, but it has nothing to provide;
someone weeps, I fall asleep.

It is twenty days today, Mama does not hold me anymore;
I open my mouth but I am too weak to cry.
Above me a bird slowly crawls across the sky;
why is there nothing now to do but die

Harry Chapin - The Shortest Story.
Jim, you have been proved wrong

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 01:52 PM

"The Wild Rover in all of its manifestations is indeed a temperance song, which gives a delicious irony to its usage as a rip-roaring drinking song"

I've always been amused by that too. Whichever anonymous editor rebranded 'The Bad Husband' of the ballad as 'The Wild Rover' bears some responsibility for that. The C19 song remained a temperance piece, but maybe later ears decided that the 'wild rover' character sounded more of a swashbuckler than a morose alcoholic.

It's also the only one of all those Alehouse Ballads in which the protagonist plays his poor man / rich man trick on the alewife, which I believe was a factor in its subsequent evolution and popularity.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 02:38 PM

Jim writes -
I am referring to the natural unexaggerated and often understated speech of our folk songs.
So is that the factor that makes them unique?
Are there no written songs that show these qualities?
Are there other factors and facts that appear in folk songs and nowhere else? I mean something quantifiable.

If you can provide a list of factors that makes folk songs identifiable from all other genres of song then you are really on to something - but we need the details.

You write
On the contrary, they are creations of the "common" people rather that of music created by commerce for profit - that is what makes them unique.
whilst also writing
If you want firm evidence there isn't a shred of it either way, so all the modern scientific methods have nothing to work on apart from tracing first printed versions unless you have any way of showing these to be the first, first printing means nothing whatever.

If you think that there isn't a shred of evidence about the origin of the songs, are you not contradicting yourself to claim that they are the creations of the "common people". I don't think that you can have it both ways.

Are the undefined "common" people who may or may not have created these songs incapable of thinking that they might make a little honest money by singing them to a broadside publisher?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 03:50 PM

On the subject of the use of vernacular in song, Jim makes a good point:-
Vernacular as used in Music Hall and Stage songs is used for effect - often it mocks the subject rather than reinforces it - 'Oirish' or 'Cheekie-Chappie cockney' - it is usually effected or exaggerated
Music hall 'folk humour (sic) is designed to poke fun at the folk rather than represent them honestly.
Other victims of this brand of humour were the rural working population who were mocked as being 'Yokels' and 'Country Bumpkins' on the early variety and music hall stages. Were these songs taken up by 'the folk'? Yes, they were, though funnily enough evidence points to the fact that it was the rural victims that revelled in singing them.
Every traditional singer that I encountered in the 1960s when I came to Sussex - and there were still quite a number of them then - were happy to sing Never no more for me! alongside The Bold Fisherman (George Belton) - to sing A Suit of Corderoy alongside Thousands of More (The Coppers).... I could give numerous examples.
Thinking outside south-east England, one of the great traveller singers, Belle Stewart, might sing The Twa Brithers and then go into Saft Country Chiel. Do you know that one? It made me laugh so I learned it directly from Belle. Here's the first verse and chorus:-

Ah'm a Saft Country Chiel an ma name's Geordie Weir
Ah suppose ye all wonder what Ah'm daeing here.
Well, it's jist on a visit tae Glesgae Ah've come
Tae see some auld friens Ah've ne'er seen fir sae lang.
(Chorus)
So Ah wish I wis back aince mair in Dalry
Ye wid ne'er see ma face 'til the day that Ah die.
If Ah only could manage the price o' ma train
Ye wid ne'er see ma face back in Glesgae again.

I went to my bookshelves to find a book that I knew that it was in and found an incomplete version printed under the title Geordie Weir but found that the book had the first line of the chorus as:-

So I wish I was back in Smarendale Rye

The book it is in is Till Doomsday In The Afternoon (MacColl & Seeger).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 04:06 PM

"Are there no written songs that show these qualities?"
I'm sure there are Vic , but not among the broadsides I'm familiar with
"Are there other factors and facts that appear in folk songs and nowhere else? "
There are features of folk songs that appear everywhere, but there is no other genre I know of that consistently overwhelmingly represents the folk voice and was identified as genuinely their own by the people that sang them

I have yet to see Yorkshire or Lincolnshire variants of 'Bird in a Gilded Cage' or P'ut a Bit of Powder on it Father' or 'She Sits Among the Cabbages and Peas'
When we (you and I) discussed the 'you know a folk song when you hear one' issue ealier on this thread, your response was that instinct was not enough, or words of that efect
Now, it seems, there is nothing about folk songs that set them apart from other songs

If you "need tha details" we are speaking in different tongues
Bert knew the difference when he posed his question; Walter knew the difference when he went through his repertoire ticking off what were folk songs (and why) and what weren't; Mary Delaney knew the difference when she refused to sing us her Country and Western Songs
Mikeen McCarthy was pretty sure he saw pictures when he sang his folk songs and didn't when he sang his parlour songs
Topic Records knew the difference wen they largely confined their output to one type of song and called their monumental series 'The Voice of the People'
So did Gavin Greig, or Hamish Henderson..... or all those who captured, documented and categorised these songs
Even Steve Roud knew the difference one time when he numbered only folk songs and rejected those that weren't
Are you suggesting that all these people didn't know what they were talking about

This anything goes attitude was once a revival thing when the singers ran out of imagination - - now if seems to have spread to the desk jockeys

"yourself to claim that they are the creations of the "common people""
I have always said that nobody knows who made them and said that we probably never shall - that remains my position
It took a while before Steve to punctuate his claims after he had contemptuously dismissed my MacColl's statement as "starry-eyed-nonsense"
Now you are picking me up for having omitted it
Where were you when I Needed you back then?
Sorry - my point and all my unanswered questions remain
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 04:08 PM

Just like the burlesqued ballads the comic vernacular songs soon found their way into the oral tradition. William and Dinah was soon supplanted in oral tradition by Villikins, its Music Hall burlesque written by Henry Mayhew. Comic burlesques of ballads like 'Billy Taylor', 'Lord Lovel', 'George Collins' and 'Ah, my Love's Dead' quickly became serious songs again when they re-entered the oral tradition. The comic pathos imbued in the stage versions was very weak and often not obvious on the printed broadside and the rural poor accepted them as serious songs. Indeed even the middle-class collectors recorded them as serious songs. They often collected and published 1860s Music hall songs without knowing what they were. 'Country Carrier, Jim the Carter Lad, Watercresses, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, Cruise of the Calabar etc....

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 04:55 PM

One last try -
Jim wrote -
Now, it seems, there is nothing about folk songs that set them apart from other songs
Are you suggesting that I am saying that - because I am not. I am trying to get to the roots of your claim that you made about their 'uniqueness' when you wrote - "Sorry Vic - you (and everybody here) is ignoring the uniqueness of fok songs"
If there is something that is unique then that is exciting and I have been pursuing you for a statement on or list of these special qualities that are not found anywhere in other song - but it is not forthcoming. It is not enough to list the people who in your opinion - 'knew' what a folk song is (Bert, Walter, Mary Delaney, Hamish, Gavin Greig). It's the nature of the unique qualities that you claim that I am pursuing without success. I stand by my former claim that you quoted "that instinct was not enough" Neither is what I would call the insiders' mystique of "these people knew...." enough and I would still maintain that when A.L. Lloyd wrote "In any case no special mystical virtue attaches to the notion of folk song" he was expressing this in different words.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 04:58 PM

Yes, they were, though funnily enough evidence points to the fact that it was the rural victims that revelled in singing them.

Just as the saucy and 'fat ladies' seaside postcards mocked the people who bought and posted them (or at least, they mocked the people next along on the beach). And that 'regional' TV soap operas that caricature people are popular in those regions - everyone knows someone like that.

People are not alays as 'precious' as commentators from outside their group, especially those taking care not to cause offence (you could say 'politically correct'), may think

Not that care is not needed, as the some responses to Jim's friendly 'bunch of scuffs' comment indicate. Really, if someone can misinterpret that they can misinterpret a line from a song.

Why shouldn't a milkmaid or ploughboy enjoy the idea of a rural idyll painted for the pleasure gardens or have a laugh at a characature of someone like someone they know - or even themselves if done sympathetically.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 05:36 PM

"but it is not forthcoming."

Yest it is Vic and it has been from the very beginning
If we are talking about the same music we have been involved in it long enough for it not to be necessary to deman I should spell it out
Folk song is unique for what it is - folk song - the voice of the people
Bert's question is succinct enough - he indicates there are differences and wrote a book on those differences - do you really want me to summarise that book?
The opinions of those I listed most certainly do count - they based their work on the folk songs I recognise as s=uch and rejected the ones Roud has inclued in his re-definition
If you don't understand that, I af far too old to learn a new language
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 06:09 PM

We are coming full circle again. Back to the beginning.

The questions being shied away from: Is the body of folk song a finite thing? Does it have a hard and fast definition? Do we use the 54 descriptors? Are those descriptors finite? Can we say where the boundaries lie between one song and another? Can we agree on any of it?

>>>>Folk song is unique for what it is - folk song - the voice of the people<<<<
Shaped by the people perhaps, but created by the people, much more of a minefield.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 06:37 PM

I'm not sure that words arranged in verses so that they can be sung to 'strophic' music and in lines with patterns of rhyme can be described as 'natural'. 'Conventional' would appear to be a better word. Jim provided some examples of internal rhyme above which make this point, for me.

Reference has been made to Bert's question, as posed at the end of his book. Bert Lloyd asks a number of rhetorical questions at the end of his book. For example, he asks if the makers of 'The coal-owner and the pitman's wife', and other modern workers' songs might be seen as intermediaries between an old tradition and a new.

He appears to answer at least some of these questions with a quotation from American musicologist, Charles Seeger. This refers to a 'more stabilized society' that we may hope is coming into being, and to the selecton of a 'new, more universalised idiom' for this society. Seeger says instead of attempting to keep folk song alive as something 'quaint ...' we should accept that it is changing, and 'help what it is changing into'. I am assuming this sort of attitude fitted with Lloyd's left wing approach, though one is tempted to mischievously read the 'help' as a coded reference to his own tinkerings.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 06:53 PM

" left wing approach"
Why "left wing"
I met Charles Seeger several times - I got the impression that he was as left wing as Bert, even more so
"Does it have a hard and fast definition? "
It defines a long-dead phenomenon so it can only be redefined by adding fresh information
You can't re-deine the plays of shakespeare ot Elizabethan madrigals - why should you be able to re-deinne folk songs
If folk song creation should miraculously rise from the dead, that would be a different matter
You have attempted to do the equivalent of Shakespearean plays by throwing the works of Johnson, Webster, Beumonont and Fletcher et al into the mix
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 07:16 PM

Steve: You are right to try to ask questions being shied away from.

I am coming round to thinking that the idea of 'folk music' is what they call a 'social construct'. This is perhaps why we have problems defining it.

And from the outset, as far as I can see, people on both sides of the Atlantic have had different ideas about what this is and about how it should be interpreted, so that some early US folklorists viewed African American folk song as providing an insight into the racial difference they so firmly believed existed.

Definitional questions (how does it arise, individual or collective, Barry's 'communal re-creation' theory; how is it passed on) seem to have been into thinking about this subject from the start. I think this is perhaps why it is so tricky to discuss it.

I think Roud attempts to address this complexity when he imagines a diagram with overlapping circles, rather like a complicated Venn diagram of some sort.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 03:33 AM

"This is perhaps why we have problems defining it. "
Up to farly recently definition hasn't been a problem - this really is a new kid on the block as far as us veterans are concerned
This cultural self-imposed myopia started with a revival that had apparently become bored with the traditional repertoire and wished to encompass other genres in their 'folk club' evenings; nothing wrong with that if you had audiences who liked big ballads and Victorian tear jerkers'.

As a frequent visitor to fok clubs in the sixties and seventies I was for a time prepared to listen to all sorts, within reason, but eventually it came to the situation that you often went home from a folk club without hearing a folk song.
I stopped going to clubs and so did many thousands of other folk song lovers - the ccene took a nose dive and hundreds of clubs disappeared - as did those who had formerly attended them
The folk venues had transmogrified into something we, as individuals, could no longer put a name to.
Unfortunately, the organisers continued to (often very aggressively) continued to call their clubs 'folk' - there had been a hostile takeover of our 'Other Music'

Those of us who continued to expect to heat folk songs at folk cubs were called 'Folk Police' or 'Folk Fascists' or 'Purists' or 'Finger-in-Ear'
We have now reached the stage that, on a forum that claims to be about "Traditional Music and Folklore Collection" we cannot discuss folk song definition - it has become a no-go area

We have a workable definition; as flawed as it mat be it is a reasonable rule-of-thumb to our music - "54" has become a term of abuse and contempt
Instead of repairing the flaws, any attempt at defining it has been totally abandoned - it has become a music without a name, "unless you accept "singing horse music" (based an an apocryphally-credited old joke)

Our music is as well-researched and documented as any other, possibly better
I have many hundreds of books discussing the features and peculiarities of folk song, lore, narratives, dance music.... (all related disciplines)
Up to the eighties, folk song had its own clear identity which was reflected in clubs, records, literature, shops full of goods... (an entire cultural and at times, thriving movement)
Now it a "dog and a cane and a bell" to identify it.

I fell under the influence of Ewan MacColl's singing in the early 1960s - later, when I got to know him, I fell under the influence of his ideas on folk song
In the early days he would insist that whatever happened folk song would never die.
Pat and I carried out an extended six month interview with him in the early 1980s - by then he had adapted to "Folk song will only die if it falls into the hands of people who don't like or understand it" - I'll drink to that never happening every time

Significantly MacColl is another no go area on this "Traditional Music and Folklore Collection" forum, and if things go on as they are, so will Child and Sharp and Lloyd and Lomax...... and all those dedicated and talented visionaries who gave us this wonderful cultural phenomenon
I hope I'm not around to witness that particular book-burning

When you say there is a problem defining folk song - please spaek for yourself - some of us don't have that problem
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 04:51 AM

Jim,please define folk song

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 05:25 AM

please define folk song

Aargh, no, not that!

I think Jim's conflation of the 'print origins' theory with the practices of English folk clubs since the 1980s muddies the water. The people who preferred to hear American singer-songwriter or modern pop music in their folk cubs would not have given a FF about whether folk songs originated as broadsides, and by the same token Steve Roud doesn't give that kind of music house room.

Roud and '1954' are in broad agreement over what makes songs 'folk' and that is based on the way the songs were used in communities where singing was still actively practiced.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 05:36 AM

Can he define it

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 06:30 AM

Has anyone written a social history of song in communities where singing was still actively practiced during the 20th century. That is, after the period after that covered by Roud?

What are the differences, socially, between singing on the cart coming back from market in 1755 and in the back of charabanc coming back from a works outing to Southport in 1955?

Why do people 'draw the line' where they do? There seem to be many times where one can pick point to a significant change - Jim's account of Travellers getting TV in the 1960s, recorded music in the 1920's (+/-), change in farming following the WW1, Music Hall in the towns, the gradual move of populations from country to town etc.

Where will people 'draw a line' through communal singing in 100 years time?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 07:05 AM

"Singing as effectively practiced" in the late 20th century mostly meant genres nobody would think of as folk - karaoke, football songs, hymns. Ethnomusicologists are quite happy to study those, but they don't have a lot to do with each other.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 07:51 AM

"What are the differences, socially, between singing on the cart coming back from market in 1755 and in the back of charabanc coming back from a works outing to Southport in 1955?

Why do people 'draw the line' where they do?"

Because what most people including Steve Roud, Cecil Sharp, et al, agree on is that for it to be 'folk' it has to have been passed down, not just sung. So technically it would depend not only on what your charabanc passengers were singing (hits of the day, Music Hall, WW1 favourites?), but how they had learned them.

Although it's not a hard and fast 'line', the advent of commercial recorded music and radio represents a watershed as far as this argument goes.

And singing was 'actively practised' as a community activity less and less as the 20th century wore on. Speaking as a 1970s era football fan, I'm always shocked when I go to a match now how the number of people actively taking part of singing has diminished, even though the creativity still flourishes. As to karaoke, although it might be 'folk song' by the broadest definition, the fact that singers read the lyrics from an autocue and perform to a backing track makes it something different to 20 verses of 'Lord Bateman' learned from your grandmother.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 07:59 AM

If Charles Seeger was at least as left wing as A L Lloyd, then my interpretation of Lloyd's answer to his own questions looks reasonable.

Jim asks me to 'speak for myself'. I take his point. From my perspective, there appears to be heated disagreement about which definition of folk song is correct. At the risk of over-simplification, there appear to be two main positions:

1) Some people argue that a great deal of the music to which the label has been applied (eg by the Victorian and Edwardian collectors) actually originated on printed broadsheets, but argue that since it began to be passed down orally it counts as folk music. The arguments about origins rely on analysis of the style and content, and sometimes on tracing the events recounted to real life events as set down in newspapers (eg some 'goodnight' ballads, as in the Pettitt example).

2) Other people argue that this sort of definition widens the definition to a ridiculous degree. They deny that songs written for money count as folk music. They also assert that such songs are aesthetically inferior. People in this camp often argue that it is impossible to know the actual origins, and therefore a view that any piece originated on paper is not based on fact. However, given that in the 20th century some communities in which songs were both made and passed down orally existed, and that within these communities there was a sense of which songs were 'traditional' and which were not, and a sense of ownership, they argue that it is possible that the songs collected by the Victorians and Edwardians were originally made by 'the people' and have been passed down through an oral tradition over hundreds of years, conceding that some songs may have been made into broadsheets over time. The argument appears to go that it is possible, therefore this is how it happened. This tradition survived despite the fact that 'the people' in the centuries covered in detail by Roud, are known to have also sung popular tunes, deriving from commercial sources, including broadsheets, music hall, and the USA. I think that on this view a new song counts as 'folk' if it was made by people in the tradition, but I'm not sure about this.


3) Within the camp of those who believe that 'the folk' (excluding ballad writers from 'the folk') wrote song have disagreed about the precise process, with communal creation and communal re-creation being two suggestions).

I'll now rephrase my comment.

It is difficult, as an outsider, to decide which of the hotly debated definitions of 'folk music' in current circulation is the correct one. It is particularly difficult if one accepts the 'nobody knows' argument as expressed by some adherents of definition number two.

It is even more difficult in view of factors including but not limited to:

a) the international and possibly non-song (ie myths, folk story) origins and non-song for some of these songs, as possibly claimed by Child;

b) the ideas of Lloyd that some of them derive from Anglo Saxon, pre Norman Conquest traditions, which did not have rhyming songs at all, as far as I know. It was highly alliterative, used a lot of litotes and had a figure of speech called a 'kenning';

c) some of the discussion gets heated (!) and goes round in circles (guilty myself) and

d) there are problems with some of the evidence in terms of tinkering, selectivity and other factors.

For a comparative beginner, like myself, Roud's 30-odd page introductor discussion is valuable and helpful. His history of collectors is also useful, not least as it gives some idea of how the definitional quagmire came about.

I think I stand by my point about 'folk music' being a social construct, but perhaps I would amend it to refer to this producing difficulties in agreeing a commonly acceptable definition.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 08:03 AM

Two hundred years ago did the music of the pleasure gardens, broadsheets, hymns and Percy's reliques have 'a lot to do with each other'?

Other than sometimes finding way their social singing in the way that the sources for karaoke, football songs etc were in the late 20th century.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 08:17 AM

That was to Jack Campin.

To Brian Peters. Probably mainly "hits of the day, Music Hall, WW1 favourites" But as a kid on the chara' how did I learn some of them?

Ten years later we thought it was a good laugh to sing "While Shepherds Attached to the tune of 'On Ilkley Moor". One of that generation of adults on the coach told us that it was 'traditional'. Since that was pre West Gallery revival I suspect that they knew it from the oral tradition.


I don't see how, as a social practice, it was that much different from comming back from market singing songs that included things that were hits of the day in the pleasure gardens or on broadsheet.

If an interest is in songs in oral tradition why not call it that?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 08:17 AM

Two hundred years ago did the music of the pleasure gardens, broadsheets, hymns and Percy's reliques have 'a lot to do with each other'?

Pleasure garden songs were printed on broadsides, so an obvious connection there. 'Reliques' was based on written sources and available only to a small section of society; setting aside Child's enthusiasm, it has only marginal relevance to folk song. Hymns were generally sung from hymn books.

I'm not sure of your point here.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 08:18 AM

Shepherds Watched of course.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 08:28 AM

My point is that if one can't identify what in the repertoire originated amongst 'the folk' and that Roud and other show that a lot of what was collected from the oral tradition came from elsewhere why not, as in my last post, regard it as 'songs passed on in an oral tradition'. It doesn't stop ethnousicologists picking it apart.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 08:30 AM

"Ten years later we thought it was a good laugh to sing "While Shepherds Attached to the tune of 'On Ilkley Moor". One of that generation of adults on the coach told us that it was 'traditional'."

And, like most children, I found it highly amusing to sing the 'washed their socks' version of 'Shepherds' - I don't remember ever seeing that in a book either

"I don't see how, as a social practice, it was that much different from comming back from market singing songs that included things that were hits of the day in the pleasure gardens or on broadsheet."

Technically, it isn't. Football chants, children's playground rhymes, and back-of-the-bus choruses (does anyone still sing on the back seat of the bus?) all include elements you could probably call 'traditional'. The difference is that, where singing was once a vital part of everyday life across large swathes of the wider community, it is now limited to a few special situations.

"If an interest is in songs in oral tradition why not call it that?"

For years many of us preferred the term 'traditional' to 'folk'. Steve Roud himself said at the book launch that, having felt the same way for years, he now felt ready to reclaim 'folk'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 08:45 AM

"Aargh, no, not that!"
Tanks for making my point so succinctly Brian
Folk song a no go area on a site dedicated to folk traditions - doncha juust love the logic of that one ?
There is basically one definition of folk song and a few refinements - everything else is based on the idea that we don't need a definition - the "Singing horse" school of thought
Folk song is a label you put on a type of song you put on your tim f you wish people to avail themselves of what you are promoting
Without that label, you remove from them the right to choose - simple as that
No wonder we are regarded as a minority group of misfits

"Sorry", can't stay.
I've just got home from a glorious worshop on traditional song which has included some of the best singing I've heard for some time and am now heading for a display of Irish and English language singing which I know will set my head ringing with song for the rest of the month - all because the organisers know what folk song is and are not afraid to say so
Have a good afternoon
JIm

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 09:31 AM

To bring the discussion back to the subject of the thread:

As I am sure most of you know, Roud has a section on Percy and his 'Reliques'.

He says it was a keystone of the Romantic movement in Europe, as well as being cited as the founding document of ballad studies in Britain.

Roud says (p43/4): 'It can be justly claimed that the Reliques, as published, is completely useless in our attempts to understand ballads or folk song in his time.'

The word 'tinkered' appears in Roud's comments on Percy, with a comment to the effect that this was a persistent thread in folk song studies. Roud says a lot more, but for me this shows what a useful text Roud's book is for a beginner.

Also as a beginner, I am aware that Child made use of Percy, which makes me wonder how 'right' Child may be. This is what Brian hints at (08.17am).


I wanted to compare what Lloyd said on the topic, but neither Percy nor Reliques are in Lloyd's index, and he has very little to say about Child.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 09:32 AM

I have heard group singing on a bus twice in the last few years. One was a bunch of young Christian women on a trip from Glasgow to Iona whose repertoire seemed to come entirely from "Singing Together" - rather sweet. The other was on a late night service from Edinburgh to the Borders where a slightly sloshed young woman led the whole bus in a singalong of Dougie Maclean's "Caledonia", prompted by a video played on her iPad.

Both made the trip more fun.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 09:41 AM

"Aargh, no, not that!"
Tanks for making my point so succinctly Brian
Folk song a no go area on a site dedicated to folk traditions...

I'm sure you realise, Jim, that my 'Aargh!' comment referred to the endless, circular and often bad-tempered discussions on the subject 'What is folk?' that you and I (and other participants on this thread) have been involved with over many years on this forum. Having initiated the present thread and been a regular contributor to it, I'm hardly trying to shut down sensible debate, but that question has me rolling my eyes.

"I've just got home from a glorious worshop on traditional song which has included some of the best singing I've heard for some time ... all because the organisers know what folk song is and are not afraid to say so"

I've been a to a few good weekends like that in England, too. At the last one, three weeks ago in Yorkshire, we had Michael McGonigle and Phil Callery over from your side of the water, amongst other distinguished singers.

In a month I'll be off to Whitby folk week where I look forward to hearing Keven and Ellen Mitchell, Will Noble, Peta Webb and Ken Hall, and other wonderful singers. The last time I was there the festival had me host an afternoon of English singing, with Will Noble, Will Duke, Di Henderson, Arthur Knevett and Ruth & Sadie Price. I think you'd have enjoyed that; I hope you have a fine time at the session you're heading for.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 10:26 AM

Some feel that reaching for a dictionary makes for dull discussion, but I think usage of terms is the cause of some disagreement here,

'Traditional', in the sense of handed down seems the best term for what people here are mainly interested in. It doesn't exclude songs having started transmission in written form.

It wouldn't do for Roud's book because that includes a lot about the sources from which songs may have been inserted into he handing-on process and mentions people singing from those sources.

'Folk' isn't much use without an adjective. 'Common folk' (as opposed, maybe, to 'rich folk or 'posh folk') seems to be what people mean. Setting aside the need for another adjective I think 'Folk Song' does work for Roud's book in the sense that it is a social history of singing in communities.

However, 'Folk Song' doesn't work for Jim as a title. I think because he wants to restrict the term to music created by the 'common folk'

For me the problem with folk is not 'what is folk?' but 'who are/were folk?' So far as creative origins is concerned one aspect of that is that having a good voice or an ability with words may have allowed someone who prospects were to be an agricultural labourer or factory worker to be a paid performer or broadside seller (or writer). Doing it for money.

(by the way I agree with almost everything Pseudonymous is posting)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 10:55 AM

Well, at the risk of eroding my 'fan base' { :) ] I'm just off to a 'carnival', at which music is invited/welcome. I'm taking a tambourine and some shakers. It's linked to other events up and down the country. If Bert were still here, I have a feeling he would have been at one or other of them.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 11:02 AM

I'll let you know what songs are sung, but I promise not to take down any that seem original using a notepad!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 11:03 AM

"how 'right' Child may be"

Child's achievements were colossal, and still influential well over 100 years later. This doesn't mean he was always right, of course, particularly with regard to his selections.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 12:26 PM

Meaningless definitions ?


"Folk song is unique for what it is - folk song - the voice of the people"

And Brexit means Brexit

Sorry Jim but they sound so similar to me.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 01:06 PM

Nice one, Hoot!

At the risk of repeating myself (100s of times) the 54 thing is NOT a definition, it is a list of descriptors to enable scholars to identify what might be folk songs. If one accepts that, then all we have to argue about is the relevance of each descriptor and how it applies to each version of each song. I strongly suspect that all here would be happy to accept those descriptors (excepting the one that was immediately ditched). I'll leave you to guess which one that was.

Steve's Venn diagram is by far the best approach. No music genre, and precious few genres of any kind, is defined by a finite boundary.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 03:46 PM

Steve's Venn diagram is by far the best approach. No music genre, and precious few genres of any kind, is defined by a finite boundary.

Reminds me of a breakfast conversation with Bert Lloyd on one of several occasions when he stayed at our house after singing for us at our folk club. Somehow the conversation turned to the subject of the definition. Bert's comment has stayed with me for well over forty years. he said:-

"Look out of the window; I think that we can agree that it is daytime. If we were sitting here at 10 o'clock tonight I'm sure that we would both think it is night time. Ask a hundred people to tell you the exact moment when day becomes night and you will get a hundred different answers. It is the same at the boundaries between folk music and other musics."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 04:58 PM

What Lloyd was describing there has a name in philosophy - "the paradox of the heap".

Most of the classification problems described here are a bit different - you don't just have one property varying along a continuum, but many conflicting features. Wittgenstein talks about that in the Philosophical Investigations, as "family resemblance" - a lot of concepts are ascribed in the same way you see people as being related, where two might share the same freckles, two might have the same wonky teeth, two might have the same eyebrows... you can tell everybody's related at a family gathering even though there's no one feature you can point to that makes them all look the same.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 05:39 PM

All good and relevant analogies. Ah, but will it convince...…?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 07:10 PM

Good tale, Vic.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 03:06 AM

"I'll let you know what songs are sung, but I promise not to take down any that seem original using a notepad!"
Sorry - I don't understand why understanding the music you love appears to be an academic exercise that has to be written down
I came to this music and fell in love with the sound
After a while I realised there was more to it so I went looking for it - what I found deepened my pleasure of what I listened to and what I sang
That has inspired me to keep at it into old age
It is not dry, academic study - it is now a part of my life

I sat and listened to a dozen good singers yesterday - mostly much younger than me, sme half my age - it made me realise that our singing here has a great future
All of them had come to learn more about the songs they sang - I didn't spot a notebook in the room

Off to a wind-up singing session after breakfast - I'll leave you to your argument as to why our music is unfathomable pop song
Have a great day
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 03:17 AM

just in case no one has realised Jim is attending the Willy week. I am not sure of the relevance but Jim is determinmed to let us know, does it validate his arguments at all .no

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 03:26 AM

LAST YEAR
THIS YEAR (SOME)

"does it validate his arguments at all .no"
You told me you'd never been Dick - apparently having experienced something is not a required qualification !
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 04:01 AM

I was at a session last night there were two young musicians aged 14 and 11, CCE trained from ulster, very good musicians, what relevance does this have, none jim has to let us know how immersed in trad music,none of which strengthens or weakens his argument   jim, what relevance does your attendance at the willy week have?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 04:13 AM

It has evey relevance Dick
The classes in this scool are now being taken by youngsters who were pupils here fiv or six years ago, and the skills they have acquired date back to the old boys who first took part in the school all those tears ago - Junior Crehan, Bobby Casey, Seamus Ennis, Breandan Breathnach, Paddy Glackin, Joe Ryan, John Kelly.....
Irish Traditional music now has what all traditional music needs to survive.... a continuum
All that is happening now is what CCE should have ben doing over the decades of its existence and failed to achieve miserably because it's 'playing by numbers' approach in order to win medals
As Breandan Breathnach once said "CCE is an organisation with a great future behind it'
Must go
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 04:43 AM

your mentioning of your presence at Willy week has no rekevance at all to the discussion in hand.
it does not matter how long you take to go as long as you do not stop confucius

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 05:01 AM

if we were to believe Jim ,then everything CCE has done would be bad, a typical Jim Carroll over simplification, these over simplifications never strengthen his arguments, neither does his refusal to answer questions or qualify his opinions with facts.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Tootler
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 06:18 AM

"I'll let you know what songs are sung, but I promise not to take down any that seem original using a notepad!"

Sorry - I don't understand why understanding the music you love appears to be an academic exercise that has to be written down

Somebody's sense of humour neuron needs disinterring and polishing!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 06:56 AM

Thanks, Tootler!

I promised a report back: not as much music as I'd hoped for, but still worth attending.

The music was unaccompanied (a traditional characteristic) but had harmonies (not traditional). Some of the tunes I knew, but cannot say whether these came from the people or from some musical hack, and cannot even remember not which they were. I think one might have been 'John Brown's Body' (not traditional, I don't think, am very confused about definitions). My feeling is that most present were fairly middle-class (not traditional). It was I think what you might call multi-cultural (not traditional). Lots of passing cars tooted (not traditional).

I did not get the notepad out, as I did not have permission from the singers to collect their work [ :) ], but somebody gave me a pretty poster to hold so my hands were busy. The lyrics seemed to have been specially written for the occasion, and, sorry, I can't remember much detail, only the gist.

Sorry(ish) for massive thread drift.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 06:59 AM

Dick wrote:-
does it validate his arguments at all .no 

It does not even impinge on the discussion.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 08:48 AM

"It does not even impinge on the discussion."
Yes it most certainly does
The advences of Irish music and song have been based entirely on a growing understanding of the tradition - whatever youngsters choose to do with their new-found culture, a base has now been established that they continue to return to in order to remind themselves what it is all about
It's mecoming more and more clwear to me why the British scene is where it is
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 10:01 AM

It's mecoming more and more clwear to me why the British scene is where it is.
You are in position to make a sensible judgement because you are rarely there

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 10:11 AM

Jim,
Please do not expect any further reaaction from me to your posts on Mudcat after this one. It is become increasingly clear that discussion with you gets nowhere. You make an exchange of views impossible. We get the same old points being made over and over again rather than responses to points that are being made. This caused one regular here to exclaim-
We are coming full circle again. Back to the beginning.
He has it spot on. Your circumlocution is an impediment to structured argument.
We are discussing Folk Song In England and yet you constantly respond with references to your opinion of the situation in another country and when another ex-pat in that country suggests that you may not have it totally right. it is met with demeaning put-downs.
Another well-respected poster reacted by saying:-
I think Jim's conflation of the 'print origins' theory with the practices of English folk clubs since the 1980s muddies the water.
Again this is spot on and follows quickly on another example of conflation or confusion or both pointed out by myself over your attitude towards different attitudes shown by the academic community.
A difference in attitude is normally healthy and stimulating in debate. I don't think anyone minds that your opinion on the origins of folk is so strongly held. It is your unwillingness or inability to concede even the smallest point, to back up your strongly held opinions with evidence, to answer questions without prevarication or obfuscation that stultifies progress in discussion.
When a pair of religious pamplet-wavers come knocking on my door, I gently send them on their way because experience shows that to reason with extreme fundementalists is not possible because they know and I don't so why is it that I won't accept; reason does not come into it; belief dominates.
Sadly, Jim, I feel that I have reached this stage with you for the same reasons.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 12:55 PM

I would still like to know what generally accepted definition Jim claims to have been changed by Steve Roud's book.

The collectors around 1900 knew a folk song when they heard one; or rather they knew what they thought qualified as a folk song and so was worth collecting. Some of them were mainly interested in the tunes, so didn't care if the words had been printed on a broadside, let alone whether the broadside was the first incarnation or itself based on previous oral tradition.

Jim tells us that Walter Pardon et al knew which of their personal repertoires they regarded as folk songs and which were something else. But how did they decide? What criteria did they apply, consciously or instinctively?

Steve G says, "the 54 thing is NOT a definition, it is a list of descriptors to enable scholars to identify what might be folk songs."

The book presents a somewhat larger set of descriptors but Steve R states that he more or less agrees with "1954".

If we take this part of "1954" - "music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community" - and qualify it by "where the individual composer belonged to the common people and did not compose primarily for payment", would that capture Jim's idea?

Did anyone previously include that qualification or something like it?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 01:10 PM

"Jim tells us that Walter Pardon et al knew which of their personal repertoires they regarded as folk songs and which were something else. But how did they decide? What criteria did they apply, consciously or instinctively?"

I remember Jim explaining that Walter used a melodeon to remind himself of the tunes, and that he could tell an old (authentic?) song because the bellows finished up in the extended position. To a melodeon player this means that the tune is modal.

As I've already said, a lot can be inferred from the sound of the song. Collected folksongs dating from say the early 1800s are different in terms of textual and musical language to Music Hall, Tin Pan Alley Dibden compositions, etc. (though I concede this is based partly on my own antennae rather a comprehensive analysis) I'm sure Walter would have been able to make that kind of distinction.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,just another guest
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 01:45 PM

Jim Carrol 13 Dec 17 - 04:07 AM "The fact that English worker dialect poets like Ridley, Samuel Lackock, "Joseph Skipsey, John Axon and Samuel Bamford could continue to create the masterpieces they did without caricaturing their class as the broadside products did ..."

Jim Carrol 09 Jan 18 - 01:07 PM "Tanahill wasn't a broadside writer - he was a weaver-poet, as was Bamnford, Axon, Lackock and all the others mentioned previously as examples of working men producing poems of working life based on their own experiences"

Assuming the spelling 'Samuel Lackock' is a typo from Jim we have:

George Milner, introduction to second edition of "The collected Writings of Samuel Laycock", 1908. During the Cotton Famine "week by week they were published in the local papers and large numbers were issued as broad-sheet ballads. Many of these were learnt by heart and sung by lads and lasses in the streets of the town"

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Laycock "Laycock was one of the thousands unemployed and tried to earn a meagre living by writing verses which the unemployed could set to music and sing in the streets for pennies."

Though Milner's account suggests that he did not compose them "primarily for payment" but rather that "Deeply moved by the acute suffering which surrounded him on every side, the spirit was kindled within him, and he beganto write his Famine Songs" (precedes the quote above)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 02:09 PM

Interesting thought on melodiums/ia??, Brian. I was trying to discuss modes earlier on the thread.

Maybe your idea only works, as you will be aware, if we exclude the ionian (ie major scale) from our category of modes.

Melodeons, for those who don't know, are like some mouth organs, but instead of 'blow' you have 'push' and instead of 'such' you have pull. Similar pattern of push/pull over the main octave as for a single key mouth organ. I assume this is the type of instrument Walter Pardon had. In this picture he appears to be playing a two row diatonic Hohner Pokerwork model.

http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/pardon2.htm

Like diatonic mouth organs, the melodeon can get the notes of the relative minor key, the 'natural minor' ie the Aeolian mode. This would end with extended bellows/ suck on harmonica.

And what else?

I'm guessing it must be possible to play 'cross melodeon' in the same way that people play 'cross harp', and, I am hazy about all this, but I think it might bring in the mixolydian. So on a C instrument you have the notes for G mixolodian (G A B A D E F G), but you would end on a push ie with bellows close together. Playing in G on a C instrument is 'cross harp'. But you would end on a push, ie bellows not in extended position.

You could work this out for all the 'church' modes through the melodeon diatonic scale; some end push some pull.

However, according to Roud/Bishop, many 'folk songs' are in ionian. So it looks as if Walter Pardon and Roud/Bishop disagree here.

And I haven't even thought about pentatonic melodies, and their varieties.

Complicated????

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 02:25 PM

Actually, this thread and Roud have been 'empowering', because, if truly traditional music was unaccompanied, then I don't need to feel that when I wince when a melodeon player hits a chord with the left hand buttons that to my ears clashes with the melody being played with the right hand buttons (and the chords on the instruments don't seem to have been chosen with the full range of modes in mind) this wince merely demonstrates my ignorant lack of enjoyment of 'the tradition', though on one level there is a tradition of sorts as I've heard it done often enough. And my ignorance of the tradition is, of course, amply evidenced generally. :)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 03:47 PM

"It is become increasingly clear that discussion with you gets nowhere"
That's a two-way street as far as I am concerned Vic (I'm sorry to say)
I am endeavoring to respond to every one of your points - you are responding to none of mine
THat I believe is the cause of your "circles"
We obviously don't agree on definitions - when I suggest that you believe the music hall songs are out of the same stable as our folk songs which you appear to be not unique, you appear to tale umbridge   
Me
"Now, it seems, there is nothing about folk songs that set them apart from other songs
You
"Are you suggesting that I am saying that"
If that is not what you are saying - what are you saying exactly
I answer your point to the best of my ability and ask you for clarification
In return I get another question
What you are appearing to be looking for is abject surrender

You are the people who have changed the rules and moved the goalposts - it is up to you to justify your tectonic shift I've got my experience and my library to keep me warm

If you are not prepared yto respond tto my points I don't want to talk to you either - we can agree on that at least
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 04:20 PM

"I'm guessing it must be possible to play 'cross melodeon' in the same way that people play 'cross harp', and, I am hazy about all this, but I think it might bring in the mixolydian."

Exactly. Dorian is also available very easily.

"Maybe your idea only works, as you will be aware, if we exclude the ionian (ie major scale) from our category of modes."

Yes, I can't really be bothered calling major 'Ionian'.

"when a melodeon player hits a chord with the left hand buttons that to my ears clashes with the melody being played with the right hand buttons (and the chords on the instruments don't seem to have been chosen with the full range of modes in mind)"

This is very much a part of Cajun music, where they play one-row melodeons mostly on the pull, and don't have the chords available to provide a 'musically-correct' accompaniment.

"However, according to Roud/Bishop, many 'folk songs' are in ionian. So it looks as if Walter Pardon and Roud/Bishop disagree here."

The alternative modes sound more exotic, and hence perhaps older when compared to major tunes which are the most common in Music Hall and other more modern styles. Which of course is why folk revivalists throughout the last century or so have been fascinated by them.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 05:14 PM

Walter Pardon et al knew which of their personal repertoires they regarded as folk songs and which were something else. But how did they decide? What criteria did they apply, consciously or instinctively?

Verse form, including metre? That's dropped out of consideration in Anglo-American folksong studies but was very important for Bartok and pretty much everybody else in southern and eastern Europe - and it's a glaringly obvious difference between old ballads and Tin Pan Alley or Dylanoid material. (Though if you go back to the Middle Ages, you find long lyrics with complex verse forms built from short lines much like the norm in rock).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 03:23 AM

Walter Pardon spoke at length about the differences between his "old folk songs" (his term) and "that other stuff" (also his term.
His identification covered the whole gamut - from tunes to descriptions of characters and the people and places described in the songs - right through to how he saw them and identified them as a singer - he was articulate and he was very positive

Anyone who sat with him and talked coud recognise from the way Walter talked about his songs and how he saw them as he sang them could spot that he regarded them as both different and importnt
He told us about how visitors concentrated on songs he didn't believe to be "the old folk songs" saying "I don't know why they want them old things"
When we asked us to sing them (for comparison) he was extremely reluctant to do so and became uncomfortable, so we gave up after a couple
We constantly use in talks we give, a recording we made of elderly Clare singer Tom Lenihan describing passionately the difference between "the modern stuff" and those "passed down from the old people for generations"

Mary Delaney, the blind Travelling woman, had an endlessly large repertoire of both lyrical and narrative traditional songs - she called them 'my daddy's songs" (when we recorded him he could remember about half-a-dozen)
She used this description to identify her traditional songs - it was her version of '54'
She also had an equally large number of modern popular songs, particularly Country and Western - she point-blank refused to sing a single one of them for the tape recorder saying, "they're not the old songs - I only sing them because that's what the lads ask for in the pub.
Because of her blindness, Mary's activity was limited largely to singing - that is what she was known for.
She had a phenomenal ability to pick up songs quickly, this gave her a role in her community, that didn't mean she couldn't tell the difference - obviously
According to the 'New Age Academic' re-definition of folk song, 'My Cheatin' Heart', 'Stand By Your Man' and 'Jolene' all should have Roud numbers - Mary knew and sang them all.
Nobody can deny her role as a traditional singer - why haven't they been numbered?

Other singers, using different language and values differented between their types of song even though the might have sung all sorts

For me, this underlines the nonsensical nature in which academics have re-defined our folk songs.

It is typal academic arrogance to ride rough-shod over something that, for me, is painfully obvious - these songs are obviously so different as a genre that non-academics can tell them apart

A far as making sure our traditional songs are kept alive and recognised for their importance and uniqueness as a separate body of history and art, it really is time we woke up and smelled the coffee - there has been far too much damage done already by lumping them in with "that modern stuff"
JIm Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 03:48 AM

Brian: I hadn't thought about Cajun music for years; the 'dissonance effect' on my ears isn't the same for that genre. Different context maybe.

Also, not sure if you are counting Walter Pardon as a 'revivalist';

Some of his melodeon playing is on 'mustrad' with a comment that he was 'certainly not a musician who played for dancing in any form', possibly because there isn't a great deal of rhythm in it. He played where nobody could hear him, it says. Spotify has a selection of his material too.

I suppose if you were 'in the tradition' modal material would not sound exotic or unusual.


Jack: I thought there was a lack of information about songs in the middle ages? I know Tudor poets used complicated rhyming schemes, but apart from bits of Canterbury tales, which wasn't sung, more or less nothing medieval. But verse form and meter, maybe. There was according to Roud/Bishop some 5/4 in traditional/folk singing.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 04:38 AM

The basses in a melodeon are designed to give you a I IV V accompaniment to a major key tune. when played for dancing their prime function is rhythmic, though and dissonance will tolerated as the rhythm is much more important. This, I think, is much more obvious with a one row than a two row where with more basses/chords available players can be very creative in the way they use those buttons.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 04:49 AM

guest 15 july438, what you are saying is correctas regards two row. on gd boxes on bc the basses are sometimes wrong[double ray] and sometimes have been retuned, but even then are not one hundred per cent. some hohner one rows hawe chords for one ,four, five chords

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 04:58 AM

There are several thorough anthologies of mediaeval songs - Sidgwick and Chambers, Davies, Dobson and Harrison. The form was international: you get the same complex arrangements of short lines in long stanzas in every written language in Europe, and tunes were shared internationally. This is nothing like anybody's folk idiom.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Tootler
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 05:56 AM

Guest further up was me. Sorry. I'd forgotten my cookie needed resetting and I've not got round to it on my iPad.

Dick
I was referring to GD boxes which are prevalent this side of the Irish sea and I maintain what I said was correct. I play with a GD box player regularly.

I think you meant BC boxes which are effectively chromatic on the right hand and yes the left hand is an issue, though I believe many players have them modified to match the keys they regularly play in. As far as I've seen, Irish box players rarely use the basses anyway - just occasionaly for emphasis. As I said, for dancing, the rhythm is more important than having harmonically "correct" basses.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 05:58 AM

not sure if you are counting Walter Pardon as a 'revivalist'

Ooh no, not at all!

I suppose if you were 'in the tradition' modal material would not sound exotic or unusual.

I was talking about the folk revival there. If we accept Roud and Bishop's assessment of the relatively low proportion of modal tunes in the traditional repertoire, then even to a traditional singer such tunes might have seemed 'in a class of their own'. However, one current theory is that traditional singers didn't distinguish between the different modes at all - it is certainly true that some would apparently slip from one mode to another within a single song. This seems counter-intuitive to my (revivalist) ears, but who knows? I wasn't party to Walter Pardon's personal thoughts on the matter, but as a highly intelligent man and an instrumentalist, perhaps he thought about the issue more than most.

I could say lots more about melodeons, but I've caused enough thread drift already!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 05:59 AM

"he was 'certainly not a musician who played for dancing in any form',"
That is an accurate description
Walters main used of the melodion was for remembering song tunes (he also played a fiddle)

His experience of traditional singing was in the home, previously it was done by the family at Harvest Suppers, but he never experienced them.
His participation as a boy was limited - he sang on song, 'Dark eyed sailor' because "nobody else wanted that"
As an only child he spent a great deal of time with his two bachelor uncles who taught him their songs
During the war, because of his poor feet, he was assigned as a serviceman to woring on essential work of RAF airports - he was stationed in Richmond, Yorkshire, among other places

When he returned his uncles had died, so he decided to gather their songs together in a notebook, filling out missing bits from other family members
He wrote the words down in a couple of notebooks and used the melodeon for memorising the tunes
He told us that cousins of his age wen't interested as they were into 'the modern songs'   
He never sang in public until he was 'discovered' by a relative, Rodger' who was Peter Bellamy's tutor.
Rger persuaded him to put some of his songs on tape - Walter bought a recorder and spent a couple of nights doing so and eventually Bellamy contacted Bill Leader - then 'A Star Was Born'
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 06:06 AM

Okay Jack: you were saying some medieval lyrics were not folk. I'm sure you are right.

But of course, as you will know, 'lyrics' in these cases does not mean 'the words to songs'. A lyric, to a student of English Literature, and to academics like Davies appears to have been, as you will know, is a relatively short poem, with 'long' being, say Canterbury Tales, or a long epic.


It is a moot point whether any of these 'lyrics' were intended to be sung. I haven't seen Sidgwick and Chambers, but one online comment I found states that its purpose is to put 'poetry' prior to the sonnet into the public domain. Take Chaucer; he wrote rondels and 'ballades' (probably taking these forms from Europe) but no music survives for any of these, casting doubt on whether they were intended ever to be sung, as opposed to being read or recited.

Some diatonic melodeons have bass chords that go with the relative minor keys. You can get some 'accidentals' if you havea two key instrument. (Thanks wikipedia).

Dobson and Harrison seems to be one on your list that lists words with music in the medieval contemprary form, but they seem only to have found 33.?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 07:13 AM

Dick
I was referring to GD boxes which are prevalent this side of the Irish sea and I maintain what I said was correct. I play with a GD box player regularly."
I
I hve regularly played with a gd player too foe 24 years,What you are saying is not correct , because Am, has limited chord.
   neither is your statement about BC boxes ,for example some irish players play in c on them and use the correct basses like a c one row, using basses for key of c ,others play across the row and use basses others play across the rows and do not use basses

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 07:26 AM

Mediaeval song has gone through the same change of perspective as folk ballads since Child - people are finding more and more ways they fit to music. It took decades after its first publication for anyone to try to sing the Carmina Burana to the intended tunes. (With short and standard forms like the rondel, there was no need for Chaucer to specify a tune since there were lots to choose from, like the "common" psalm tunes of the Reformation).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 09:12 AM

This is what I remember from my reading on the origins of the ballad form. I cannot vouch for its veracity and it may be oversymplistic.
The form itself evolved from French carols in the medieval period, usually with the couplet and refrain form which Child claims precedes the quatrain form. This is certainly borne out in the examples he gives but may not be the full picture. The few ballads that came down to us in tradition that predate print can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and even these are from manuscripts which were simply the forerunners of print, i.e., copied down by scribes from one manuscript to another for the use of the wealthy. We have very contentious clues as to what was actually sung (other than religious material) before print. The Complaynt of Scotland for instance gives us a few titles that MIGHT relate to songs still sung today, the most likely one being 'The Frog Cam to the Mil Dur'. My own opinion on the 'Tomlin' mentioned there is that it is not 'Tam Lyn' but the early Scots version of 'Tom-a lin' aka 'Brian O Lynn', for which we have very early versions, much earlier than any version of 'Tam Lyn'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 09:30 AM

Interesting idea about the 'Tomlin' mentioned in the 'Complaynte', Steve. I've looked at a few Appalachian copies of this (possibly derived from an early version?) and they're mostly 'Tom Bolynn' or similar. What's the earliest copy you know about, and do I take it the name in that is 'Tom-a-lin'?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 11:33 AM

Oh dear, more thread drift!

I'll share my ideas: you may of course take them or leave them.

My understanding is that 'ballad' has various meanings.

In terms of the medieval forms referred to by Jack at 8;15, the 'ballade', which came from France, and was a lyric poem, typically had three eight line stanzas and a final four line stanza, though there were variations. The rhyme scheme for the 8 lines was typically ababbcbc. The last line of the final stanza is used as the last line for the other 8 line stanzas and for the final shorter stanza.

Francois Villon write a lot of these. They were popular in the 13th and 14th century.

Ballads, on the other hand, usually meaning narrative poems/songs, seem to have appeared in many parts of Europe in the late Middle Ages.   

One book I was looking at recently stated that 'carol' originally meant dance .... Just to express my personal frustration at getting to any 'facts' here.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 04:35 PM

Yes,
I neglected to mention that one very plausible theory is that ballads were once accompaniment to dance, ring dances. I believe that in the Faeroes they still do accompany a simple ring dance.

Some Breton ballads and Scandinavian ballads refer to historical persons who were around in the 12th/13th centuries but like our Robin Hood ballads that doesn't mean that's when the ballads were written.
However Scandinavian ballads of the Child type appear to have been much more common in Denmark than in Britain in the 16th/17th centuries. There were collectors like Syv around at that time whereas we didn't start collecting ours seriously until the end of the 18th century.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 05:10 PM

Hello Steve

I found an article by Atkinson, a study guide on the Child ballad, which says that a book by Girould is still a classic on ballad genre, including origins, so I found this on the internet archive site, where you can download the pdf. So I did.

https://archive.org/details/balladoftraditio007247mbp

Interesting to see what he comes up with.


'Scandinavia': Child I know used the work of a Danish ethnographer as a model. As non-historian I think: Danish, Danelaw, Vikings. The influence of the Vikings was massive: they founded a number of Irish towns, held a massive part of England, much of Scotland. It's a real surprise how much of Scotland was held by Vikings (well it surprised me!). Skye! The Isle of Man! So maybe no surprise if there are common stories/myths. I don't know.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 05:21 PM

oh oh

Girould gets racist pretty quickly, distinguishing the people who made 'ballads' from primitive 'races' not capable of doing it. :(

This thread was built into a lot of American 'folklorism' from the outset.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 06:01 PM

Gerould was writing in 1957. A lot has changed since then.

The Viking influence, you are talking pre-conquest, Pseu. Any similarity between foreign ballads and those in English is down to translation by quite literate people. The whole of the north of England was under Viking rule with its capital at Jorvik (York) but that was a thousand years ago. I'm pretty certain at least some of my ancestors were Scandinavian.

I have a copy of Gerould but I haven't time to reread it just now. Plenty of artefacts and names have come down to us but you're asking a lot for any literature to have come down after a thousand years.

As late as the 19th century Danish fishermen landed their catches in Hull and it was said that local farmers could hold a conversation with them due to the local dialect of the East Riding containing lots of Danish words which had survived. But to the best of my knowledge no ballads changed hands.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 07:32 PM

"Gerould was writing in 1957. A lot has changed since then. "
Actually Gerould was writing in 1932, and no information has been forthcoming since then to impact on what he said
Why is it necessary to destroy the work of others to make room for your own theories Steve - that is cultural vandalism ?
I'm delighted that Grould's bame came up - he had much to to say that contradicts the introduction of the 'Singing Horse' theory
I apologise for the length of this but I found it difficult not to include the two chapters - there really is much more common sense in his wonderful book
If the is wrong, you need to show is where instead of alluding to it.
Jim

From The Ballad of Tradition Gordon Hall Gerould, Oxford at teh Clarendon Press 1932

The Nature if Ballads (pp 12-14)
Ballads are very far from being primitive poetry, indeed; they are rather the flower of an art formalized and developed among people whose training has been oral instead of visual. Unlettered the makers have been, simple of mind and heart, but not without moulding traditions perpetuated through many centuries and not without some contact with their superiors in the social and educational scale. Primitive music and primitive poetry could not come from them any more than it can come from the composers and poets who practise a more sophisticated and conscious artistry. They have had an art of their own, a double art of melody and verse, distinct from that of their betters but by no means unworthy, oddly enough, to stand beside it. Indeed, to trace the connexion between the two in the same lands and periods is of more importance to an understanding of the formal qualities of ballad music and ballad stories than to search for analogies among backward races.

Art of a sort there is, even among peoples who are backward in development. Research during the past generation has shown quite clearly that the history of art is exceedingly long and its ramifications co-extensive with man; but the art of the unlettered portions of European peoples is in another case from that of Bantu tribesmen. They have always formed parts of nations in which artists more or less nourished on conscious aesthetic tradition have at the same time been working. This state of things undoubtedly makes the study of ballads, to mention only the instance with which we are immediately concerned, much more difficult than it would be if ballads were phenomena with a less complicated environment. Yet it cannot be too strongly urged that we should keep the true state of things in mind and use with discretion analogies from the verse and music of primitive races.

There is no real antithesis between folk-music and folk-poetry on the one hand, and the poetry and music of art on the other, though it has been so often stated that we are in danger of accepting it unthinkingly. A contrast exists, it is true. The phrase is useful by way of indicating differences in attitude on the part of makers and wide differences in conditions of production; but it is misleading, because it suggests that folk-song is not art. Folk-song has developed orally, without conscious¬ness of the aesthetic principles according to which it is moulded; but the principles are there. Folk-song has seemingly developed also without the kind of individual¬istic effort that goes to the production and reproduction of poetry and music among the lettered classes. The literate artist cannot wholly escape, no matter how hard he may try, from the effects of critical theory; and the history of literature and music proves, we should prob¬ably all agree, that in such bondage he has thriven. The Martha of criticism has been a most useful sister to the Mary of creation. The processes of folk-song have been different. Forces of which the makers have been almost unconscious have often shaped it to beauty, taste acquired through the long-continued practice of a traditional art has directed imagination; but there has been no effort at intellectual control, which is probably why the art of the folk, with all its vitality and vigour, has been a some-what ragged thing, amazingly lovely sometimes, almost always interesting, but curiously uneven in execution.

Into the processes of folk-song as they have operated in the particular domain of the ballad we propose to inquire in the present volume, and specifically as to ballads the words of which are English. There can be no harm in thus limiting our field of study if only we keep in mind that this oral, traditional art has been con¬fined to no one people. Certain features of English and Scottish ballads are peculiar to themselves, but the art of which they are representative has been widespread throughout Europe at least. Having defined the nature of balladry, let us try, in the next place, to see our English and Scottish specimens in their international relations.

Ballads and Broadsides (pp 242 and 243)
Thus in a third way broadsides had a marked influence on balladry. Too little has been made of this, I believe, by students of the traditional ballad, though the effect on individual specimens has been admirably investi-gated.1

Since variants that derive ultimately from printed texts are found in the most isolated parts of the United States and Canada, it is clear that broadsides affected an exceedingly widespread area; and since the oral tradi¬tion of some of the texts so derived is in itself a long one, it is evident that the influence began a great while ago. There can be no doubt whatever that a pure tradition of oral descent became an impossibility as soon as the purveyors of broadsides had established their trade in the sixteenth century. Contamination, if one choose to regard it as such, became possible in the case of any ballad whatsoever. Since the printing of traditional ballads was sporadic rather than general, the majority of them have never been subject to this artificial interruption of their proper course; but so many have been affected as to cast suspicion on any specimen that is being studied. The possibility of contamination should always be kept in mind.

As we have noted earlier, the tenacity of popular memory is as extraordinary as its fallibility. Variation appears to be incessant, yet sometimes a text survives almost unaltered the chances of oral repetition for a century and more. The evidence for this rests chiefly upon versions of songs that have in one way or another got into print.3
1 See, for example, the illuminating notes of Mr. Barry in British Ballads from Maine.
2 See the history of Lord Lovel (75) or Barbara Allan (84). Menéndez Pidal has shown traditional versions
may sometimes remain unaffected by printed ones. (See ante, p. 170.)

Ballads and Broadsides (pp 14-144)        
It seems to me clear that the effect of circulating them has been to retard variation quite markedly, as if verses one learned directly or indirectly from broad¬sides and the like made a deeper impression on memory than those learned wholly by ear. One can only won¬der whether there has been a feeling for the sanctity of the written word, or whether in some obscure way minds have registered differently verses fixed in print. At all events, it appears that the normal fluidity of alter¬ation has been disturbed whenever publication has taken place.

Apart from the effect on individual ballads of the traditional sort, the circulation of broadsides inevitably produced changes in the art of folk-song as a whole. The rapid adoption of a great number of pieces both lyrical and narrative, some set to old tunes and some to new, and for the most part completely devoid of beauty in form and substance, could not have failed to lower the standards of taste that had been developed. The wonder is that the power of musical and poetical expression among common folk was not altogether destroyed by this, the first assault of many in modern times on the integrity of the traditional art. That it was weakened, there can be no doubt, I believe. There are numerous good ballads from the north that cannot have originated before the seventeenth century, but almost none traceable to districts nearer London. One thinks of The Fire of Frendraught {196), The Bonnie House O’ Airlie (199), The Gypsy Laddie (200), and The Baron of Brackley (203), to name only a few. In a very thoughtful book, published posthumously in 1913, Bryant called attention to this state of things,1 though he under-estimated the extent to which older ballads survived in the south. It is not a question of a finer development in Scotland than in England, but of an earlier decay in regions nearer London as a result of the infiltration of songs from Grub Street. What appears to have occurred was a serious, though not mortal, injury to the traditional art, affecting verse much more profoundly than music and operating less disastrously in regions that were rela¬tively free from the influence of printed texts.

There could be no better evidence of the vitality of folk-song than the fact that it survived the cheapening and deadening effect of broadsides, which for more than two centuries were hawked about the countryside. We have to remember, in this connexion, how very few speci¬mens of traditional ballads are extant that antedate this period. Our studies must largely be confined to speci¬mens as they have been remembered and sung in this later time, and our judgements are formed upon material so gathered. The verse and music that have furnished inspiration and technical guidance to our modern poets and composers were collected, for the most part, after the ballad-monger had done his worst. We should not minimize the evil that he accomplished—certainly not ignore it, as many students of ballads have done. We should not forget that a collection like that made by Child necessarily includes a great number of pieces either originated by hirelings of the printers or deeply marked by the influence of their work. At the same time, having taken these factors into account, we are justified in saying that folk-song was neither destroyed nor irretrievably harmed by the flood of new ballads that poured over the country during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. One may fairly put it that the art suffered from a severe case of indigestion, that the glut of mediocre songs could not be properly absorbed and adapted to the gracious ways of tradition; but further than that one cannot go.

1 A History of English Balladry, p. 192.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 03:51 AM

"Any similarity between foreign ballads and those in English is down to translation by quite literate people"
If you read Gerould you'll find that this most certainly is not the case (unless you are prepared to dismiss his scholarship out of hand, that seems to be very fashionable anong the 'New Agers'
Have you any firm evidence for this?
If you haven't you forgot to put in the (now very necessary) IOM
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 04:20 AM

Jim do you mean IMO

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 05:32 AM

Probably Dick - thank you
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 06:12 AM

Gerould's pig-ignorant dismissal of the entire culture of the African continent in the second of those quoted paragraphs doesn't encourage me to give his subsequent hatefest directed at broadside writers much credence.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 06:31 AM

Steve

You may be right about ballads from Viking days: but did not Child did find what he thought was the 'same' ballad in the tradition of both countries?

I note that Bert Lloyd imagined Anglo-Saxon origins, which is even earlier than the Vikings.

Of course, the Normans (as in Norman Conquest) were 'Vikings' a couple of generations earlier.

Jim

Thanks for the lengthy quotation. Need time to read and inwardly digest. But it starts slap bang in the middle of a racist bit, as he is explaining why in his view 'primitive' races could/did not write ballads.

That's more or less where I left off yesterday. Racial difference theory was quite popular at the time. It underpinned 'Jim Crow' in the deep south of the USA.

I have not read on, so I don't know what gems the book might hold, but, as Roud is aware, people writing about folk music reflect the historical contexts in which they wrote. I am just thinking that it is worth bearing this in mind when looking at what they have to say.

Early folklorists believed that music/song gave you an insight into "racial" characteristics. The general idea was that 'white' races were further advanced in evolutionary, biological terms, than the 'primitive races'. This was one argument against giving people from non-western European backgrounds education, the vote etc.


In the first ever issue of the Journal of American Folklore it says this:

The second division of folk-lore indicated is that belonging to the American negroes. It is but within a few years that attention has been called to the existence among these of a great number of tales relating to animals, which have been preserved in an interesting collection. The origin of these stories, many of which are common to a great part of the world, has not been determined. In the interest of comparative research, it is desirable that variants be recorded, and that the record should be rendered as complete as possible. It is also to be wished that thorough studies were made of negro music and songs. Such inquiries are becoming difficult, and in a few years will be impossible. Again, the great mass of beliefs and superstitions which exist among this people need attention, and present interesting and important psychological problems, connected with the history of a race who, for good or ill, are henceforth an indissoluble part of the body politic of the United States.

And on the 'Indian tribes': 'The habits and ideas of primitive races include much that seems to us cruel and immoral, much that it might be thought well to leave unrecorded. But this would be a superficial view. What is needed is not an anthology of customs and beliefs, but a complete representation of the savage mind in its rudeness as well as its intelligence, its licentiousness as well as its fidelity.'


All this strikes the ear as to put it mildly 'ethnocentric'.

I was at an anti-racist protest (with non-traditional music) on Friday, so this sort of thing is quite high on my agenda at the moment.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 06:41 AM

Jack: you put it so much more succinctly than I did! But still, I am going to read on to see what else is in it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 07:49 AM

Geroulds field of knowledge was the ballads
Sharp talked about banjos as "nigger machines" and ignored them, yet we owe him big time for introducing us to our own traditional songs
THese people were very much of their time - I'll live with their ignorance and limitations
'Primitive' was a term favoured by the experts, even the most sympathetic ones - including Margaret Mead
I don't think Gerould dismissed them, rather, he maybe suggested that they didn't/couldn't write them down
Must re-read it myself
The oft dismissed and debunked Bert Lloyd probably did more than most in Britain to make us aware of International music - his 13 programme 'Songs of the People' is still one of my favourite listens

This has become more and more disturbing as it progresses
First we had the 'folk' being disenfranchised as makers of their songs and that creditrole being put in the hands of a commercial industry of poor poets
Now we appear to have the systematic book-burning of our best scholars

First we had Child who couldn't tell is literal poetry arse from his folk elbow.
Now we have the systematic dismantling of a century plus worth of scholarship in order to replace it with the work of - well, basically, paper shufflers.
I didn't notice Steve's comments on 'foreign ballads' otherwise I would have lain awake for a long time last night

Child bases a large part of his groundbreaking collection discussing the 'foreign' input into our native ballads - he discusses their implications extensively in his private correspondence
Now we have to add this to the folk song tradition he apparently knew SFA about
You can add Lowery C Wimberly's work of 'The Folklore of the English and Scottish Ballads' based to a great degree on international motifs

Another of my interests is folk tales - we have several hundred of collections of them on our shelves and we've collected around 100 of them
They are full of international folklore motifs
One tale we recorded from a Traveller 'Go For The Water', is a stort vrsion of the Scots/English song, 'Get Up and Bar the Door' and is to be found throughout the world - its earliest varients go back to Ancient Egypt and India

Our folk culture is riddled with 'foreign influences' - they never came from literary sources - not in a million years
Britan has always imported foreign influences - via its colonies, via its trade, its conquests - even the African slaves once owned here left their fingerprints all over our history
Go look at the Stith Thomson Reidar Cristiansen, Archer Taylor, Ordnuf Hodne, Sean O'Sullivan indexes for that fact (didn't have to get up out of my seat for that list - they are within arms reach and in constant use)

You want to see a possible source for our Scandinavian influences, visit Jarlshof in Shetland or any of the hundreds of sites on Orkney, where the language still bears its imprint
In England you can go to York - in Ireland we have Waterford or Dublin
The Scots culture was strongly influenced by Italy - for a material peep at history - look at that beautiful Italianate once seen never to be forgotten faccade insoide the courtyard of Caerlaverock Castle.
Literary influences my arse

Making sense of our song traditions has to be down to taking what has been done already have and adding to it - not replacing it as you would a holey pair of socks

I'm afraid the new trend is very much reminiscent of Jimmy Cagneyish "Top of the world ma" stuff

Pseu - you need to read everything you can lay your hands on - none of it has all the answers, but very little of it has nothing to offer

If you would like an excellent overview, I highly recommend D K Wilgus's 'Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship Since 1898' - a wonderful and highly readable stroll through the subject without the academic competitiveness

I don't know where your anti-racist protest was on Friday - I hope it went well
If I'd been there I'd have been on it - nice to know we're on the same wavelength of that one at least
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 08:01 AM

Jim

"If I'd been there I'd have been on it ...'

I know that!

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 08:27 AM

I don't think Gerould dismissed them, rather, he maybe suggested that they didn't/couldn't write them down

This is what you quoted Gerould as saying:

the art of the unlettered portions of European peoples is in another case from that of Bantu tribesmen. They have always formed parts of nations in which artists more or less nourished on conscious aesthetic tradition have at the same time been working.

Which means he knew nothing whatever about the social background of African artforms, which in much of the continent were every bit as locked into monarchical and aristocratic dynastic hierarchies as anything the British gentry and royal court paid for. This was stark staring obvious to many of Gerould's contemporaries, like the European artists inspired by the sculpture of West Africa who knew damn well that they were looking at work dedicated to kings. Gerould had absolutely zero excuse for being that stupid - and perhaps he wasn't: by 1932 African-derived music had become an inescapable part of American culture, and if a scholar didn't want to know where it came from, racist hostility was the only explanation for that indifference.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 08:38 AM

Pseudonymous gives interesting quotations from 'the first ever issue of the Journal of American Folklore" and the one comment that struck me hardest was:-

The second division of folk-lore indicated is that belonging to the American negroes. It is but within a few years that attention has been called to the existence among these of a great number of tales relating to animals, which have been preserved in an interesting collection.

I would really like to be able to ask the person who who wrote this if there is any aspect of human artistic expression where humans do not interact constantly with other creatures; they are a constant source of wonder and companionship for us as well as being a major source of our nutrition.

I had news on Friday of the death of a close friend, Suntou Kouyaté, the great Gambian jali who played, made and taught the balafon. I find that I have been knocked sidewards by this news and am thinking about him and many other jali friends in and around Brikama in the Gambia.
I have been deeply immersed in jaliya culture for over twenty years now and have made many recordings of it (which I must get properly catalogued soon) At the root of most jaliya stories are animals that communicate with humans and are either of great assistance or hindrance to them. I find that the different song-stories seem to have fashions of popularity than are replace by others but then re-emerge after some years. Three of the most popular on my last visit in November were:-
Mali Sajo This tells a beautiful story about the love a hippopotamus felt for a young girl. Later it was killed by European hunters.
Simbo A hunter is wondering about his dog's devotion to him and compares this to his own devotion to a superior being, usually but not always Allah.
Kado During a war between the Fulas and the Mandings the monkeys act as spies for both sides.
I have always been sceptical of those who claim to see very close connection between African and Afro-American culture with statements such as "The Blues comes from Africa" and "The banjo developed from the West African n'goni." and I always tread very carefully when comparing West African animal tales with slave tales from the American south.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 09:22 AM

Ironically, in view of all that has been said here about 'pop', and the baleful influence of broadsheets on 'folk', Peabody, one of the earliest people to gather material from African Americans, as reported in the same Journal of American Folklore, moaned about the fact that they were singing popular ballads such as 'Goo goo eyes' and May Irwin's bully song. That wasn't what he wanted to 'collect'. But at least he did report it, albeit couched in commentary that is at times wince-making and drawing on adverse stereotypes.


But I'm not going down this potentially fascinating thread drift avenue any further. Sorry if I started it; did want to make the point about Gerould before reading more of him, which I shall.


It's raining! Bliss.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 09:32 AM

You may well be right Jack - there was a nationalistic (rather than racial) approach to traditional singing in Britain as well - have Harker made his name by grossly overstated it
Idon't think that detracts in any way from the contribution these people made - as I said, they were very much of their time
You might well extend your hostility to the suggestion that Steve's suggestion that 'foreign material' was introduced into the English tradition bia literature rather than life experience
For me, is shows a disturbing lack of understanding of folk traditions
I like Gerould for what he had to say on ballads (basically on the basis of one book and article - beyond that, he remains a stranger)
What he says makes sense
If his implied racism influenced his opinions on ballads you might have a point - I can't see that it does.

I can think of many analogies of when I apply this approach - one very simple one springs to mind
One of the first book s I ever read and enjoyed was the Rev. Charles Kingsley's 'The Water Babies' among other books it inspired me to become a life-long 'chain' reader
Over the last few years I have discovered that KIngsley was a raving racist who detested the Famine-fleeing Irish and described them as 'white savages, no different than their counterparts in the Congo' - two doses of racism in one spoonful.
As much as I detest the man for that, I can't see that it detracts from his classic children's book and the reforms that it brought about in the conditions of Victorian Chimney Sweepers' slaves.
   
I'll take from these people the good things they have to offer nad reject the bad - as I ma prepared to do with Gerould and Sharp
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 09:37 AM

'Goo goo eyes' and May Irwin's bully song'
I assume you've heard the recording of the Kipsigi women singing a paeon of praise to the god-like "ooh Jimmy Roger, Mr Jimmy Roger"
Unforgettable - it's on Lloyd's Songs of the People' series
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 09:39 AM

Jim
The Water Babies: same experience here. Most of your points seem sensible to me. I'm not qualified to comment on the 'literature' origin of foreign influences, though I feel it must have been among the methods.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 09:57 AM

Sharp talked about banjos as "nigger machines" and ignored them

Where is this quote from, Jim? I haven't come across it in my research. Sharp did occasionally use the 'N-word' in his writings, but more commonly used 'negro' and, described the two African-American singers he met as 'coloured' (which was at one time considered the politer term to use). Bear in mind also that the white mountain people he was working with routinely used the offensive term in 1916. Although Sharp certainly shared some of the racial ideas about white (and specifically English) superiority Pseudonymous was describing, he made some complimentary remarks about the few black people he actually met.

Although he was far more interested in unaccompanied ballads than banjo music, he did say after hearing a banjo / fiddle duet:

"The thing was very skilfully played, plumb in tune, and its constant repetition had a very hypnotic effect on me and apparently on the players ... the tunes look little enough when committed to paper, but the way they were played produced a very curious and not un-beautiful effect."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 10:28 AM

"Where is this quote from, Jim? I haven't come across it in my research"
I honestly can't remember Brian - it was a well circulated story back in the day; I suspect I first heard it from Bert but he certainly wasn't the only one to relate the story
I think I am right in saying he didn't collect from black informants in the Appalachians, but I confess I've never checked
I'm not sure of this but I don't think 'Nigger' wasn't the term of abuse it is now

Pseu
Regarding forieign influences into our cultures, Wimberley's 'Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads' makes an interesting read.
Literature certainly played a part in 'foreign' influences, but looking at our copy of Priors translation of Danish Ballads, I can't spot a singable version in any of the three volumes
They are every bit as bad as the broadsides, which suggests tampering and invention by the translator rather than the real stuff
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 10:56 AM

Tzu>>>>>did not Child did find what he thought was the 'same' ballad in the tradition of both countries?<<<<<

Of course, they certainly had motifs in common and often had the same plot and not just between 2 countries, some are pan-European, But translation from one language to another suggests (to me at least) a level of sophistication (dare I say it, by literate people!). IMO, IMO, IMO...…


Tzu, No-one here to the best of my knowledge has criticised the bulk of the contribution of the likes of Child, Sharp, Gerould, Lloyd et al. The problem is that some here would seem to want to worship their contribution like a religion, which IMO is ridiculous. We now have access to unprecedented knowledge and for those people to have got everything right, well they really would have been deities.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 11:12 AM

"The problem is that some here would seem to want to worship their contribution like a religion, "
No one I know Steve
I have reservations on their work and sometimes opinions - I would have ben happier if Child had actually heard the ballads he wrote about sung
What is being done now by the New Agers is replacing their work bu undermining it
I find that distasteful and destructive
I would have the same reservations about some of the desk-jockeys as I have about Child - but at least the old lot appeared to respect the folk as creators
All good research is carried out on the basis of what has gone before, rather than replacing it like a fashion item gone out of date.
I think I have said before that I found the greatest flaw in Roud's book was it's virtual total lack of songs - our song tradition has become as paper-bound as you have us believe their creation was
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 11:35 AM

I think I am right in saying he didn't collect from black informants in the Appalachians, but I confess I've never checked

Just two individuals, Jim, most notably Aunt Maria Tomes (or Tombs) of Nellysford, Va who, Sharp recorded, "sang very beautifully in a wonderfully musical way and with clear and perfect intonation".

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 11:46 AM

Thanks Brian
Somewhat odd for the Appalachians - I'm grateful fro the information
I am fully aware that Sharp was a Fabian Socialist, by the way
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 12:04 PM

A couple of snippets from Gerould, who is proving interesting. Lucy Broadwood noted similarities between a tune collected in Cumberland (much of which is now called Cumbria) and a Westphalian version, and put it down to Germans being involved in Lake District mining. These same Germans arose in a Time Team (British archaeology programme, now sadly defunct) on that mining activity. Song in question: The Maid Freed from the Gallows. This snippet is the sort of 'gem' that fascinates me.


"Nobody has been able," he says, "to work out Child's rationale for his song selection." I've read that before.

"... a surprisingly large number of those not included by Child are quite as interesting and valuable as very many which he put into his volumes." Now that's a comment for Clinton Heylin to be reading (see above, his review of Roud).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 12:09 PM

Brian Peters wrote:-
Aunt Maria Tomes (or Tombs) of Nellysford, Va
That reminds me that about 7 or 8 years ago that I booked a two-man multi-media show for Lewes Folk Festival called Sharp's Appalachian Harvest as the main song presentation on the Saturday night. I was a bit worried that it may be a bit academic for as a stand-along main concert. I need not have worried; it was a sell-out. There was a reference to Aunt Maria in that show and the tune of hers from the show also turned upon the album of the show. Here is the booklet note on that song:-

Tune sung by Aunt Maria Tomes, Nellysford, VA, May 22, 1918
Sharp has been castigated for his failure to collect material from African-American singers. A fieldworker searching so specifically for material of British origin might be forgiven for ignoring them, but it seems never to have occurred to Sharp that this group might have folk songs and music of their own, and one particular comment in the diary grates on modern ears. He collected only two songs from black people but, as usual, he found it easy to strike up a cordial relationship when he met Aunt Maria Tomes, delighting the eighty-five-year-old freed slave (and suppressing his atheist beliefs) by singing her The Sinner Man. Although Sharp remarked that Aunt Maria sang "very beautifully in a wonderfully musical way and with clear and perfect intonation," he took down just one verse of her Barbara Allen - maybe the unusual tune was of greater interest, or maybe the singer knew no more. I collated verses from some of the other sixteen versions in the collection of this, the most popular of all British traditional ballads.

These notes were writteb by the man who sang it on the album and in the show; a man called Brian Peters.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 01:02 PM

Thanks, Vic.

Gosh, was it so long ago? Unforgettable for me not least because you got Shirley Collins - who knows plenty about Appalachian song herself, of course - to introduce the show.

You missed one thing amidst all that detail (obviously an oversight because I know you're a great admirer of his music): my co-conspirator in that project, the great Jeff Davis.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 01:10 PM

>>>>I have reservations on their work and sometimes opinions<<<< And that's all the rest of us have and comment on so can we bury that one, please?


Now, to the very demeaning 'desk jockeys'. To whom exactly are you referring? None of the people I know who have been commenting on the current topics could be solely described in this way. They are all heavily involved in the music actively, have carried out field recordings, have travelled round the country hunting out scarce versions, etc. In what way are we/they any more 'desk jockeys' than you are?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 01:12 PM

Somewhat odd for the Appalachians

If by this, Jim, you mean that it was odd he met only two black singers in an area with a large African-American population, that can be explained partly because he looked for (or was directed to) areas where people were known to sing the old ballads, which in practice meant areas with a high proportion of British Isles descendents. On one occasion that we know about, he and Maud Karpeles turned back from a particular township when they found it had a mostly black population. There was a lot of segregation in the mountains at the time, so for instance the rather isolated rural community of Madison Co., NC, where they got a lot of songs on their first trip, had only a tiny black component.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 01:17 PM

>>>>>I found the greatest flaw in Roud's book was it's virtual total lack of songs<<<<<<

Oh dear! Not that one again. The book contained 764 pages. It followed hotly on the heels of The New Penguin 542 pages containing 151 songs all fully annotated with a study on the tunes as well. Some people are never satisfied!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 02:15 PM

"The book contained 764 pages"
Pity the reviewers weren't sent a copy of both - maybe then they would have something to go on
You can never assume that those who are prepared to lay out for one will by the other
For me, it's the difference between bert's version and Stve's
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 02:33 PM

the great Jeff Davis. 

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 02:39 PM

Sorry Steve - in the middle of a meal so last post was hurried
There's two things about the omission of songs in the book
I can remember where i was when I bought Bert's book as clearly as I can remember what I was doing when Bambi's mother was shot - I was at a CND fundraise in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester
The place was full of non-folkies but the book sold out within an hour because the punters could look at what they were buying
This is not the case - the authors have aimed the book at aficionados and veteran folkies - at a time when the scene desperately needs new blood and brains

Secondly, and most importantly, to my mind
If you are going to radically move the goalposts in term of what folk song is, those not in our particular Freemasons Lodge need to be able to view the repertoire covered to see if such a radical switch of direction is justified.
That isn't even true if you can call yourself 'Two Books Jackson'
I don't remember many 'New Age Folk Songs' being included in the new eition of 'Penguin Book' - I'm sure I would have noticed and been up on my soapbox before now if they had been
Washing up time
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 03:45 PM

>>>>>radically move the goalposts in term of what folk song is<<<<<<<


Anyone else feel SteveR has done this, after reading the book? Just curious!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 03:52 PM

Looks like you missed it, Jim, so can I respectfully ask you to at least look at my post of 1.10 PM?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 03:53 PM

Anyone else feel SteveR has done this, after reading the book? Just curious!
No

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 05:25 PM

Hello all,

Me, I'm getting dizzy going round this particular circle!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 06:02 PM

Steve
Your posting refers to nothing I have said
Your work as a collector concerns taking songs from a tradition that was being remembered twice
We have agreed (I thought) that even Sharp's people were taking songs from a dying tradition a century ago and racing to do so
Where does that leave us at present
Pat had the advantage of recording songs from a tradition on its last legs and one that was still warm
Even there, it was limited because it was largely being remembered.
Your claims have not been made on the basis of what you discovered in the field bup from paperwork
I admit to not having definitive answers, you have pai
d lip service to not having answers but from the very beginning your attitude has been =one of contempt and ridicule - I'm sure you don't need me to repeat your dismissive summing up of my attitude to MacColl's 'Song Carriers summing up
Your attitude to researchers and academics who were living at the time the broadside presses were going full tilt and and the world was throbbing with living traditions I find totally unacceptable - as for those immediately following that period - unbelievable.
Your dogged determination to draw the conclusions you have from statistics leave none of us any future other than to give up and follow your lead - you leave no room for negotiation or co-operation

People have complained about our going round in circle - fine - why not face my arguments down with ones of your own?
The basic Question is a simple one
If you believe the people were capable of making our folk songs - why are you so convinced that they didn't ?
I really don't think it gets much more difficult than that
I really have shown you mane - far too much of it
Now where's yours?
All I've seen so far is shadow boxing
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 06:28 PM

>>>>Your posting refers to nothing I have said<<<< Really? I was using your own words verbatim!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 10:53 PM

As Vic Smith says, I have "already given a yellow card to this thread." I keep looking, but the discussion is still fascinating despite occasional animosity.
Carry on, gentlemen.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 02:24 AM

Sorry Steve - in the middle of a meal so last post was hurried"
Jim, might i suggest you eat your meal before making posts
“A man must eat before he can think"Marx

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 03:14 AM

"Really? I was using your own words verbatim!"
I'm talking about the subject as a whole Steve, and I am not just referring to you

I was just skipping to a few books I haven't opened for years - I was staggered at the amount of excellent work I have either absorbed into my own ideas or had altogether forgotten
One of the most interesting (and earliest) is Francis Gummere's 'The Popular Ballad' (1907)
It's not an easy book (the author recommends that "Gentle readers should begin their reading with the second chapter") and it is certainly dated in places, but it throbs with excellent information and opinions.
The book is based on the idea that folk balladry was a creation of 'the common people' - totally distinct from literary creations
I had forgotten that this idea originated in the 1500s in the writings of the philosopher Montaigne -1533-1592
I said earlier that the first reports of traditional singing were by 'The Venerable Bede - c673 to 735; (must get the spelling right this time), when he described cattlemen passing a harp around and improvising lewd songs
Wedderburn's 'Complaynt of Scotland describes the song of 'the frog and the mouse' being sung by unlettered shepherds in 1549
If traditional singing and song-making has been around for so long, where did it go - what happened to all that talent and creativity?
Before we throw out the idea that the folk created their own songs, that question needs to be answered

“A man must eat before he can think" Marx
There's me thinking Charlie used to take sandwiches into the British Library Dick?
Must remember your advice (belch!!)

Joe
I apologise (again) for my occasional outbursts of irritation.
I think that all here regard this subject as important and not particularly easy to deal with
These ideas are new to most of us and we're not particularly skilled debaters or writers (speaking only for me, of course)
I feel an anodyne discussion would be selling the subject short - doesn't mean we shouldn't be polite to each other and tolerant of views we don't agree with
I always avoided pubs with signs saying "no politics, no football, no religion", no matter how good the beer - Liverpool was full of them, not without good reason
I've got a tremendous amount out of this discussion so far - I hope others have
Your indulgence on the occasional lapse would be very much appreciated (by me, at least)
Thanks
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 03:16 AM

Just noticed
"Pat had the advantage"
Pat and I, of course
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 04:22 AM

"I was just skipping to a few books I haven't opened for years - I was staggered at the amount of excellent work I have either absorbed into my own ideas or had altogether forgotten"
Jim, your own ideas continue to interest me with their depth of vision.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 05:10 AM

That does not mean i always agree with you ,but i find them interesting nevertheless

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 05:46 AM

Life would be very boring if everybody agreed with everybody else all the time Dick
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 05:46 AM

Life would be very boring if everybody agreed with everybody else all the time Dick
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 06:28 AM

I was looking again at the first book about folk in England that I bought, by Maud Karpeles, whom I later learned more about. I now know she was involved with an international body that came up with the 1954 definition referred to above in this thread.

The book discusses definitions, and, though I did promise myself not to get involved in dizziness-inducing circular arguments, I am going to quote some of what it says. The reason I do this is because, for me, it possibly contradicts any theory that for a hundred years people have argued that to count as folk song a song must have originated with the people.

" (i)The term folk music can be applied to music that has been evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by popular or art music and it can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community;

(ii) The term does not cover popular composed music that has been taken over ready-made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the re-fashioning and re-creation of the music by the community which gives it its folk character"

One might not like the implications of this, especially as it includes the dreaded term 'popular', but for me it makes it difficult to argue that for a century folklorists have worked exclusively with a different definition.


Karpeles' discussion is more subtle than a simple 'folk-broadsheet' opposition.

She also refers to a view that folk song 'composes itself', ascribing it to early German Romantic writers, saying that many later scholars believe that 'the songs owe their origin to individual ownership'. She refers to two schools 'the production theory' and 'the reception' theory'. She says neither school gives enough importance to the question of passing on via word of mouth.

This emphasis makes it difficult, in terms of Karpeles' view, to argue that material composed in, say, 1950 would count as 'folk' music, on the basis that it has not been through the mill of re-fashioning and re-creation.

Why do the manufacturers of squidgy stuff that comes in tubes so often choose the same shade of blue? It almost leads to unfortunate misapplication of the wrong sort of stuff to one's person.:(

Somebody should write a song about it :)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 06:53 AM

'popular'
Whatever Karpeles meant by the term, she was referring to a specific type of music which is all that matters here
If the definition changes the subject referred to doesn't
Suggesting that id did has always been a misinterpretation con
Until the definition is changed it is a red-herring to these arguments - the only people to quote it are those who wish it gone and use it as a tem of abuse
These arguments will only remain "circular" while people refuse to respong to what is really being said
The solution lies in hands other than mine
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 06:53 AM

'popular'
Whatever Karpeles meant by the term, she was referring to a specific type of music which is all that matters here
If the definition changes the subject referred to doesn't
Suggesting that id did has always been a misinterpretation con
Until the definition is changed it is a red-herring to these arguments - the only people to quote it are those who wish it gone and use it as a tem of abuse
These arguments will only remain "circular" while people refuse to respong to what is really being said
The solution lies in hands other than mine
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 08:00 AM

"ntil the definition is changed it is a red-herring to these arguments - the only people to quote it are those who wish it gone and use it as a tem of abuse"
Can you give an alternative definition

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 08:12 AM

"Can you give an alternative definition"
I'm suggesting that those who don't agree with it offer an alternative
The problem is, of course, that the basis for the existing definition has been firmly documented since 1898
Try re-defining anything that has been in existence for that long - and good luck
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 09:35 AM

If traditional singing and song-making has been around for so long, where did it go - what happened to all that talent and creativity?
(Jim Carrol)

It's all around you, you just don't like what it produces, don't regard it as folk song or don't regard the people who produce it as 'the folk'.

Before we throw out the idea that the folk created their own songs, that question needs to be answered (Jim Carrol)

No-one in this discussion seems to be throwing it out.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 09:38 AM

I can't think of anyone, including contributors here, who does not go along with the 54 descriptors. I certainly do.

My own personal proviso is that they do not offer what I would call a definition with finite boundaries and why should they? As I stated above, no other musical genre or literary genre requires hard and fast boundaries. Neither Steve nor I have changed any of this. As Maud K quite clearly states, origins have nothing to do with whether a song/ballad is a folksong or not, and she was the major influence in drawing up the 54 descriptors. I cannot see any differences between any of us here.

The whole argument seems to be around origins of individual folksongs/ballads (not of the genre as a whole). We can discuss this amicably without resorting to insults like 'desk jockeys'. My opinion is that 95% of the English corpus originated in some form of urban commercial enterprise and Jim's opinion is that some unknown quantity originated with the rural common people. I base my opinion on having studied in great detail, the folk songs in that corpus, alongside much other material that came from the same sources that didn't survive in oral tradition.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 10:04 AM

>>>>>>>This emphasis makes it difficult, in terms of Karpeles' view, to argue that material composed in, say, 1950 would count as 'folk' music, on the basis that it has not been through the mill of re-fashioning and re-creation.<<<<<< Tzu


And therein lies one of the best examples of why we can't place hard and fast boundaries on this 'definition'. You say tentatively '1950'. Everybody here will probably have a different idea of when this date should be, or how long it takes a song to become a folksong. Those who have attempted to do this have offered when the song passes from one generation to another. That can be 25 years or 50 years or a century or in the case of playground songs, one year group to another. Be interested to see if Jim could put a date to this.


Examples:
My Brudda Sylvest, dated 1908, American. By 1950 the song was being sung in a variety of forms in English pub sings with no-one having any memory of where it came from, (probably spread during WWI WWII forces intermixing)

Common Bill, dated about 1870, Music Hall, published as a folk song in Lucy Broadwood's English County Songs, 1893, and appears in several later collections.

Many of the Music Hall songs of Harry Clifton, Harry Linn and J. B. Geoghegan appeared in the collections round about 1900 simply because they sound and look like folksongs.

Mayhew's 'London Labour etc.' contains an account of an interview by Mayhew with the writer of 'Bonny Bunch of Roses O' (probably John Morgan who wrote several other pieces that went into oral tradition)

I could go on quoting examples going back to the 17th century.

BTW the first draft of the 54 definition did include the descriptor that any song of which the author is known could not be a folksong. For obvious reasons within a year this descriptor was dropped.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 10:05 AM

Some people have nothing better to do. 1400

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 10:16 AM

"It's all around you, you just don't like what it produces,"
Some is, but no longer for the same reason
Most songs are made to be sold and the little (c) would prevent them from passing into the tradition, even if there was one to include them
That not only restricts their performance but also largely fixed the texts
The thing that distinguished songs is that they were largely anonymous, therefore ownerless - anybody could put their own personal stamp on them
They became historical documents chronicling their time
Today, the fol songs fall within the scope of the Public Domain, but even this is changing with performers copyrighting "arrangements" all folk songs are "arrangements" by their very nature.
"No-one in this discussion seems to be throwing it out."
Attributing 90% plus of our folk songs to a commercial industry does just that
It becomes worse when similar claims are made of folk dance and folk tales
This makes "ordinary" people passive recipients (customers even) rather than creators of their culture

You need to produe more than earliest published dates to back up your claim - you have admitted that you are unable to prove there were no earlier versions
You once offered to produce a list of those who agreed with you - bet it's nowhere near as long as my list of a century + worth of researchers who believed that the folk made their songs
We need to move on from claims and discuss the logic of their creation
You might start with explaining how so many bad songmakers made so many good songs - why they did and how they, as outsiders, managed to do so with such accuracy and obvious insider knowledge
Hardly from a desk in Seven Dials
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,17 Jul 18 - 09:35 AM
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 10:37 AM

Most songs are made to be sold and the little (c) would prevent them from passing into the tradition,

Now who's moving the goal posts. You asked about creativity.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 10:38 AM

Jim i keep asking a definition please

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 10:39 AM

We have been over and over this numerous times before, Jim.

Okay, but this might be the last time as some of us are becoming very exasperated at being asked to repeat things over and over again.

>>>>>'You might start with explaining how so many bad songmakers made so many good songs'.<<<<<<

As others have already pointed out here we are talking about hundreds of thousands of songs of widely varying quality. Not all of the songs produced were of bad quality, just the same as the commercial productions of today. The very small percentage that were appealing in some way to ordinary people went into oral tradition and survived, in towns and in rural areas. 'Bonny Bunch of Roses O' is an excellent song is it not?


>>>>>'why?'<<<<< To feed their families and keep the wolf from the door. It is very likely they came from a variety of backgrounds, some ex-seamen, some from rural areas, some born in the areas they lived in. Their literacy would have also varied greatly, some well read, some barely literate but with a knack of turning a verse.


>>>>>'outsiders'<<<<<< I write songs about our local heritage, whaling songs, fishing industry, local waterways. I have never worked in any of these industries. I was a teacher for 40 years, but I can turn a verse and put a good tune to them. Some of these people read newspapers, some read books, some sat in the pub and picked up their info there. Very few folksongs need any 'insider' knowledge to write them, particularly rural songs. The majority of rural songs are idealistic romantic pieces that have come from theatrical productions like the penny operas.

>>>>>>'desk in Seven Dials'<<<<<< Well, that may be the picture you conjure up, but mine is more likely a pub in 7 Dials.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 10:45 AM

Many of the Music Hall songs of Harry Clifton, Harry Linn and J. B. Geoghegan appeared in the collections round about 1900 simply because they sound and look like folksongs.

Yes - it was quite a shock to me to discover that 'Ten Thousand Miles Away' (which I'd learned from a Walter Pardon recording) and 'Hey John Barleycorn' were Geohegan compositions. They certainly do 'sound like folksongs'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 10:50 AM

Very few folksongs need any 'insider' knowledge to write them, particularly rural songs.

And you can guarantee that any such insider knowledge would get lost in transmission. Only a small minority in any community know the exact sequence of operations involved in gutting a sheep, threading a loom or building a drystone wall, and if your song followed those steps in order, the next non-specialist to transmit the song would probably rearrange them in a sequence that couldn't actually work.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 11:38 AM

'insider knowledge'

I was thinking just the other day about 'The Farmer's Boy'. As far as I know the origins of this one are still obscure but, to look at the lyrics, you'd assume it was a slightly mawkish piece of Victorian sentimentality. I'd certainly not have believed it was composed by an actual farm labourer. Actually, checking back over this thread, Jim reported many posts ago that Walter Pardon found it inauthentic.

Yet by all accounts it was very popular in the rural community, and to hear Fred Jordan sing it you'd think he'd written it himself, so obviously close to his heart as it was. Insider knowledge is clearly not essential to a song hitting the spot.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 11:42 AM

"We have been over and over this numerous times before, Jim."
We have indeed Steve - ane we oft know where
You came up with 'schools of broadside hacks, hacks who had worked the land or gone to sea, hacks who had searched newspapers for background information.... a whole list of excuses rather than admit that they might just have got their songs from visiting countrymen, which was not only possible but highly likely.
You also claimed the term "hack" did not mean "bad poet"
All this sounds to me like hastily grabbed excuses rather than researched information
of course a large number of our folk songs contain insider information, trade tems referenced to tools and equipment, farm practices - right through to customs, superstitions and even social practices
On these latter, the songs take a stance on things like arranged marriages in order to climb the social ladder
The further back you go, the more specialised the knowledge gets, especially on the subject of folklore.   
I've pointed this out before, but here goes again - if you read books like Hugill's 'Sailortown' you are presented with a hated, feared and mistrusted group of workers who lived in virtual ghettos while they are ashore, yet the songs treat them as sympathetic and their exploits in doing down the Townies as victories - they only become sympathetic figures in wartime.
The same with the Navvies - described in Terry Coleman's work on the subject threatening invading armies - a million miles from your 'Bold English Navvy

Look - I have shown over and over again that he Irish rural workers have produced many hundreds of songs describing their lives and aspirations, around here especially, but, as it transpires, throughout Ireland
What is so different about the rural English or Scots workers that they had to go out and but descriptions rather than make songs up about them themselves?
Steve claimed it was because the Brits were too busy earning a living
I suggest you look at the conditions that gave rise to the richest body of Irish song - Famine, forced Emigration, mass evictions, land wars, a war of independence, Civil war, then permanent immigration right up to the present day... all the subject of many, many songs
And the Brits had to pay somebody to do it for them - I don't think so somehow.
We don't know who made the songs - we probably never shall
All we can go on is logic and what little information we have.
From day one I have accepted that singers supplemented their home-made repertoires with marketed songs - we all have done so up to now
What new information has been provided to make us change our minds and why did the old researchers get it so wrong - especially those who were around while the broadside presses were still rolling?

Steve G once accused me in a fir of pique of having an 'agenda'
I can see no greater evidence of an agenda than a significant number of singers and enthusiasts grabbing the suggestion that the folk mde hardly any of their songs so readily and being soi keen to prove that fact
Sorry - unless that is justified we will continue to go around in circles
As far as my experience is concerned, working people were natural songmakes with both the desire and ability to make their own songs - if they were capable of doing so the overwhelming evidence suggests that they did - why wouldn't they?

"Jim i keep asking a definition please"
And I keep telling you that I already have one, thank you very much
If you want a new one, go to it and make your own - you have my blessing
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 11:46 AM

"Yet by all accounts it was very popular in the rural community,"
As was 'Break the News to Mother" or Bird in a Gilded Cage"
I wouldn't describe those as folk songs (though I think Steve Roud would now - he wouldn't have done a few years ago though)
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 11:58 AM

Look - I have shown over and over again that he Irish rural workers have produced many hundreds of songs describing their lives and aspirations, around here especially, but, as it transpires, throughout Ireland

Songs which never caught on elsewhere and which none of the Irish, even in the community where they originated, bothered remembering and passing on.

What is so different about the rural English or Scots workers that they had to go out and but descriptions rather than make songs up about them themselves?

Probably nothing. Their songs didn't catch on either. The better distribution of printed songs was what made them stick, as it did in Ireland.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 12:15 PM

"Songs which never caught on elsewhere and which none of the Irish, even in the community where they originated, bothered remembering and passing on."
Not necessarily the case, somme did when you add them to the repertoire that did survive
Collecting folksongs was very much a missed opportunity here - that was down to external activities
Songs of immediate interest died when the memory of the incidents fades (as they probably did in Britain) - they were functional songs of the moment ans as such, they would have been overlooked by collectors
The point I am making is that the Irish people have proven themselves more than capable songmakers - why not the British?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 12:23 PM

Incidentally
Many of these songs were captured in the press and political journals and the schools collecting project

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 12:27 PM

Not having a good posting day today - this is what I intnded to put up
Incidentally
Many of these songs were captured in the press and political journals and the SCHOOLS COLLECTING PROJECT of the 1930s have remained unexamined until now
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 12:27 PM

Jim but you dont tell us what your definition is, it the 1954 definition. you keep refusing to show us what your definition is

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 12:38 PM

The point I am making is that the Irish people have proven themselves more than capable songmakers - why not the British?

Both were even better at forgetting songs that didn't serve a long-term function than they were at creating them. Whereas the at-some-time-print-transmitted stuff had staying power.

I heard quite a few chants at the Edinburgh "Dump Trump" march last weekend that were entirely new to me. How many am I ever going to hear again? Not a lot. I can think of only two chants of that type that have lasted decades ("the people united will never be defeated" and "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out out out!"). Ephemeral creation is ubiquitous. Roud's interests seem to be mainly in songs that persist long enough to be traceable.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 01:26 PM

Jack
It's always been an accepted fact that technology and literacy turned the people into passive recipients of their culture rather than makers of it
Your apparent interest in foreign culture will have told you of the effects of acculturation and outside intervention, I am sure
I think the ephemeral stuff still had resonance
LIKE THIS
AND PARTICULARLY THIS
The latter. for me, is a brilliant example of a complex subject satarised by a non-professional

Dick - Please read my posts
I'm happy to accept the '54 definition until a better one comes along
If you can't follow that, I don't know how to help you
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 02:04 PM

It's always been an accepted fact that technology and literacy turned the people into passive recipients of their culture rather than makers of it

Accepted by who? It's obviously garbage.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 02:22 PM

'What is so different about the rural English or Scots workers'.

You are comparing 1960s Irish rural workers with early 19thc English rural workers. Here are just a few of the factors that make the difference.

transport
social mobility
literacy
education
technology
medicine
aspiration
That's without taking into account things like enclosure, abject poverty. That's enough to be going on with. If anyone wants to add more be my guest.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 02:33 PM

Radio
gramophone records
broader horizons
greater awareness
longer life expectancy with some pension
a more favourable leisure/work ratio
the experience that some who wrote songs made money from them.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 02:37 PM

No I am not Vic
I am discussing the songs created within the lifetimes of the singers from about 1880 to 1950

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 03:01 PM

I'm being somewhat conservative there
The locally made songs we encountered date back to the end of the Famine (1850) - no songs as far as we can find were made during the Famine
They covered the victions and emigrations following the Famine, the Fenian uprising in 1867 the land wars and Cattle raids during the re-redistribution of Estates, the anti-enlistment campaign in WW1, the War of Independence 1818 to 1922 and after
That timeline would pt the Irish rural population pretty well in line the period Steve is now referring to
All periods produced masses of home made songs
One of the things Ireland had that England didn't was a rich repertoire of traditional Irish and Anglo Irish songs and ballads to use as a template for making new songs
That templte was smashed by the joint effort of Church and Government around the end of the 1940s when they mounted a concerted attack on "unchaperoned' entertainment
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 05:45 PM

Scottish bothy ballads are an example of Scottish farm workers who made up songs.
"The point I am making is that the Irish people have proven themselves more than capable songmakers - why not the British?
Jim Carroll"Jim, Scotland was and still is part of Britain, IT SEEMS LIKE SOME PARTS OF bRITAIN WERE STILL MAKING UP SONGS

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 02:52 AM

"IT SEEMS LIKE SOME PARTS OF bRITAIN WERE STILL MAKING UP SONGS"
I'm well aware of that Dick - this has been my argument from day one
Don't tell me, tell those who seem so keen to believe that they don't

In all the years I've been involved in folk song, I don't think I've ever encountered such enthusiasm to suggest that they weren't doing so; occasionally there were suggestions that the folk were incapable of making the ballads, but their making folk songs was never questioned until now

I fully believe that working people were once prolific, even instinctive song-makers with a desire to express their feelings, experiences and aspirations in verse - (I remember you once gave me a locally-made song on a local sportsman) - I heard two of those last week
That the folk made their songs still appears to be the belief here in Ireland - last week I attended a series of singing workshops where the tutors appeared somewhat bemused at the suggestion that the folk didn't make their songs - one response was "Isn't that how they got their name"
It seems that the U.K. scene has made a U.D.I.

Having been involved in that scene for as long as I was, I find that somewhat depressing
I would have thought that they had enough problems in tackling how to ensure the survival of folk music without adding this to them
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 03:42 AM

But bothy ballads/cornkisters were committed to paper very early on, and those paper sources were used.

I doubt many people could memorize "The Pirn-Taed Jockie" without seeing it written down, any more than you could learn one of Zosimus's similar productions in Ireland.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 04:11 AM

It seems that the U.K. scene has made a U.D."
, people are composing folk songs all the time in the uk,

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 04:31 AM

One of the things Ireland had that England didn't was a rich repertoire of traditional Irish and Anglo Irish songs and ballads to use as a template for making new songs

That can't be a real difference - most of the models used for English-language political songs in Ireland were English or Scottish, would other topical stuff have been so different?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 04:37 AM

"people are composing folk songs all the time in the uk,"
In order for a song to become a 'folk song' it has to be got at by the folk process' - even by roud's re-definition it has to be sung by recognised folk singers who have been part of that process
Nobody can compose a folk song any more than they can compoe an Elizabethan Madrigal'

"I doubt many people could memorize "
Sorry Jack - not the case
Non literate Travellers (even blind ones) have been the saviours of some of our longest songs and ballads - John Reilly, Mary Delaney and Martin McDonough being prime examples of singers with phenomenal memories
Mary claimed to have being to meomorise a ballad after three hearings - Non-literate Martin McDonagh sang a six minutes version of Young Hunting for Tom Munnelly without mistake or hesitation - he told Tom he had not sung it for forty years
We tend to underestimate our singers
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 05:27 AM

Memorizing a ballad, where there is a storyline, is a different proposition from memorizing something like the songs I mentioned, where unpredictable verbal fireworks are the whole point.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 06:07 AM

I agree in principle Jack, though even there it can have problems, as I am beginning to find out (these singers were around my age and over)
But it doesn't always matter
THIS IS ONE OF THE LONGEST SONG we ever recorded - it is plotless and shapeless, yet the singer remembered it for us the first time he sang it and sang it each time virtually without hestitation.
He knew it so well, he could cut out whole sections at will if he was the audience wasn't paying attention
He learned it as a boy from a near neighbour in a totally isolated group of dwellings half way up Mount Callan - the neighbor was also noted for his remarkable memory, as a singer and long storyteller
For me as an atheist, the outstanding feature of the song is it's length

Martin was noted for his long songs - most exceeding four minutes and nearly all lyrical rather than narrative
He once told us "A song's not worth singing unless it has a few verses in it"
He was the master of understatement.
A group of friend once too him to the Cork Folk Festival
THey described how, when they stopped the car in the main street in the middle of Cork, Martin (who had never travelled more than 20 miles in his life. stepped out of the car, looked around and commented, "a grand bit of a village".

I wonder if you would apply your reservations to the epic Eastern European Bards who I believe you are familiar with
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 06:30 AM

Yes, of course Scotland still is part of the UK/Britain, though opinion there is divided on whether to continue as such. Though if you go back far enough in time the old kingdoms took in swathes of what are now England and Scotland, eg Northumbria, once a kingdom of the Angles, took in Edinburgh. The ancient kingdom of Rheged likewise crossed the border. A friend in Scotland still calls the English 'Anglish', though he would have been living in Northumbria had he been born in the same place centuries earlier.

I think somebody suggested that English people are not musically creative any more. People in England are still being musically creative, albeit not writing folk songs, which, on some arguments is impossible nowadays, as the via oral tradition preservation criterion cannot apply except retrospectively.

I thought of writing a list starting with Lennon and MacCartney and including examples from English/British musicians and songwriters with varying ethnic backgrounds, including rappers and British Asian music. I know (before somebody points it out to me) that as 'commercial' music this won't count as 'folk', which is supposed to be non-commercial at the point of origin, but it shows creativity.

I've written songs; I know several people who have made up songs. Some of these are in one of the many 'pop' genres, some are observational comedy.


My penny's worth is that non-literate people probably made more use of their memories than literate people, as they could not write stuff they needed to remember down. The idea (not that anybody here expressed it) that non-literacy was a sign of lack of intelligence is a relatively recent one. So I wouldn't buy that as an explanation for lack of song-making. Even young kids can memorise nursery rhymes. The fallibility of memory is presumably one source of variation in old songs passed down 'orally'.

On the lack of old 'ballads' as a template, I agree with Jack.

Re the comment that Roud lacks songs whereas these are in Lloyd. The two books are quite different in aim and scope. But I think that the point that Roud and Bishop already produced a book of songs is a fair one. But not all the 'lyrics' in Lloyd have music alongside them, though many do, so it isn't really a source book. I find Lloyd rambly in places, whereas the Roud book is more organised.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 06:42 AM

We are talking about the folk traditions Pseu
People coming to Britain from other countries often come from places with living or far healthier traditions than ours

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 07:20 AM

What were the backgrounds of the Musical Hall composers? Of the three listed by Brian Peters only J. B. Geoghegan is easy to Google but this old mudcat discussion https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=129312 opens with the info that he was born in Salford, the son of a fustian cutter, and used his creative abilities to get on in life and acheive some fame.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 08:41 AM

Jim said:

"We don't know who made the songs - we probably never shall
All we can go on is logic and what little information we have.
From day one I have accepted that singers supplemented their home-made repertoires with marketed songs - we all have done so up to now
What new information has been provided to make us change our minds and why did the old researchers get it so wrong - especially those who were around while the broadside presses were still rolling?"

The disagreement is over the proportion of home-made songs to composed ones. What appears to be relatively new is the large number of songs found in the tradition which are now known to have been published in print. This may not be news to researchers and collectors, but for a general reader such as myself to read this in Roud this was something new.

"I can see no greater evidence of an agenda than a significant number of singers and enthusiasts grabbing the suggestion that the folk made hardly any of their songs so readily and being so keen to prove that fact"

I don't think it is so much a question of being "keen to prove that fact" than following the evidence that has been put to us. I find Roud's conclusions interesting, but they don't change how I feel about folk song from an aesthetic point of view. I am entirely open to alternative views but I would like to see some evidence to support them. All Jim has produced is evidence that the folk were capable of creating their own songs (which no one, including Roud, has disputed) and the suggestion that as broadside writers were all hacks those songs which show any quality must have been collected from the folk in the first place.

I must say that I found Roud's comment that the songs sung by the folk were normally composed by outsiders rather startling. But if some 90% of traditional songs had appeared in print, even if some of those were existing folk songs, then it is perhaps a justifiable conclusion. I don't recall that Jim has suggested an alternative proportion, although I have not re-read this thread so I may be mistaken. If we could concentrate on trying to determine this proportion, based so far as possible on evidence, then this discussion might start to get somewhere.

I think it is accepted that both home-made and composed popular songs were sung by the folk. It is in the nature of the folk process that only the best songs, songs which meant something to the singers and their audience, survived. It is that survival rather than their origins which made them folk songs and is what I believe make them special and interesting.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 09:07 AM

On the Lloyd/Roud comparison: I opened Lloyd at random and came across a section on The Child Ballad 'The Elfin Knight'. This is a 'Child Ballad', chosen as such because it appeared to be old and widespread. We get only a few lines of the song, and those are from a Scottish version, intended to support a bizarre and unconvincing point that Lloyd is seeking to make on 'delousing' and 'insecticidal fingers'.

LLoyd's basic argument at this point is that ballads may have 'ancient and outlandish origins'. But it seems to me strong on rhetoric and broad brushes and short on evidence.

The piece seems to show astonishingly wide reading and travel by Lloyd: it refers to


Child;
Sophus Bugge;
Leon Pineau;
Unnamed researchers from Finland;
frescoes in 'certain' medieval churches of Hungary and Slovakia;
Unnamed Russian scholars;
Radlov;
Potanin; and
Pidal.


Unfortunately for anybody wishing to follow up on this section, we are not given references for these sources.

This is a pity, because Lloyd's argument (if you can call it that) here relates to a 'delousing scene' by a maiden with 'insecticidal fingernails' which he claims crops up old Siberian and Altaic epic songs. I had no idea what 'Altaic' meant and had to google it. Google says it was once thought to be a language family, possibly spoken/originating in the Central Asian Steppes, and including Korean and Japanese in some theories but that the idea is now widely discredited.

One reference that is given is wrong. It is to a 1952 Journal of American Folk Song article by Nygard. However, though the article cited is on the same song, and by Nygard, it has a different title. The Nygard JAFS article that Lloyd intended to refer to was actually published in a different year.

It's quite interesting to read this article because it discussed the methods by which, according to the author, it is and is not a good idea to trace the historical origins of songs. Source studies, Ngard says, are important because they 'reveal patterns of approach and thought that might well be noted for their inherent virtues or dangers. (This idea is one that may strike readers of this thread as pertinent) Nygard spends most of his article debunking the ideas presented to us by Lloyd more or less in support of his view that we are only just realising how very alien some of the sources of our ballads may me.

Nygard's article is also interesting because it mentions quite a few of the writers mentioned, but not referenced by Lloyd, who *appears* to have relied quite heavily on parts of it, though he only cites it in respect of one set of ideas about the song, the psychoanalytic ideas of Paul de Keyser.

For example, Lloyd mentions people in Scotland who believe they know the precise place where the story takes place. This is in Nygard.

Nygard uses the phrase 'shots in the dark' to refer to theories he believes to be, well, basically, wrong. The same phrase appears in the section by Lloyd (albeit as 'shot in the dark')

Nygard discusses Bluebeard theories, saying they seem to be on slightly stronger ground, an idea Lloyd repeats without acknowledging any source (p143) my edition. However, Ngard goes on to completely rule out any actual connection, saying the Bluebeard stories would be good to use alongside the 'Elfin Knight' (my title, not his) ones as examples of the polygenesis of a narrative idea. Wheras Lloyd seems to have run with it as a possible option, and it still crops up.

Pineau is mentioned in both. So is Sophus Bugge. Lloyd follows Nygard in dismissing the ideas of the latter relating to Judith and Holofernes, mentioning Entwistle in passing. Lloyd, to be fair to him, provides another reference to Enwistle, suggesting that he 'ought to have known better.'


My point here is that Lloyd may have given us an impression of being more widely-read than he was, and I am not denying he was more widely-read than most of us, just suggesting that as a writer Lloyd was very skilled at self promotion. He wants to convince the reader that his argument about wide origins is true, but the material he uses tends to be padding. I can see why Roud came to stick to ideas more clearly based in 'evidence'.

Another source cited by Lloyd, the work of Lajos Vargyas, may be the source for some of Lloyd's other comments, including the tracing of the insecticidal fingernails. It is called 'Researches into the Medieval History of Folk Ballad, and the page references provided by Lloyd are p129 t0 165. I don't suppose anybody could look these up?
My hunch is a) that some of the unreferenced names used by Lloyd may come from this source and b) the book won't really justify the comments about insecticidal fingers made by Lloyd.


I came to Lloyd's book late in life, as I have said before, so it was never the 'inspiration' for me that it plainly was for many involved in the 'folk revival'. And it strikes me differently. It's readable in short bursts, but too much of it seems like 'romanticising'.

Roud's emphasis on evidence seems like a much needed antidote after a page or so of Lloyd's rambling material. Sorry, Lloyd fans!

PS

I am not denying that myths and legends did not cross continents, I feel sure that they did.

I didn't realise that LLoyd could speak Russian: he cites Propp in that language!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 09:34 AM

Vargyas's work may well be incorporated in his humungous book, which I have at home.

https://www.libri.hu/konyv/folk-music-of-the-hungarians.html

I think it was a free download once but I can't now trace it.

BTW that long-range influence-tracing does have parallels. Look at Carlo Ginzburg's Ecstasies, which follows quite unrelated ideas over a similar path and timescale to what Lloyd does with that song.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 10:15 AM

I tried googling for Vargyas, but could not find a free download. Possibly it's too modern and somebody still collects on the copyright?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 10:23 AM

Found an essay on Vargyas: it says about him:

Vargyas published his paper in the periodical of his then employer, the Museum of Ethnography. Its main goal was to represent the museum as a research institution and the work that was being done there. In his denouncement of pre-Second World War ethnographic research, he said “their main fault was that they did not recognise the deterministic role productivity and society played in progress and those eras marked by the emergence of new systems of productivity and social organisation, which was the greatest discovery of Marxist historiography.”



Source: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/51322229.pdf

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 10:31 AM

That's pretty silly. Vargyas's work is vast and wide-ranging, it's not driven by simple formulas like that.

For a while that book was available very cheap as a remainder deal - it was great value even at full price (which is what I paid for it).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 01:19 PM

"Lajos Vargyas,"
I met him once in Budapest
John Faulkner, Sandra Kerr and I were introduced to him in 1968 by a friend of MacColl's, Carlie Coutts, who ran the Hungarian/English Radio Service
Vargas and Coutts interviewed us and got us to sing on the radio we were paid, but regulations at the time wouldn't allow us to take it out of the country so we ran around Budapest like blue-arsed flies trying to get rid oof it in the shops - I ended up with a superb st of Supraphon LPs of Hungarian Traditional music
My abiding memory of Vargas was of a kindly, tolerant man - when they wined and dined us at the old Castle Vargas and Coutts tried to seperate John F and I who were arguing somewhat drunkenly about the Hungarian uprising
Good days great memories (when we were sober
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 01:33 PM

Jack 18 July 1031 am: glad to hear it, but feel sure the piece is accurate about what Vargyas wrote in one context (1961), when Hungary was under the control of Soviet-loyal Kadar. The author, Daniel Barth, is or was President of the Hungarian Enthographical Society. His piece is on the relationship of history and folkloristics. He gives Vargyas credit for several developments in ethnography. Barth says that 1961 seems significant to historians as it is the time when Hungarian peasants experienced 'collectivisation'.

He seems to regard this as obliterating living folk culture, whereas for Lloyd, as a mentioned previously, the claim seems to be that communist imposed collectivisation left 'the people' free to sing folk songs. Page 20 of my edition: 'In some parts of Europe, and particularly in the folkloristically rich South-east, the general democratic trend has set a different pattern in what the Americans like to call the 'collector-informant context'. A Balkan collective-farm peasant (Lloyd's term) is no longer daunted by the man in the collar and tie … The increase of working-class self confidence offers new, more favourable conditions for discovering the full physiology of musical folklore. '


Possibly relevant to Lloyd and his maiden's insecticidal fingernails is a comment made later in the piece by Barth:


" The contributions of Lajos Vargyas to historical folkloristic were already mentioned. The most famous examples of these were his studies of ballads. His methods included not only a collection
(genuine) historical data on a national level, but he broadened his scope to encompass the whole of Europe. This comparative perspective forms the basis of the timelessness of Vargyas’s works. …. His genetic extrapolations and his hypothesis about the medieval connection between French/Valloon and Hungarian ballads have already received a number of scathing criticisms. He ventured onto even more treacherous grounds when, aligning himself with the (un)historical folkloristic attitudes discussed in the first group, he claimed to identify traces of early Magyar heroic epics in 19–20th century ballads.   

Sorry to be boring! Enough already.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 02:13 PM

"Lloyd's basic argument at this point is that ballads may have 'ancient and outlandish origins'. But it seems to me strong on rhetoric and broad brushes and short on evidence... as a writer Lloyd was very skilled at self promotion.

Speaking as one who found Lloyd's book very enjoyable at first, but later became more sceptical, yours is the kind of impression I formed myself when I tried to pick apart some of his ideas, for instance the suggestion that 'The Cutty Wren' was a remnant of a medieval protest song.

However, on the 'delousing' episode he was only following Child, who seems to be the source for much of Lloyd's discussion of Child 4 -'Lady Isabel & the Elf Knight (not 'The Elfin Knight').

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 02:29 PM

In order for a song to become a 'folk song' it has to be got at by the folk process
some of MacColls songs are taken for tradtional,fiddlers green is another, it does not matter what Ewans thoughts on this were ,this is a fact, they are mistaken for trad songs ,
bring us a barrel is another, Caledonia is another. examples, caledonia, dirty old town, fiddlers green, bring us a barrel, englands motorways, fields of athenry,hard times come again no more,

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 02:41 PM

"some of MacColls songs are taken for tradtional,"
MacColl always insisted his songs weren't traditional

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 03:31 PM

Dick is right - it didn't matter how hard MacColl insisted on his authorship, this is a genre where there are strong incentives (like not paying royalties) to think of in-copyright songs as trad. Hamish Henderson saw this coming and welcomed it, for his own work anyway.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 04:02 PM

Brian, thanks for the explanation. I should of course have looked at Child! And will do so now! Lloyd's sense of humour comes across even in this short passage. Is it right that the 'elf' bit isn't in any English version? Thank you again.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 04:10 PM

Some of this is going far beyond my sphere of knowledge, but all the same fascinating. Please keep this going. Tzu, are you sure you are new to this? You are remarkably well informed and astute.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 04:18 PM

Dick is right - it didn't matter how hard MacColl insisted on his authorship, this is a genre where there are strong incentives (like not paying royalties) to think of in-copyright songs as trad. Hamish Henderson saw this coming and welcomed it, for his own work anyway.

I can remember a dinner party that Ewan and Peggy were at where Ewan was telling us a story of how surprised and pleased he was to be told that Shoals of Herring had been collected from a Irish traveller and by which time it had become Shores of Erin

I can also remember being in a pub in Ennistymon in the late 1980s at a time when the road to the north of the town had many trailers on the verges - and I am assuming that it was a traveller who sang a song in that pub that was just about recognisable as Eric Bogle's No Man's Land. Both the words and the tune had been subject to change and the grave was no longer that of Willie McBride.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 04:38 PM

Re Jim's post at 01.19, The correct name is Charlie Coutts an Aberdonian friend of mine who lived in Budapest, married to a Hungarian lady Erzy I think was her name. Charlie Coutts and I worked alongside each other at the Malcolm Nixon Agency in London for a while. While living in Budapest he could be heard on short wave radio on Thursday nights spouting party propaganda. Knowing Charlie as well as I did I wonder if he believed in what he was preaching. He was great company always up for a laugh. He told me once that he sang "Love is Pleasing" on radio in Hungary translating it into the local language but he didn't get it quite right, it translated as
"But as you grow older
The love hole grows colder
And fades away
Like the morning dew".      

He was a great guy, we went one night to an all nighter at the Alexandra Palace which featured that well known folk group the Rolling Stones which ended by me taking the Hungarian ambassador's daughter back to the embassy that night. I made my excuses and left

My apologies for the thread drift I just wanted to correct the name and got carried away.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 05:05 PM

Howard,
Couldn't agree more with your very fair post of 8.41 (before the drifts started again). Steve's number crunching is mine and the 90% is mine. It applies to that material, as stated several times above, which was collected and published in the period c1890-WWII, largely in southern England, so a corpus of about a couple of thousand songs, not including one-offs which may or may not have been folksongs. Actually about 10 years ago when I did the survey the more precise percentage was 89%, but we have discovered a few more since then. If you want the full description of the material studied it is in the intro to the new edition of The Wanton Seed.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 06:22 PM

is it right that the 'elf' bit isn't in any English version? Thank you again.

Correct regarding Child #2. You could argue that the English and American versions actually represent a different song, that incorporates the impossible tasks common to Elfin Knight. As for Child #4, there's little trace of elvishness at all, apart from the hint of a magical horn.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Jul 18 - 09:05 PM

Brian; I should be careful and refer to Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight. The one about a lady who elopes, but realises her lover is a serial killer, tricks him and escapes back home, where in some versions the family parrot has to be mollified.

On the one with riddles, something I came across says it is often spoken of as if the same as one with similes in, when the two are different. Can't remember where now.

Brian: yes I should be careful and refer to Lady Isabel and the Elfin Kt. That's the one I'm on about.

Steve: Thanks for your comments of 4.10. I am most definitely a newcomer compared with all the expertise on this amazing website.

Music has always been important for me, but mostly listening and attempting to play, not reading about its history. I've tried various instruments, but mainly stuck with guitar, and the keyboard at Xmas for family carol singing! Over the years I was a regular audience member at a couple of 'folk' sessions, but not really a participant. I once played melodeon (quite badly, but well enough, I guess) for a Morris side. I little direct knowledge of traditional folk beyond this, though these discussions have sent me to Spotify where quite a lot referred to is available.

My musical tastes are eclectic: the 'folk' in my record/tape/CD collection is a mixture of dare I say this in this context Fairport, The Pogues, Planxty, some Cajun, Katherine Tickell (seen at Sidmouth years ago) etc. I grew up listening to my parents' jazz and being taught by them a story about slavery/blues/jazz probably I now realise not unrelated to the US leftish musical stuff pre-and post-war, Lomax, Hammond etc and learning to play piano, then later liking some pop music, including early Led Zep (who themselves went all 'folky' at one point, and bluesy stuff. I imagine Jim Carroll wincing at this list and probably others. But I suppose I feel comfy with the general 'leftishness' of the folk revival, if not with a great deal of Lloyd's specific left approach.

I first bought a whole book (Karpeles) some years ago because I was doing a course on musical theory which covered modes (it seems it is standard in music theory nowadays but wasn't when I did it as a kid) and browsing in a charity bookshop music section I noted that Karpeles had a bit on modes. I cannot even remember why I bought Lloyd now (2nd hand via ABE books); there will have been something specific that sparked my interest. So I suppose I picked stuff up from these two initial books (and forget a lot as well).

Being retired and not fit enough to do much gardening I like to try to fend off dementia by keeping the brain active. So if I get interested in something, I'll read round the subject, tending to skim, and maybe choose a bit within the topic to look at more closely, even if by the method of opening Lloyd at random and going on from there.

My degree was English and Psychology: I've taught 'language (linguistics) and literature courses (as well as non-literate adults, as it happens), and been on educational research courses including semiotics. So I encountered Propp (mentioned by Lloyd) in the Eng Lit context. Looking at texts in their contexts, and looking for the narrator's perspectives .. attempting 'critical reading' or sources, I guess somethings might be transferable.

I have lurked on the mudcat site on and off for a few years now, I guess. I think it's amazing.

Roud's book was basically a birthday present I chose when asked for hints, probably because I had seen it mentioned on this site, now I come to think of it. So when I found this thread, I learned a lot from it and then thought I'd join in with it, and very interesting it has been, and I am glad it didn't get the red card, though I think it must have come close at several points.

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 04:11 AM

" pleased he was to be told that Shoals of Herring had been collected from a Irish traveller and by which time it had become Shores of Erin"
He was pretty proud of that fact - the 'Shores of Erin' came from a reference in a book 'Folklore of the Sea' by American researcher Horace Beck
Unfortunately, by the time the songs began to circulate the tradition was more or less gone so the remained just repeated (often misremembered' and never seriously remade
We recorded 'Freeborn Man' in fragmentary form from numerous Travellers, but their tradition bombed (in Britain, somewhere between the middle of 1973 to Easter 1975) when they all got portable teles
Thannks to set-ups like Pavee Point and Limerick Uni's World Music Department the Irish Traveller traditions seem to be making a comeback - (hopefully)

Hoot
My memories of Charlie were fond ones, even though we only met him briefly
He took us in, found us somewhere to stop for the few days we were in Budapest, introduced us to Vargas (who unaccountably acquired the nickname 'Herman the German') and guided us through beautiful Budapest
He and Vargas took us to meet one of Bela Bartok's very old traditional singers - we sat in her home and swapped songs for an afternoon
I remember Sandra asking her (through a translator) if she knew "the one about the woman who murdered her two babies" - she sang us a haunting Hungarian 'Cruel Mother'
My last memory of Charlie was of one deceptively cloudy afternoon when the gang of us (including 'Herman') lay beside the roof swimming pool of our rather posh hotel discussing folk song
I misjudged the weather and ended up with severe sunstroke, so the rest of them had to carry me down the stairs to my room
Good memories
Ewan and Peg recorded army songs from Charlie - they must be housed in Ruskin with the rest of their archive

Steve
"It applies to that material, as stated several times above, which was collected and published in the period c1890-WWII"
You should have made that clear from day one instead of adapting it only when you were challenged
Had you said so at the beginning we might never have got to this stage
Your contemptuous remark came following the Song Carriers, which covered the entire traditional repertoire and included material that never went into print - waulking songs that were improvised on the spot, lilting and diddling, laments made by Irish immigrants
Your sweeping dismissal of MacColl's summing up was extremely misleading and irresponsible
If you had said your 'number crunching' was based on a moribund tradition you would have met with no opposition from me
Of course a dying tradition is going to be dominated by songs from outside - that is part of what killed it off
Now this argument has developed to the stage where not only has the suggestion that 'the folk' made their own songs been cast into doubt (even welcomed), but the whole history of folk song scholarship had become a target for dismissal and mistrust
Not something folk song needs in Britain right now   
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 07:59 AM

Hello Jim

'The whole history of folk song scholarship has become a target for dismissal and distrust'.

It seems to me that the history of folk song scholarship has to be at least in part a narrative of scholars 'dismissing' and 'mistrusting' eachother's work, though I think I'd prefer 'discussing and disagreeing with' as less emotive terms?

Folklorists came up with theories about 'folk song' as a whole and the origins of particular songs, and even motifs, such as the delousing which both Child and Lloyd devoted time to considering.

To give just one example, Lloyd dismissed and distrusted the idea that Lady Isabel and the EK derived in part from the story of Judith and Holoferness. He was less dismissive of the Bluebeard link, though at least one of his sources was dismissive of that idea.

The Nygard piece referenced by Lloyd argues that the folklorists of the different countries within which Lady Isabel versions had been found gave accounts of it which fitted in with their particular national cultures, so that those used to stories about water-based mythological creatures emphasised that aspect etc.

In short, the folklore scholarship of the last hundred years was not the monolithic entity one might imagine.

In addition, as my brief investigations into Lady Isabel show, the also discussed 'methodology' ie what factors it was good and bad to take into account when tracing ballads across continents and through disparate cultures, and what factors might lead one to decide that one song was part of a particular grouping and not another.

I don't think would be right to say that all the scholars of the 20th century operated with the same idea of 'the folk', even if they had all agreed that 'folk songs' were ones that originated with the folk. To give one example, not all of them would have been operating with or even have written papers including definitions based on a deterministic variety of Marxism.

Roud, it seems to me, doesn't get involved with these theoretical debates, many of which seem not to have been resolved, but sticks to what can be said with reasonable certainty about the musical practices of ordinary people over a few relatively recent centuries. He draws upon contemporary accounts, diaries, libel trials, memoires to build up a fascinating picture.

Roud seems quite clear about what he sets out to do.

On page 3 Roud says: 'So, this is a book of social history, covering folk song in England from the sixteenth century to about 1950... The book's main argument is that the social context of traditional singing is the key to understanding its nature, but is also precisely the component which has often been neglected in past discussion of the subject....One of the dominant themes of the book is that folk song, however, defined, did not exist in a cultural vacuum, and we will dedicate some time to investigating the 'other musics' that were available to ordinary people in the past, and which potentially influenced the styles and repertoires of their own song cultures.'

Roud seems to give theorising rather short shrift, I admit: he says 'Writers of general books about folk song usually feel it their duty to give the subject deep roots, but the fact is that there is so little evidence about vernacular singing in the earlier periods that all is speculation..... ' I am not sure that it is entirely fair to equate the developments of theories as 'speculation', theorising for me has at least to have some evidential basis and arguments, whereas speculation is less bounded to what is known 'as a fact'.

On pages 5-6 Roud refers to what he calls 'the collection boom' of the Victorian and Edwardian enthusiasts, and says 'the corpus of "folk songs" discovered and documented by the collectors is one of the starting points of this book.' That seems pretty clear to me.

Roud says that his book will go beyond the narrow 'what folk songs did people sing' approach of the Vic/Ed people and ask 'what songs did the folk sing'?

Roud then goes on to defend the idea of 'folk' from the onslaught of Harker in 'Fakesong', with his own ideas on why 'The Marxist generation (which appears to include both Lloyd and Harker) turned against folk song: he says ultimately it did not meet their expectations in terms of furthering their cause. I can see that this is red rag to a bull for some people. But this view of Roud's is of course, another 'theory' and, I suppose, one that people in another generation may in their turn discuss and/or disagree with.

MacColl is mentioned here. This thread has carried denials that MacColl passed his own songs off as folk songs. Roud does not go that far, he simply says that his need for songs to fit the narratives of 'programmes like the "Radio Ballads" prompted him to fill the many lacunae by writing his own.' A song about travellers being evicted is one (according to the Telegraph, which does describe his songs as 'folk', and says that Mary Poppins was the inspiration for another! I didn't know he wrote 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face') But there is an implication in Roud about the narrative being in some sense 'not real', I guess.


I quite like MacColl's songs: I have heard the Manchester Rambler sing quite ofen, and I like the Pogues' version of Dirty Old Town.

(I didn't realise his descendant was in The Bombay Bicycle Club.)

I have just realised that Roud is *very* helpful if you are trying to understand some of the heated arguments that arise on some Mudcat threads.

Best wishes to all. Bother it, it looks like another very hot day!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 08:44 AM

The colector alfred williams throws an interesting light on all of this, here is part quote from mike yates
Williams, not being trained as a musician, had, as Frank Purslow mentioned above, noted down all manner of songs, many of which were not 'folk songs' in the eyes of the Folk Song Society members. But - and this is actually the beauty of his collection - in doing so, Williams has shown us more or less just what singers were actually singing in parts of the Thames Valley during the period 1914-6. For example, Williams appears to be unique in telling us that singers were singing glees - part-songs, sung unaccompanied, which were originally based on 17th century madrigals. They were extremly popular during the period 1750-1850, but were thought to have more or less disappeared after that date. In Folk Songs of the Upper Thames we find this note attached to the songs Here's a Health to all Good Lasses and Come, ye Friends of a Social Life.

Glees were usually sung by those having slightly superior tastes in music; that is, by those above the average intelligence among the villagers, or by such as had been trained at some time or other to play on an instrument, it may have been a fiddle or cornet in the local band, or in the choir on Sundays at the church.

It should, though, perhaps be mentioned here that while folk songs were once well-known, they were not necessesarily easy to find.

A countryman never sings to a stranger. First win his heart and confidence before you can expect a song from him. And this requires time and effort on your part. That is why, as I have said, the folk-songs escape attention.

Cecil Sharp, who had once lived and worked in Australia, felt the same when he said that English folk songs were like the duck-billed platypus, an animal that was seldom seen, even when one was standing on a river bank directly above an underground nest. I think Sharp would also have agreed with Williams when the latter spoke about the difficulties of persuading people to sing, athough I doubt if Sharp would have approved of Williams having to "buy" a song or two.

I have sometimes been forced to spend several hours of manoeuvring with people before I succeeded in tapping their store of folk-songs. And sometimes I have had to entreat, and almost to implore; but I have never once absolutely failed to obtain a song from an individual after I had learnt that he was possessed of some. Once or twice I have had to buy a song outright, as though it had been a saucepan or a kettle... The great majority, however, when once you have crept into favour with them, give you the songs freely, with apologies for their rudeness. They are surprised that you should discover yourself to be interested in such a thing as a country ballad, and I have more than once been reminded that "only fools and fiddlers learn old songs".

Nor should it be forgotten that Williams, like Cecil Sharp and the other collectors, was often having to tease the songs from elderly singers, many of whom were in their nineties when Williams called to note their songs. One 94-year-old singer told how, as a young man, he had worked in the fields alongside a former soldier who had fought at Waterloo. There is also the touching story of one man, aged 99, singing to Williams only a few hours before his death.

Who, then, were these simple rustics? Luckily, Alfred Williams has told us quite a bit about the men and women who sang for him. There was, for example, Elijah 'Gramp' Iles of Inglesham who, mistaking Williams for the new village curate, quoted a short passage from the scriptures on their first meeting.

In my perambulations of the Thames Valley I have met with fine old characters, but none of them were quite as distinct, original, and rich in memories as 'Gramp'. The songs he sang were all very old. Several of them he learnt from his grandfather, while only a lad: they must have been in the family for generations. Then there was Henry 'Wassail' Harvey of Cricklade who, at first, refused to sing to Williams. Once, when Williams called on the octogenarian, he found Harvey suffering from a cold, and some medicinal rum soon had the old man singing!

Daniel Morgan, a traveller and dealer, gave Williams a very rare text for the old ballad Bold Sir Rylas. Morgan lived in Bradon Woods:

(His) great-grandfather was a squire, and he disinherited his son and also attempted to shoot him, lying in wait for him for three days and nights with a loaded gun, because he courted a pretty gipsy girl. In spite of the squire's opposition, however, his son married the gipsy lass and left home to travel with his wife's kindred and earn his living by dealing, and attending the markets and fairs. Daniel Morgan... is a witty and vivacious man. He lives among the woods of Bradon, the relic of the once large forest of that name, in which the famous Fulke Fitzwarren is said to have defied the King at the time of the Baron's War. I have spent pleasant hours in the cottage, during the dark winter evenings, listening to the old man's songs, which he sang sitting on a low stool cutting out clothes-pegs from green withy, while his wife sat opposite making potato nets.

And there was Gabriel Zillard of Hannington.

Of Zillard it is said that he would unbutton his shirt-collar at six in the morning and sing for twelve or even eighteen hours, if necessary, with the perspiration streaming down his cheeks.

According to Williams, Zillard was not the only person with a large repertoire of songs.

It was common, years ago, during wet weather, when labour out of doors was at a standstill, for the rustics to assemble at the inns and have singing matches, in order to see - not which could sing best, but which could sing most.

There were usually two singers at such events, which could last for up to two days, each singer taking a full day to sing through his repertoire. And their repertoires would always be of old songs.

And I have never once known a rustic, or any one else accustomed to singing the old folk-songs, who would deign to learn any of the modern popular pieces. They speak of them with contempt, and feel insulted if you should ask them to sing one. "What! That stuff! That thing! Call that a zong! Ther's nothin' in't, maester. Ther's no sense ner meanin' to't, ner no harmony,"they will answer you.

When I was collecting folk songs many years later, I too often heard similar comments from the people who were giving me their songs. Many singers that I met clearly preferred the old songs to the sort of songs that they were hearing on their radios. I would also say that Williams was right when he spoke of the types of songs that his singers preferred to sing.

Different people sing different songs. I mean different types of songs. And that is natural. It is a matter of temperament...The songs of old Elijah Iles, of Inglesham, were gently humorous and witty, such as "The Carrion Crow and the Tailor", "Sweet Peggy", and "The Old Woman Drinking her Tea". The majority of the pieces sung by David Sawyer, the sheep-shearer of Ogbourne, were rather sentimental. William Warren, the South Marston thatcher, sang the romantic-historical kind, such as "Lord Bateman". Shadrach Haydon, the old shepherd of Hatford, preferred the strong and formal order. Thomas Smart, of Stratton St Margaret, would sing none but what were moral and helpful. Those of 'Wassail' Harvey, of Cricklade, were roughly hilarious, such as "How I Could Ride if I Had But a Horse", "Dick Turpin", "Jarvis the Coachman", and so on; and those of Mrs. Hancock of Blunsdon, were of the awful sort, i.e. dealing with tragedies, lovers, and blood, such as "Johnny, the Ship's Carpenter", "The Gamekeeper", and others.

Interestingly, according to Williams:

The women's songs were chiefly the sweetest of all... They were rarely sung by the males. The women might sing some of the men's pieces, but the men seldom sang those of the women. They appreciated their sweetness but they felt that the songs did not belong to them... Most of the men sang in the inns, and their pieces were consequently more or less publicly known, while the women's songs were sung over the cradle and might not often have been heard out of doors. I have never omitted an opportunity of searching for the women's songs, where I suspected any to exist, and I was never dissappointed with anything I obtained as a result of such inquiries. Examples of the kind and quality of songs sung by women are discovered in such pieces as "Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor", "Grandma's Advice", "The Seeds of Love", "Lord Lovel stood at his castle Gate", "If you will walk with me", "Cold blows the Winter's Wind", and so on.

So, where did these songs come from in the first place? And why were they disappearing? With the exception of a handful of locally composed songs, almost all the songs that Alfred Williams collected were known, in one version or another, throughout England, lowland Scotland and parts of Ireland. When we think of the word folk we tend to think of an oral tradition. But, in the case of folksongs, this is not quite right. For several hundred years the texts of songs, including what we now call folk songs, have been printed on single-sided sheets of paper called broadsides. Hundreds of printers throughout the country have issued these sheets and this was how the songs texts passed into the tradition. Alfred Williams was clearly aware of this tradition.

The songs were mainly obtained at fairs. These were attended by the ballad-singers, who stood in the marketplace and sang the new tunes and pieces, and at the same time sold the broadsides at a penny each. The most famous ballad-singers of the Thames Valley, in recent times, were a man and woman, who travelled together, and each of whom had but one eye. They sang at all the local fairs, and the man sold the sheets, frequently wetting his thumb with his lips to detach a sheet from the bundle and hand it to a customer in the midst of the singing.

But, Williams also wrote:

It must not be forgotten that very few of the agricultural labourers of a hundred years ago could read or write.

If the singers were illiterate, how then did the songs pass into the tradition? Well, as I said, thousands of these sheets were sold every week, so some labourers must have been able to read. Williams reports that many of his singers said that they could learn a song after only hearing it sung once or twice. Other Edwardian song collectors have also noted similar comments from their singers. So perhaps the songs were learnt from the broadsides by a few people and that others, hearing the songs sung, were able to quickly learn them.

But why were the old songs no longer being sung? Williams offers us a number of reasons.

The dearth, or, at any rate, the restricting of the fairs, and, consequently, of the opportunities of disseminating the ballad-sheets is one cause of its decline. The closing of many of the old village inns, the discontinuance of the harvest-home and other farm feasts. The suspension and decay of May games, morris dancing, church festivals, wassailing, and mumming are other obvious reasons.

Change to village life came in other ways, too.

Another factor was the advent of the church organ and the breaking up of the old village bands of musicians. That dealt a smashing blow at music in the villages. Previous to the arrival of the church organ, every little village and hamlet had its band, composed of the fiddle, bass viol, piccolo, clarionet (sic), cornet, the "horse's leg", and the trumpet or "serpent". They were played every Sunday in church. But they did not solely belong to the church. All the week they were free to be used for the entertainment of the people.

In fact, according to Williams, the entire structure of country life was being broken up.

Another reason for the disappearance of the folk-song is that the life and condition of things in the villages, and throughout the whole countryside, has vastly changed of late. Education has played its part. The instruction given to the children at village schools proved antagonistic to the old minstrelsy. Dialect and homely language were discountenanced. Teachers were imported from the towns, and they had little sympathy with village life and customs. The words and spirit of the songs were misunderstood, and the tunes were counted too simple. The construction of railways, the linking up of villages with other districts, and contact with large towns and cities had an immediate and permanent effect upon the minstrelsy of the countryside. Many of the village labourers migrated to the towns, or to the colonies, and most of them no longer cared for the old ballads, or were too busy occupied to remember them.

But, again according to Alfred Williams, one factor above all others was responsible for the disappearance of public singing. Singers were forbidden to sing in the village inns.

This was the most unkind and fatal repulse of all. It was chiefly brought about, I am told, not by any desire of the landlord, but by the harsh and strict supervision of the police. They practically forbade singing. The houses at which it was held i.e. those at which the poor labourers commonly gathered, were marked as disorderly places; the police looked upon song singing as a species of rowdyism.

And, finally, the songs could not compete with the rapid changes in entertainment that were spreading throughout the land. The gramophone and the cinema have about completed the work of destruction, and finally sealed the doom of the folk-song and ballad as they were commonly known.

No wonder Alfred Williams felt the urgent need to collect those songs that were still remembered by his elderly singers.

In 1915 Round About the Upper Thames was published in serialised form in the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard. This was the third of Williams's country prose books. The paper then asked Williams to submit some of the folk song texts that he had collected, so they too could be published in a similar fashion. He was offered three pence (1p) per printed song - not much when we realise that Williams would sometimes cycle up to 70 miles before collecting one song! In all, about 250 songs were printed in the paper and Williams pasted the cuttings onto cards, these becoming the draft for his book Folk Songs of the Upper Thames.

But it was not until 1922 and 1923 that Round About the Upper Thames and Folk Songs of the Upper Thames were to appear in book form. Williams had stopped collecting songs in 1916, when he joined the army, and it may be that ill health, together with the work involved in building Ranikhet, had prevented him from working on these two books.

Surprisingly, Folk Songs of the Upper Thames was not reviewed in the Journal of the Folk Song Society, although, in the 1945 Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (the continuation of the Folk Song Society's Journal) Frank Howes, the music critic of The Times and then a leading member of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, did provide a short review of Leonard Clark's biography of Williams, Alfred Williams, His Life and Work, which concluded with the following:

Williams did not add music to his varied accomplishments and the tunes find no place in his collection of folk-songs, but he was a true collector in that he tapped the oral tradition of rustic singers and as a student right outside the folk-song 'movement' his book (i.e. Folk Songs of the Upper Thames) has a special value for us. There is an unconfirmed suggestion that, following the publication of Folk Songs of the Upper Thames, the Folk Song Society offered to print the rest of the collection, but Williams refused help, apparently believing that the Society simply wished to put two or three choice songs into their collection. To my knowledge, the only extant letter to Williams from a member of the Folk Song Society is one from the Yorkshire folksong authority Frank Kidson, who argued with Williams that some of his collected songs were not really folk songs. It goes without saying that comments like that would not have been well received by a man like Alfred Williams!

A Different Drummer

Alfred Williams was a remarkable man, one who left us a unique legacy. It has been said on occasion that Williams felt himself to have been a failure, and, during his lifetime, he certainly did not receive anything like the praise that is now given to him. His beautifully written prose books tell of a way of life that is now long past. His song collection is of great value, and yet he was criticised by some members of the Folk Song Society, who failed to review his book Folk Songs of the Upper Thames in their Journal.

And it has only been after his death that his importance has been fully realised. Interestingly, his treatment by the Folk Song Society was similar, in some ways, to that given to Alice E Gillington, another 'outsider' song collector, who lived with gypsies in the New Forest and who collected and published many of their songs. Correspondence between Gillington and Lucy Broadwood shows that the latter did not think too highly of Miss Gillington's songs. Like Alfred Williams, Alice E Gillington was not a member of the Folk Song Society.

Much can be said about Alfred Williams's legacy and there is much to be thankful for. As Albert Mansbridge, the founder of the Worker's Education Association, once said, "England is greater to-day, because Alfred Williams lived a brief day in her life."

Acknowledgement
My thanks to Malcolm Taylor, Librarian of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, London, for his help in the preparation of this essay.

References
Most of the quotations mentioned above can be found in the following works:
Baldwin, John R. Song in the Upper Thames Valley: 1966-1969 in Folk Music Journal Vol. 1. No. 5 (1969), pp. 315-349. The English Folk Dance and Song Society, London.
Clark, Leonard. Alfred Williams, His Life and Work Basil Blackwell, 1945. Reprinted, David and Charles, 1969.
Clissold, Ivor. 'Alfred Williams, Song Collector' in Folk Music Journal Vol. 1. No. 5 (1969), pp. 293-300. The English Folk Dance and Song Society, London.
Purslow, Frank. 'The Williams Manuscripts' in Folk Music Journal Vol. 1. No. 5 (1969), pp. 293-300. The English Folk Dance and Song Society, London.
Williams, Alfred. Villages of the White Horse 1913. Reprinted by Nonesuch Publishing, Stroud. 2007.
Williams, Alfred. Folk Songs of the Upper Thames Duckworth & Co., London. 1923. Various reprints.
Anyone wishing to know more about Alfred Williams' folksong collection may also wish to consult:
Bathe, Andrew Lee. Pedalling in the dark: the folk song collecting of Alfred Williams in the Upper Thames Valley, 1914-1916. A thesis submitted for PhD, National Centre for English Cultural Tradition (NATCECT), University of Sheffield. May 2006. (Copy held in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, London).

Mike Yates is a former editor of the Folk Music Journal, and, like Alfred Williams, has collected folk songs in the Thames Valley and elsewhere.

The songs collected by Alfred are now online - the large majority of a collection of more than a thousand songs which have been uploaded by Wiltshire County Council. Click here to go to the beginning of the list.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 08:49 AM

" 'discussing and disagreeing with' as less emotive terms? "
Child's ability to distinguish betwen his work on formal poetry and traditional ballads is a new one on me
Sharp and co have always been a figure of disdain - often unfairly
Gummere, Gerould, Motherwell... and many others have not only accepted the 'folkness of folk' but have written on length on the subject... 'all starry eyed romantics' it would appear
Even poor old Margaret Laidlaw was talking romantic nonsense, it would seem
Now we have reached the stage where the whole lot has come under suspicion
And all to make room for paperwork
Dave Harker (an exceptional scolar, I'm told) based his work on compiling a hitlist of past collectors and taking them out one by one
Here we have a mass assassination without the list.

Thanks to this argument, I re-read Wilgus's history of folksong scholarship and was reminded that we are were we are by collectors, even when they did not agree, developed their ideas on the basis of what had gone before - sometimes they replaced past ideas, but mostly they incorporated them into their own (occasionally losing some valuable ones in the process)
The New Age Scolars have done a real Augean Stables job on our understanding of our songs.

If this outlandish percentage calculation were not enough. now we have a re-definition which does not distinguish between popular commercial song that up to now were recognised as not being folk by virtually all folk enthusiasts and traditional material.

I was part of a long lasting and thriving olk Song Revival who knew what we were dealing with, sang it, and made new songs based on it
That died when the clubs began to be used as cultural dustbins to dump anything from big ballads to poor Elvis renditions
First we had to sit through poorly performed songs that didn't interest us; finally thousands of us walked away because we were no longer guaranteed hearing a folk song at a folk club
This re-definition has formalised that position.

Regarding Freud's comments on MacColl (especially his 'lacuna/Radio ballads bit) - I find this a total misunderstanding of what MacColl was about
He created songs for the same reason he (and many of us) believe the folk did - to express his own feeling and experiences
All the Radio Ballads songs were based on interviews with the subjects (Railwaymen, fishermen, boxers, gypsies, miners...)
They borrowed the exact words on occasion, but they also used the vernacular imagery - which was what made them so respected
I've always gained the impression that Steve Roud had little time for the revival
His present involvement with certain revival singers and their approach to the songs they sing doesn't impress me too much
Perhaps that has no place here - but Mudcat is a place where one of our finest contributors to folk song is regularly dug up from his nearly three decades old grave (metaphorically speaking - he was cremated) and given a kicking, so I feel it fair to express my own opinions on this matter.

"looks like another very hot day!"
Thanks btg that it's cooled down a little here
We've an acre of jungle to tame
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 08:55 AM

>>>>>You should have made that clear from day one instead of adapting it only when you were challenged<<<<<

I have always endeavoured to make clear exactly which corpus I was writing about. If I did not do that in the very first thread we crossed swords on I apologise once again, but on numerous threads since then where you have criticised our stance we have made this very clear and will continue to do so.

There never was and never will be a SWEEPING condemnation of MacColl's writing from me. I have great respect for his work and Bert's. I was specifically referring to MacColl's suggestion that the songs were written by ploughboys and milkmaids. In my OPINION a very romantic way of approaching the material.

>>>a moribund tradition<<<< Those are your words, certainly not mine. Were all of Walter's songs then part of a moribund tradition?

>>>>>>but the whole history of folk song scholarship had become a target for dismissal and mistrust<<<<<

This is a gross exaggeration and I very much doubt you would get anyone to agree with you on this.


Jim, I/we would love to engage with you and discuss our researches in more detail, but your constant misquoting and gross exaggeration make this very difficult.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 08:58 AM

Dick,
This is a fascinating and useful addition to the thread, but when you are taking a huge extract from a website, you really need to give the details of (and preferably, a link to) the source - so I will do this for you. :-
http://www.alfredwilliams.org.uk/folkhero.html

Also the final line says Click here to go to the beginning of the list. and it is very frustrating that there is no link, so again, I will provide this -

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 09:01 AM

Whoops - pressed Submit message too soon :-
https://history.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/folk_search.php

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 09:05 AM

Fascinating important stuff and the sort of thing that we are trying to provide for our county through the database at Sussex Traditions but whilst ours is being achieved by volunteers like Tina and myself, it really should come underthe cultural remit of our two county councils. just as is happening in Wiltshire.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 10:29 AM

Jim: thanks for the info about MacColl's Radio Ballads. I am just beginning to 'understand' various debates about MacColl. I assume 'Freud' is a typo for 'Roud'?

I'm not clear, sorry, what you are referring back to in your comment:

"Child's ability to distinguish between his work on formal poetry and traditional ballads is a new one on me".


As far as I know, Child's work on Chaucer was, in line with 'English' as mostly taught at that time, relating to the language eg verb forms, plurals, whether a word was considered 'vulgar' or was higher in rank, perhaps with some consideration of metre. He didn't seem to have been much interested in Chaucer's social criticism, his poetic techniques, etc. I might have missed some other work on these areas, not sure. I have found him referred to as very influential in Chaucer studies but neither of the books I have on Canterbury Tales mentions him at all. He published an edition of some 16thc plays. He seems to have spent a lot of time teaching composition and marking student essays.

I don't mind a bit of hyperbole now and again.

Steve: on defining the corpus, I quoted Roud on this in an attempt to suggest that Roud was clear about this, which I think he was.

Mr Sandman: This was an interesting post. It might, I think, illustrate that thinking about what counted as 'folk' or apt for study was not as monolithic as one might imagine. I checked and found that Roud cites two books by Alfred Williams. (attempting to bring thread back to its supposed topic).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 10:36 AM

"but your constant misquoting and gross exaggeration make this very difficult."
I've asked you to provide examples of this several times Steve
So far nothing has been offered
"I have always endeavoured to make clear exactly which corpus I was writing about. "
This is a prime example
Am I mistaken in believing what it was following my quoting MacColl's 'Song Carriers' summing up that you made you "starry eyed - and "for money" dismissive statement?
Your present claims adaptation followed.

Even that don't make real sense anyway - many of the songs collected in that period were made far earlier than the 19th century so I have presumed that your 90% + includes them
If it does, you are casting doubts on the idea that country people ever made songs to a significant degree

Back to the old truism I'm afraid - we don't know who made our folk songs for certain and until you can produce unchallengeable evidence that there were no oral versions of the printed songs we never will
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 11:58 AM

Jim >You should have made that clear from day one instead of adapting it only when you were challenged <

Steve > I have always endeavoured to make clear exactly which corpus I was writing about. If I did not do that in the very first thread we crossed swords on I apologise once again, but on numerous threads since then where you have criticised our stance we have made this very clear and will continue to do so. <

Hear hear!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 12:58 PM

Not again, again, again, again...…………..!

Absolutely, the 90% includes many examples from an earlier period than the early 19thc. We've given plenty on this very thread. The broadside still remains the earliest extant example even in these cases.

This must have now been said numerous times by many on this thread and others similar. NO-ONE has claimed at any point that country people were incapable of making their own songs or indeed that they didn't make their own songs. On the contrary I have given you plenty of examples from my own experiences. All we have said is that not having easy access to the printers their efforts by and large were not widespread around the country and stayed in their own backyard. Simple logic can tell you this. This is why relatively few of their productions made it into the national corpus.

Your last statement no-one can argue with. Most of the evidence is circumstantial and your opinion is perfectly valid, based upon little research into the other printed material however.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 01:13 PM

We occasionally come across versions in print (street lit and sheet music) that have obviously come from oral tradition or have been influenced by oral tradition, but these are not common.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 01:17 PM

Richard
And still people leap to their feet (you included) and dispute the idea that the folk probably didn't make their songs - you are not alone of course
Someone put up proudly a rave review of Roud's book which took pleasure in stating that the folk didn't make folk songs'
The damage hads been done, inside and outside the folk circle

Child was working in the middle of the 19th century yet his conclusions have been called into question - so much for the latter half of the 19th century
There has been a great deal of admitting that working people WERE CAPABLE OF MAKING SONGS but 90%= claims make them litle more than lip service
Basing folk creation on its death throes of a tradition is like estimating the skills of a top athlete after having his legs removed - totally meaningless

"Not again, again, again, again...…………..!"
'Fraid so Steve - this will run and run - longer than Mousetrap until me move away from "workers too busy earning a living to make songs" and start proving that they didn't make the songs they were singing - even within your timeline
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 02:09 PM

We appear to have hit baseline again so here's a little diversion.

>>>>>>I remember Sandra asking her (through a translator) if she knew "the one about the woman who murdered her two babies" - she sang us a haunting Hungarian 'Cruel Mother'<<<<<<19th July 4.11 AM

Can you put any meat on the bones of this one, Jim? Child 20 is an English broadside of the 17th century. Child's headnotes on this one are completely to pot (IMO). There are no known analogies in other countries that are not based on the English ballad. If you have discovered a Hungarian variant that is earth-shattering. I will have to consult Andy Rouse who is a scholar of Hungarian ballads. Child didn't know about the broadside until after he published Part 1, and his headnotes are based on the 'penance' stanzas tagged on the end of Scottish versions which actually belong to Child 21 'The Maid and the Palmer'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 02:27 PM

I posted a link to an Icelandic version a couple of years ago.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 02:39 PM

Any details on this, Jack? How old it is. Is it related to 20 or 21 or both? Is it derived from British versions?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 02:54 PM

"Can you put any meat on the bones of this one, Jim? Child 20 is an English broadside of the 17th century. "
Sigh
It was a song that appeared on an English broadside in th 17th century, do you mean
The motifs of murdered people returning to extract vengeance or announce retribution are as old as time itself - in folklore and oral narrative tradition.
Same goes for abandoned children   
I won't bother to ask if you have evidence of there being no oral versions befre the broadside

I told the story as I remember having experienced - we had not tape recorder but one of the people who conducted us did
Sandra chose the song from her own experience and the translator related the plot
Surely, if all foreign input is due to literary influences it might be on line somewhere!

THere is a definitivness about your statements which suggest that it would take a ton of Semtex to shift you from your position
I did enjoy the back-heeling of Child (again) though
I wonder why he wasted all that time - he should have stuck to songwriting - his effort on Civil War politics suggested that he was quite good at that!!
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 03:10 PM

Tut tut! OTT responses again! If Child got everything right he'd be St Francis of Boston by now!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 03:31 PM

After his family his first love was cultivating roses.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 05:18 PM

Steve - this comes from my iPhone on a bus, searching is difficult - googling "cruel mother Iceland" with site mudcat.org should find you what I posted.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 06:27 PM

Thanks, Jack
Found it. I actually contributed to the thread. The theme is the same but there the similarities end. One would need a lot more to conclude that the 2 pieces were even remotely related.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 06:49 PM

Nothing in fact is more obvious than many of the ballads of the now most refined nations had their origin in that class whose acts and furtunes they depict - the upper class - though the growth of civilisation has driven them from the memory of the highly polished and instructed,and has left them as an exclusive possession to the uneducated.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jul 18 - 08:07 PM

"If Child got everything right he'd be St Francis of Boston by now!"
The same applies to you Steve
Giving what Child did and where and when he was - I'll take my chances with him if it's OK with you
You have just said - hand on heart, that you are referring to songs of the latter half of the 19th century yet there you go laying the law down about a well established 18th century full of folklore to be found in both songs and tales throughout the world and predating Hamlet's father's Ghost, at the very least
'Lip service' seems to have it about right
One of the most disturbing things about your New Age theories is that they can only be accepted if we forget everything we know (or thought we knew)
This is little more than cultural bookburning- Harkerism gone mad - no wonder you described him as a great scholar

"After his family his first love was cultivating roses."
So now he knew more about gardening and washing up than he did about ballads
Betterer and betterer
This is really "Top of the world ma" stuff Steve - I assume your friend take the same attitude as you do - you once offered me a list of references - please do - I'll need to look out for them
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 01:40 AM

"After his family his first love was cultivating roses."
So now he knew more about gardening and washing up than he did about ballads./'
Jim, that is your interpretation of what steve is saying ,at no point did he say that ,my impression is that it was a throwaway remark which gave us a little information about his other interests. you chose to take a defensive attitude and iterpret it as a hostile attack on his knowledge of ballads

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 03:08 AM

"my impression is that it was a throwaway remark"
Not my interpretation Dick but feel free to believe that if you wish
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 04:40 AM

I do not need your blessing to see a remark as less than hostile, I am aware of your interpretation because of your aggressive response to Steve.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 04:49 AM

" I am aware of your interpretation because of your aggressive response to Steve."
Just as I am aware of Steve's aggressive remarks to Child - a fellow researcher - and not the first
New Age Scholarship appears to be based on destroying much of what has gone before - not a thing I would wish to be associated with, even if I agreed with it
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 07:29 AM

I quite enjoyed the hyperbolic 'as old as time itself' (19th Jul: 2.54).

On the ghost of Hamlet's father: I pricked up my ears at this point remembering a Melvyn Bragg In Our Time radio programme about Shakespeare's Hamlet I listened to on the BBC iPlayer ap. So I went to Wiki to check what I remembered.

Shakespeare's play sees especially relevant as it was based on a Danish story about Amleth. This was set down in writing by a medieval Danish character called Saxo Grammaticus (c1160 - 1220), who was secretary to the Archbishop of Lund, Denmark's church being Latin at this time. Saxo seems to have well educated. This was a period of Danish expansion and also a time when 'Wends', a historical name for Slavic people living within or near Germanic settlement areas. (I believe that the term Wend crops up in Child?)

Saxo wrote "Gesta Danorum", an early history of the Danes. Saxo said it was modelled on Virgil, though wiki suggests others may have influenced Saxo incuding Geoffrey of Monmouth.

A sixteenth century French scholar retold/translated the story, which is believed to be how it came to Shakespeare. Shakespeare is also believed to have written an earlier version of Hamlet.

I mention this because it is an interesting example of how stories or legends from Denmark got themselves into English culture. In this case it seems reasonable to believe that translation by highly literate middle classes was responsible. And as we know, people of all ranks went to the Elizabethan theatre.

To me 'New Age' maybe means not factual, not based on reason or logic, which isn't what people reading 20th century works on folksong are about. It's about medicine made from herbs, and from mainly water with untraceably diluted bits of stuff in them, and not from properly trialled medicines. But maybe it means 'postmodern' in the sense of not involved with or following 'grand narratives' such as the ones that are told about/invoke folklore?

For me, it seems reasonable to disagree with some of what Harker said while accepting that other aspects of his work were good: this seems to be the approach of Roud, as I said last time we went round this circle.

I am guessing that Harker may have been less that respectful of MacColl and Lloyd, seeing them as old 'Stalisists' or some such, and that this is partly why he is so disliked in some quarters, though it won't be the only reason as Roud's comments show. Roud seems at one point to lump all the far right together.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 07:37 AM

"To me 'New Age' maybe means not factual, not based on reason or logic,"
Not necessarily - certainly not in this case
It means a break with the old scholarship

If harker had confined his attacks to MacColl and Lloyd he would have been among many - it was his attack on the whole basis of folk scholarship, taking out all the collectors one by one, that caused the animosity
He even refused to speak in public because of the response he got

He seems to be a new-found Messiah with some people
If you haven't read 'Fakelore', I suggest you do
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 07:40 AM

AAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

Of course I meant 'far left'. Chees what a typo :(

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 07:44 AM

Come on now gents, does a light-hearted (and actually rather interesting) remark about Child's horticultural hobby really need to fuel further confrontation?

Harkerism gone mad

I can't let that one go. Harker attempted to tear down everything, particularly the work of all the collectors. Roud is building on their work and pointing out its shortcomings where necessary - and as we've discussed he is dismissive of Harker.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 08:27 AM

The main problem with 'Fakesong' was that Dave rather went over the top, particularly with his political approach, BUT a lot of what he suggested makes sense. Nothing is ever so black and white as one person here seems to think.

As I have stated many many times on these threads my admiration for Child is almost boundless. I don't need to say any more than that. Those who know me know that is true. The problem with the romantic approach is that people like Child are treated as gods and they can do no wrong, a stupid approach to any historical research.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 08:45 AM

>>>>>Giving what Child did and where and when he was - I'll take my chances with him if it's OK with you<<<<<


Or you could actually do some research yourself and actually check it out!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 08:55 AM

"Come on now gents, does a light-hearted (and actually rather interesting) remark about Child's horticultural hobby really need to fuel further confrontation?"
Not on its own but in the context of attitude to past scholars and that scholarship being used as ninepins it gives the lighthearted remark' a bit of context

Regarding my comments about Harkerism - I was referring on that occasion to Steve Gardham whose scholarly corpses are piling up by the minute, but if we are to take Roud's re-definition seriously, the same applies to him
The old crowd worked on the basis of perceived truths regarding the origins and uniqueness of folk song - Roud's book turns that on its head, in effect, undermining most of what has been written and acted on over the last century or so
Not as clumsily open as Steve Gardham, but in essence ending up in the same place

It has become apparent that much of Roud's book is based on Steve Gardham's work
Gardam recommends Harker as an excellent scholar
It seems to my that if they wish to be considered seperately, one of them needs a very long spoon

All this stands to throw folk scholarship into the same sort of chaos as the abandoning of folk song identification did the club scene
Some of our best thinkers came from the revival - Bert, Ewan, Bob Thomson, Roy Palmer, Tom Munnelly, Peter Hall, Vic Gammon... the eyes moisten when
I think of the debt I and many others owe to their input into our lives
They helped us drag together the enjoyment as singers and listeners and the understanding of the art form we were involved in
I honestly can't see that continuing to happen for those who follow is - I am seriously beginning to wonder if anybody will
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 10:39 AM

Duly admonished I intend to read Harker, though I repeat while Roud does 'rubbish' him, he does several times refer to/rely on his scholarship. So not a wholesale dismissal of absolutel everything about Harker.

I note that Vic Gammon somewhere did express some sympathy with aspects of what Harker says.

Here's an interesting review (found while googling for cheap 2nd hand copies).

Review of Harker

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 11:32 AM

2nd hand Harker now over a hundred quid :( Interlibrary loan, then.

From a review (unfavourable overall) of Boyce and Harker by E David Gregory. Like *Roud*, Gregory finds bit of Harker less objectionable than others. It may be one can reasonably view Harker as an "excellent scholar" without rubbishing his whole oeuvre including Fakesong. I don't know enough of course to judge but people I would respect (including Gammon) appear to have taken this approach. And others I respect not of course. I quote:

"Let us begin by giving Dave Harker his due. .
?an important and innovative book that provides useful insights into the history and business of music publishing. Harker correctly pointed out that folksong and ballad collecting was a task undertaken mainly by middle-class intellectuals. His claim that vernacular song collecting has usually involved a relationship between different classes of society is unassailable. Moreover, some song collectors were avaricious, others were fraudulent, and I would by no means attempt to defend every single one of them from his charges.

For example, we should recognise that Tom D'Urfey's motive in assembling Pills to Purge Melancholy was primarily financial, and he seems to have readily "borrowed" songs from any source he could. Much the same could be said about A Collection of Old Ballads and its anonymous author. Thomas Percy undoubtedly created quite a few fakesongs when in the first edition of his Reliques he published his own rewrites of ballads as if they were the texts to be found in the famous folio manuscript. Frederick Sheldon seems to have shared Percy's perspective on the legitimacy of "polishing" texts and then still claiming them to be authentic "originals.” Several of the Scottish Romantics (including, at least initially, Sir Walter Scott) did the same, with Pinkerton the worst offender. As a result, a small number of ballads that were wholly or largely the creations of enthusiastic imitators were passed off as authentic creations of the "folk", although these were usually exposed sooner or later."

* Trying to keep on topic however vaguely*

Noting that Percy was much relied upon by Child {this being one of the firts things u learn as a beginner, in addition to how to survive under online crossfire :) }.

There was a good joke about Keats on another thread here. Colonel tells Sargeant Major to get troops together for a lecture on Keats. SM says to troops 'Now, you orrible lot. It has been brought to the Colonel's attention that some of you don't know what a Keats is'.


Just tring to lighten the tone before we get another yellow card.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 12:10 PM

"Keep digging, Jim."
I'm not digging Steve, I don't have to - you have done that far better than I ever could
If I have misjudged your part in the book I apologies to both of you - not a nice mistake to make
You have not produced a singe instance of my misrepresenting you, not have you responded to my points about your denigrating other researchers
Your silence in an adequate confirmation

"Jim actually do some research yourself and actually check it out"
Check what out Theresa?
I've spent over 50 years being actively involved in folk song, first as a listener and singer, then as a collector and researcher, mainly interviewing the people who gave us these songs (that latter has accounted for thirty odd years of my life so far)
I've written articles, sleeve notes and reviews and my wife and I have given around forty talks on the subject (to date)
We now have around a dozen radio programmes on our work under our belt THIS THREE PART SERIES is porobaly the on we are most proud of.

Our work is to be found on around a dozen albums, and is housed in the British Library. The Irish Traditional Music Archive and The Irish Folklore Association and several hundred of our field recordings are publicly accessible on the CLARE COUNTY LIBRARY WEBSITE
I'm now involved in preparing a book of Irish Travellers songs, stories and interviews and an introduction pack for enthusiast new to Irish Child Ballads (see Child Ballads in Ireland thread)
The big work at present is to prepare our collection and a large international archive of traditional recordings to be deposited in Limerick University where our library will be bequeathed for research purposes (embarrassingly under the title 'The Carroll/Mackenzie Library'

IS THAT ENOUGH RESEARCH FOR YOU?

Sorry 'bout that, couldn't resist
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 12:23 PM

Second hand prices for Fakesong are a bit less than that but not by much. Use this URL to track it:

http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/RefineRare.fcgi?id=180720092205915297

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 12:26 PM

I don't believe Bert was a 'fine scholar'
He was a pioneer whose energies and generosity gave the British revival a kick-start, along with a handful of other talented and generous people - MacColl and Seeger included (also the target of much abuse)
Bert was limited by his inexperience and the fact tha all these people were treading new ground
Without the likes of them, we wouldn't be talking to each other and many of us wouldn't have spent a lifetime of enjoyment and interest in these songs
Which is why I find all this smugness of hindsight as sickening as I do
Lloyd and his ilk did more for British folk song than any who followed them, including the present generation of knockers.
As a young lady once told me when I found myself 'batting out of my league' with her, "Come back when you have hair on your chest"   

"Carroll"
Why do you people have to degenerate this to a demeaning level when you can't get your way
Neither an admirable nor a particularly adult trait "Johnson'
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 12:39 PM

"I don't believe Bert was a 'fine scholar'" - No? Clearly spoken by somebody who never heard Bert talk about Bartok or Eastern folk music in general, as I often did. Then there was his ballad lecture at the first Loughborough Festival in the '60's. Yes, Bert did mix up song texts (when he was wearing his singer hat) and probably made up a few tunes when he could not find one, but he was probably the most knowledgeable person during that period. For once I find myself fully agreeing with Jim when he says "Which is why I find all this smugness of hindsight as sickening as I do".

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 04:54 PM

Let's lay this to rest please. It cannot be denied that Bert was very knowledgeable on a wide range of subjects. From a very early age he spent many hours in libraries reading about history, literature and politics and for a while took part in whaling and the Australian outback.
He was also a respected journalist working with the BBC and Picture Post before they decided they didn't like his political stance.

The only quibble that we have with Bert's scholarship is that he didn't make clear the boundaries between his creative abilities and his scholarship, and when it comes to folk music this casts doubts on his scholarship. The ultimate effect of this is that whenever we come across a song that has passed through Bert's hands or a pronouncement he makes on the history of folksong we have to go back and find more reliable sources to verify what he has written.

Exactly the same principle applies to the published works of Percy, Scott, Pinkerton, Jamieson, Buchan, etc., yes, and even the highly acclaimed Motherwell.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Jul 18 - 07:14 AM

Goodbye. All this has put me off. Maybe back some time. Maybe not.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 21 Jul 18 - 07:56 AM

Tzu/Pseudonymous - please try again. You have something to say, and most Mudcat threads don't get eaten by obsessional grumps in the way this one has been.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jeri
Date: 21 Jul 18 - 09:24 AM

How people can argue for nearly a year, because someone announced a book was published probably just lets folks know what sort of a place this is. IMO, there HAVE been good points raised, but mostly not about the book.

When you get to the point where you completely drop the subject, in favor of going after other posters, you're going to get the thread closed.

As this is about music, I'd rather that didn't happen.

---

I'm closing this for a day or so in the hopes that the people who need to make personal or meta comments think about it, and find something positive to post somewhere.
Sorry, Brian.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Jul 18 - 10:11 PM

Jeri closed this thread for the day to let things cool down. I'll reopen it, but please remember that there is a yellow card on this thread. We're watching it. There's a lot of good discussion here and I'm learning a lot - but there's also a lot here that is bothersome.
Keep the animosity down, please.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 22 Jul 18 - 07:20 AM

Just to point out, if I may, that a set of posts on this thread that finally led to my walking away seems to have been deleted. The moderator comments sum up the character of these deleted posts well IMO. This is not, by any means, a complaint about the deletion. I just wanted to clarify events for anyone reading the thread later. I didn't leave immediately after Steve Gardham's sensible post of 4.54, and I wouldn't want people thinking that particular post was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 22 Jul 18 - 11:15 AM

Tzu,
I'm very relieved to see you here! New contributors of your calibre are very welcome. I also welcome the yellow card and will endeavour not to be drawn.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 22 Jul 18 - 11:15 AM

1500 at second time of asking. must be a record!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 22 Jul 18 - 11:17 AM

BTW I'm about halfway through Gerould and have found very little to argue with so far. Thanks for the reminder, Tzu.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 23 Jul 18 - 08:07 AM

For this post to be closed permanently because of a few barbed and personal comments would be a travesty. Please can we discuss matters in a reasonable way without lowering the standards of the debate. We can oppose one another with reasoned argument and by backing our comments with evidence without recourse to denigrating others or the constant re-hashing of supposed past grievances.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Jul 18 - 08:28 AM

I would agree with you if you didn't describe past arguments as grievances" Vic
I don't think anybody on either side has raised them (beyond this subject, I don't believe anybody even has them)
Past arguments are a different matter - when they are ignored they are bound to be "re-hashed"
I decided to stay clear of this to allow others to have their say, but I fully intend to go over old ground until I am satisfied it has been dealt with satisfactory - it would be a betrayal of everything I believe to do otherwise
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 23 Jul 18 - 09:56 AM

I have just come back from the Bradfield Traditional Music Weekend (just north of Sheffield, ) a really enjoyable weekend of song and tune sessions and some fine presentations. The finest and most interesting as far as I was concerned was The Fragrance of Country Melody - Irene Shettle's presentation, the result of exhaustive research into the life and work of Lucy Broadwood.
My ears really pricked up when she quote from a letter of Lucy's saying that of the 420 songs that she knew to be in the repertoire of the great Henry Burstow of Horsham - her major informant - that 75% of them could not be regarded as folk songs by her strict definition.
Irene has promided to sent me a copy of her script an when I receive it, I will post the actual words that Lucy wrote.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 23 Jul 18 - 10:39 AM

Tzu
Now the thread is being closely monitored it would be a good time to discuss any points you want to raise about the book.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 23 Jul 18 - 04:41 PM

Well, we'll see.

I have been looking into Gerould, though as I have a pdf and not a book it is a bit frustrating to read. However, he seems to have a 'use' rather than an 'origin' definition of folk, rather like Roud (p3 of the 57 Galaxy Reprint of Gerould) and Karpeles. It seems Gerould had a specific 'recreation' theory about this. I still have a lot to read in Gerould.

Gerould has got me thinking just how it may be that the same stories (whether in ballad/narrative song form or not) crop up all over Europe. I found, as you will see from a new thread, which may or may not lead to discussion, a specific example where a work by a known Anglo-Norman poet got itself into a number of European languages.





This is really quite off-topic, but I am not going to criticise Roud for not going into all these theories and this far back in history, as a) he has enough of interest to say without it and b) Gerould himself at times flags up when he is being conjectural.

Unlike Roud, Gerould's discussion of music is closely linked with his discussion of words. He explains why on pages 11-12. However, Gerould can do this because the ballad as 'genre' is narrower than the concept of 'folk music'.

I have been listening to some 'collected' English folk, mostly via Spotify. One thing that strikes me is how sober the singers sound, yet much traditional singing is said to have taken place in pubs, and, according to some first-hand accounts given by Roud, in quite rowdy circumstances. Plus, of course, in the past people didn't drink water because it wasn't as safe as beer. I'm wondering what if anything was lost or at least different when the Victorian/Edwardian collectors interacted with tradition bearers in the sober contexts they did.

Gerould's last chapter (on American folk songs) reminds us how many ballads came back to the UK from the US, including some we might describe as 'blues', but I don't think Gerould does. Roud also charts the effect that American music has had on what the people in England sings, going back surprisingly far.

I was always told that my ancestors had been abolitionists, and I know that some ballads in the Bodleian touch on slavery. I don't remember anything on this in Roud, but I might be wrong. This might be an interesting area of study.

A few thoughts.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 23 Jul 18 - 06:13 PM

Finished Gerould now. Yes, he is very careful to flag up opinions, and probably due to all of the controversy at that time, goes over the top in repeating that for some conclusions we just don't know, and will probably never know. I can find very little to disagree with and that's pretty good for someone writing nearly a century ago. In his chapter on broadsides he in several places acknowledges the great influence of print, but not having access to all of the great collections we have today, he quite rightly keeps this general and quite vague.

>>>>>>I'm wondering what if anything was lost or at least different when the Victorian/Edwardian collectors interacted with tradition bearers in the sober contexts they did.<<<<<<
Yes, not hearing some of the more meaty songs in their natural environment must have led to them missing an important part of the tradition. Although they would have avoided the more overt bawdry, not only did the collectors record some quite near the knuckle stuff, what is more remarkable is Sharp actually published it. 'English Folk Songs for Schools' edited by Sharp and Baring Gould contains sexual encounters and other stuff we wouldn't give to pupils today, some of it quite obvious.

Whereas there were ballads printed on slavery, often tear-jerker poetry, I can't think of anything that went into the tradition in Britain.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 23 Jul 18 - 06:38 PM

Thanks for your reply, Steve. I wasn't thinking about bawdiness, (I think that might be what you mean by 'meaty', but about aspects of delivery after a pint or two, or whatever poison took their choice, would it have been louder, faster, more gestured, interactive, passionate, more rhythmical, more improvisational flourishes in melody (of the sort A L Lloyd sometimes threw in), for example. Just thinking about the differences between sober and tipsy singing I observe today. Not to mention presumably a desire to allow the person taking it down to take it down.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 02:12 AM

An interesting point from Gerould is that for some Child ballads found in Europe as well as in England one cannot state with certainty which country they originated in. Lord Randall is one example he gives. For me, his discussion would benefit from dates. I like dates as they help to contextualise even though I am by no means the world's best historian.

I don't see how it could be argued with much credibility that such songs got to England via a purely oral non-literate tradition, unless it was a bilingual oral non-literate tradition in which those people who made up the conveyor belt of tradition has skills in ballad- making in two languages.

But his point, if correct, shows that Roud was right not to call his book 'English folk song' as was suggested higher up this thread.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 03:45 AM

"I don't see how it could be argued with much credibility that such songs got to England via a purely oral non-literate tradition"
Over the centuries the motifs of our traditions were obviously carried by colonisers, traders, armies of occupation seamen, slaves and slavers, settlers all who needed to breach the language barrier in order to carry out their occupations to survive
Much of our repertoire stems from or was carried by the Travellers who probably originated in Asia and, having travelled The Globe, eventually settled in the areas they are still to be found - they are still recognised for not being literate

All of this existed in a world where literacy either didn't exist or had not become a part of the everyday life of the people who sang songs and ballads.
The motifs in 'Bruton Town' date back earlier than Boccaccio and those in Hind Horn as far back as Ancient Greece and Homer

One point that seems to have been downplayed by Roud is that our singing traditions were largely based around the home and not the streets and pubs.

Sorry for the interruption - I'll leave you to it
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 04:15 AM

(just another guest)

Following in from Jim's suggestion, I wonder wonder how many were carried by wandering* traders and tradesmen for whom a good voice and repertoire of songs might engender hospitality, perhaps rather than suspicion as a stranger.

That might encourage conversion of songs into the local language or other forms of acculturation.

Did the Onion Johnnys, for example, sing?

I am avoiding using the word 'traveller', though some may be Travellers in Jim's sense

By the way, regarding the name of the book, only a few paragraphs into the Introduction Roud says "instead of asking 'What folk songs did people sing', we are more concerned with the question 'What songs did the folk sing?'"

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 05:25 AM

I don't know about the onion Johnnys but Travellers, wherever they were from, relied heavily on being socially integrated, so this must have involved becoming familiar with the language of their hosts
As afr as music goes, we know there were 'German Musicianers' and Italian Organ Grinders on the streets of the cities.
In rural areas agriculture depended to an extent on casual itinerant labour in the form of fruit and potato pickers - the traffic between Ireland and Scotland exchanged large numbers of songs - were told last week of a major Irish traditional singer instructing her daughters going to England to "Bring me back a song"
Once you take on the Norther Scotland/Scandinavian links and the Borders Italian Renaissance influences, you have your direct path to many of our big Ballads
The attempts to nationalise these ballads is a barrier to our understanding them.

As far as singing venues are concerned, Sam Larener once told MacColl and Seeger, Sure, we sand down in the Fisherman's Return' but the real singing to place at home or at sea.
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 05:32 AM

Sorry - missed the last question
As far as I'm concerned we should be concerned with what folk songs the people sang - the people sang everything from opera to advertising jingles and football chants
That makes any ration discussion on any specific type of song so fast as to be unapproachable
The fact that chosen the other is, as far as I am concerned, tha Achilles Heel of the book

Sorry about the typos above - my new keyboard is playing up
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 07:02 AM

I wonder wonder how many were carried by wandering* traders and tradesmen for whom a good voice and repertoire of songs might engender hospitality, perhaps rather than suspicion as a stranger.

David Thomson describes travelling tailors in Ireland (early twentieth century) in People of the Sea. They would make clothes in people's homes, in remote rural areas, and were usually housed in the loft where they could hear everything that was said in the house. They had a reputation as singers and storytellers (which would make them welcome to stay longer and maybe generate more work), and listening from up there would help expand their repertoire. But not much multilingualism involved, though presumably some between English and Irish.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 10:39 AM

Tzu
Regarding your query on 'delivery'. You are probably correct. Taking down someone's songs with just a pencil and a notebook inevitably misses out on a whole host of factors some of which you flag up. The answer, like much of the rest of the subject, is we don't know.

.....until Grainger came along with his cylinder recorder which gave us at least more information, but even then the environment in which they were recorded has to be taken into account. What we have is a tune and a text and perhaps a little biographical info, and maybe an odd comment was taken down. Folksong collecting has almost always been an amateur occupation (with some notable exceptions he added hastily) and I for one am extremely grateful for what we have.

My great admiration for the works of Sharp, Hammond, Gardiner, Baring Gould, Kidson and others of that era, is that whatever they did with their editing it would appear that they tried their best to leave what they collected intact as recorded in their manuscripts.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 11:08 AM

"David Thomson describes travelling tailors in Ireland "
Travellers of one sort or another were welcome visitors in many of the rural homes - their tinsmithing work and horse trading was an essential part of rural life and their abilities as singers and storytellers made them all the more welcome
Two brothers in North Clare described how, when Travellers with songs were in the area work would be abandoned ant they would go off deliberately to pick up new songs
From the opposite point of view we have a remarkable reminiscence from a Kerry Teveller, Mikeen McCarthy, who described how, as a child, he would eavesdrop on sessions where village people would walk out to the site with food and 'guals' (armfuls') of fuels and sit around an open fire listening to Mikeen's father singing, telling stories and laying music
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 11:13 AM

There is no implication in Thomson's book, as far as I remember it, that the itinerant tailors were "travellers" with a capital T, meaning Gypsies - they spent part of the year on the road for the job, but were based in a town.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 11:26 AM

Hello Steve

Thanks for your thoughts.

I wasn't trying to 'rubbish' the collectors, or to underplay the importance of their work. I was just musing. Sorry if it came across that way.

Keeping manuscripts (and recordings) is good, it's like researchers having their 'raw data' available for others wanting to review their research.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 11:35 AM

In Ireland, there was little difference between the two
It was the 'tradesmen' that was the uniting factor, not their ethnic origins
Onede strange feature we learned about in Clare was of the travelling women - lone women who would walk from town to town offering to work or just simply begging a meal and a bed in the barn
Tom Lenihan described a 'Mrs Brown' who he learned songs from
He guessed she had been abandoned and driven away from home to the life she was living when he met her
Other's he believed were girls who had 'got into trouble'
I know from Thomson's books that he was a reliable source of information
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 02:38 PM

Jim

Interesting point about German Musicianers and Italian Organ Grinders.
Do we have any dates for these?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 02:49 PM

19th century Peau
There's actually a song about one by Harry Cox
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 02:50 PM

G M that is (nothing to do with Genetically Modified though!
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 09:36 PM

While we are so off-topic, I have read several folk lyrics (in a Gammon book I think) involving grinding, though this is usually been done by Millers and involves rhyming 'sack' with 'back', if I remember aright. My friend points out that some blues songs feature similar metaphors, either with a plain and simple 'organ grinder', or with a 'mill', which in one famous case sung of by a woman 'done broke down', or coffee-related grinding. I don't know of any direct British or Irish to blues lyrics links on this line, though I know some blues ballads are versions of ballads whose life began this side of the Atlantic.

Sadly, none of the Millers appear to have made it into Child.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 09:49 PM

It was Jim's Italian organ grinders which set me off on that topic.

Sadly, Cox's song isn't on Spotify.

I can't speak about Ireland, but I think it may be a misconception to imagine some sort of Olde Englande in which people roved round singing songs for their supper. Starting in Elizabethan times, you needed paperwork officially to move area, so that they could send you back to where you were born if you were poor, and so on. This went on surprisingly late: we think one of my ancestors might have got sent back where he came from when he turned up in another Parish without means to support himself. This was 19th century.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Jul 18 - 02:30 AM

Street singing was ommon in Britain and Ireland - it still is - they call it buskig nowadays
I used to drink in a pub in London which displayed a reproduction warning notice listing the horrific punishment meted out to 'singing beggars'
Harry Cox's 'German Musicianer' is a bawdy comic song, probably originating on the stage - Steve will tell you - 'romantic', but not in the way you mean!
Cox's 'musicianer' is an instrument mender rather than a performer - thre are also related songs that make him a watch or clock mender

I believe the 'profession' street singers (legal ot illegal) whod did nothing else were largely a feature of the Towns - those in Ireland did whatever work they could lay their hands on
We recorded a Traveller in Ireland, Mikeen McCarthy, from Kerry, who sand at the fairs and markets in rural Ireland in the 1940s and '50s - we got more songs, stories, lore and information from him then we did from anybody else (apart from Walter Pardon)
He described in some detal the process of taking his fathers traditional songs into a local printer, reciting them over the counter and having them turned into 'ballads' (the term used for the song-sheets that were sold all over Ireland)
There's a hilarious description of him trying to teach the tune to an American customer in Listowel on the double CD of Traveller recordings we issued, 'From Puck to Applby'
Mikeen's experiences are a clear example of traditional songs being given to printers in order to sell them.
Mikeen, like all the singers we interviewed, were clear dividing their singing into their different functions - those for street singing and selling on 'the ballads' covered the lot, from traditional to the popular songs of the day, those sung in the pubs were called 'come-all-ye's", and the traditional songs sung in a traditional manner he called 'fireside songs'
Irish radio made a magnificent three-part series of our recordings and interviews with us of our work with travellers, called 'Come All You Loyal Travellers' (one of the best displays of our work) I feel
WE have a recording of our interview with Mikeen, to our producer friend, as he listed all the jobs he had done on the road, from tinsmithing and horse-dealing right though chairmaking, general carpentry, selling holy pictures... to clearing rubbish from empty houses.
The list took nearly five minutes to get through - Paula had to fade it after less than a minute - she based an entire programme just on Mikeen.
Singing and selling was only a tiny fraction of his work
He was not just an 'informant' - he became a lifelong friend up to his death in 2005

I know that street singing was an occupation elsewhere in Europe - I once attended a memorable talk by Belgian collector, Stefen Topp on one of his street singers, Alfred(?) Geens

Walter pardon of Norfolk mentioned an Italian peddler who used to come around his art of rural Norfolk who sang in the streets

My point was that oral influences were far more likely to have been the reason why our folk motifs are international than literary ones (in a non-literate Britain)
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Jul 18 - 06:15 AM

Sorry about the somewhat garbled posting
I really need to count up to 500 before I post first thing in the morning
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 25 Jul 18 - 06:19 AM

Jim

Interesting to note the use of the word 'musicianer' to name an instrument mender.

Because many African Americans used the term to refer to a musician.

This usage (musician) originates in Britain and occurs, for example, in a 19th century novel by George Eliot called Silas Marner. The word derives from the French.

I know that songs with 'German' in can be bawdy: this is in either Lloyd or Gammon or even both.

There has not been a 'non-literate' Britain for a very, very long time. Somebody on this thread recently gave a good example of how somebody non-literate might learn songs from somebody literate.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 25 Jul 18 - 07:54 AM

Jim

By the way your post was interesting even if, as you said, it was 'garbled'.

Pseu

PS Aren't we all playing nicely? :)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Jul 18 - 08:43 AM

"There has not been a 'non-literate' Britain for a very, very long time. "
Not necessarily true - the ability to read doesn't mean that it was used for everyday life
In Ireland it was further complicated by the two languages - singers and storytellers mistrusted the printed texts and only used them to supplement oral ones - we have several examples of that from both singers singers and storytellers
I once checked the rural literacy percentages and was staggered to find how many people couldn't read past the middle of the 19th century in England
The towns were higher but even the use of literacy skills was patchy and confined largely to the wealthier classes, even into the 20th century
My grandfather, as a merchant seaman, was part of the the setting up of the Maritima Workers Education Association for seamen
Literacy became a political weapon in the 1929s depression - being able to read was reckoned to be a way to fight exploitation
None of this is definitive of course but one of the factors of our folk songs is that they were found in the countryside rather than in the towns

I belive the 'German' references owe more to general Xenophobia mixed in with the mistrust of strange men entering your homes at will
There are pop songs of the early twentieth century of Spaniards who "blighted my life" or italians like "Oh, Oh Antonio" who seduced wives or girl-friends , given the opportunity

"PS Aren't we all playing nicely?"
So far - early days yet :)
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Jul 18 - 08:47 AM

singers and storytellers mistrusted the printed texts and only used them to supplement oral ones - we have several examples of that from both singers singers and storytellers

You could say the same about the Masons - for them the important stuff stays unwritten. Doesn't make them any less literate.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 25 Jul 18 - 09:21 AM

"Music/Musician/Musicianer"

The great Louis 'Scan' Tester of Horsted Keynes played Anglo-concertina, bandoneon, keyed bugle, fiddle and piano to my knowledge; he may have played others. He always referred to whatever instrument he as playing as a 'music' and several of the older pre-revival rural musicians that we met when we first came to Sussex in the 1960s did the same.
In a recorded interview that I did with him he in talking about his concertina made by Crabb and says:-
It's a very fine music.
.... and elsewhere in the interview he says:-
I always takes great care of my musics.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 25 Jul 18 - 12:24 PM

Referring back to earlier discussions on this thread: the song 'The Coalowner and the Pitman's Wife' has been mentioned on this thread as an example of how good the folk were at writing folk song. I looked this up in Lloyd's "Folk Song in England", and found the text less than precise, as it said something to the effect of its 'seemingly' having been made by William Hornsby, and later unearthed by a person in Whiston, Lancs. Given what we now know about Lloyd, I wondered what the true story was.

I now know that in a letter to Dave Harker, Lloyd stated that he had in fact received an incomplete text and had 'altered' it to 'accommodate bits of the incomplete text I got from Jim Denision.'

So you can go back and read what Lloyd said about this song in his Folk Song in England in the light of his later admission. Lloyd could have, but did not, write that he himself had created the version on the basis of a fragment, and he could have printed the fragment.

Instead, he comments (p110) that is is a 'masterpiece', 'wearing a smile that shows strong teeth'. On page 386 he asks whether its author/s can be seen as intermediaries between an old tradition and a new'. On page 323 he refers to it as 'an impressive specimen of early strike balladry'. On page 324 he says it emerges as a 'witty caricature' and that its dialogic structure hints at the French 'debat pastoral'. I cannot but read these on the basis that Lloyd is congratulating himself and his work here and that the joke is on the credulous reader.

I'm probably the last person on this thread to learn about this particular piece of Lloydian tinkering. Sorry to all those who already knew.

But this particular song seems to me to be an unfortunate choice if used as part of any argument that Lloyd's book about folk song is better than Roud's. (I'm not saying for certain it was used in this way, but I have a feeling that it was.)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 03:15 AM

Lloyd was not a collector as such - he was initially a singer with a wide interest in the background of songs and picked them up in the course of following that interest
If he was sloppy and inaccurate at times, it was due to that and not to dishonesty, as is all too often suggested
He was hired by the National Coal Board to gather together songs from the miners - out of that came as the pamphlet 'Coal Dust Ballads' and then as 'Come All you Bold Miners', later to be published in a much expanded form (we have all three here somewhere)
The people who accuse Lloyd of dishonesty are often those who have evolved a way of work and who believe there is a "right way to collect and present folk songs" just as some accuse people like me of claiming that there is "a right way" to sing them
Lloyds work was carried out as a revival singer asked to do a job - not an academic - he adapted the songs as a singer - I have no idea what he did with the paperwork of if he even made any extensive notes.

Similarly, MacColl and his then wife, Joan Littlewood were employed by the BBC to collect songs for a radio programme - 'The Ballad Hunters' around the Lancashire - Yorkshire Border   
They never kept a field diary - the only trace of the songs they collected were on typewritten sheets in a filing cabinet draw in their home, typed up by Peggy many years later from Ewan remembering them
They included, 'Fourpence a Day' from lead miner, John Gowland, 'T'ould Chap Cam' O'er the Bank' (an extremely bawdy 7 Nights Drunk), 'Drinking', and 'Four Loom Weaver' from Beckett Whitehead, 'The Mowing Match' and (I Think 'Forty Miles' (The Penny Wager).
The radio programme was never preserved and the songs survived in MacColl's memory only until Peggy wrote them down

I know this because Ewan and Peggy regularly let me loose in their collection to assist me as a wannabe singer - I never wrote down my researches and am recounting this from my memory of events from 50 years ago (this year, as it happens), so I can't guarantee the accuracy of what I have just written!

I have little doubt that as singers, both Ewan and Bert adapted these songs if they sang them - I did the same as a singer
I never made a note of the changes I made in the songs I got for my repertoire - I see no reason whic Ewan and Bert should be expected to have done so
I find it puzzling why today's researchers should demand high standards of accuracy from singers rather than academics

I knew Ewan well enough to know much of what he is accused of is inaccurate and unfair, often deliberately so.
I didn't know Bert as well, but I spoke to him enough times to believe he wasn't the charlatan he is all-too-often accused of being
As much as I loved my time in the revival - it could be a cruel, unforgiving, backbiting place towards those who didn't toe the 'folkie' line - sadly, some of that still lingers
Hopefully, the next generation.... pity we won't be around to find out
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 04:25 AM

It has been said often, but perhaps needs to be said again: there was nothing at all wrong with Bert adapting songs or even creating them from scratch, but what was very wrong was passing them off as having been made by and/or collected from someone else.

GUEST,Pseudonymous said "I now know that in a letter to Dave Harker, Lloyd stated that he had in fact received an incomplete text and had 'altered' it to 'accommodate bits of the incomplete text I got from Jim Denision.' "

Was Jim Denision (Denison?) the "person in Whiston, Lancs" who had "unearthed" the William Hornsby song, or was Bert saying that he had combined two incomplete versions?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 05:53 AM

This is Lloyd's note to the song from the first edition of 'Come All you Bold Miners - quite unequivocal and perfectly understandable and logical

THE COAL-OWNER AND THE PITMAN’S WIFE. Text communicated by J. S. Bell, of Whiston, Lancs, and reprinted by permission of the Editor of 'Coal'. Mr Bell believes that this ballad, which appears to date from the 1844 Durham Strike, was written by William Hornsby, a collier of Shotton Moor. The tune and a fragment of the text was communicated by jim Denison, of Walker.

We appear to have a song written by a collier and still being sung (in part) a century later - a folk song made by a working man - 'Heaven forfend'!!!
If that is not an example of folk composition unpolluted by commerciality, I honestly don't know what it
It certainly lets Bert off the hook
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 06:33 AM

"a song written by a collier and still being sung (in full and in part) "
Sorry - should read "it appears to have survived in full and in part (latter with a tune)"
Lloyd reports having found the two versions
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 07:16 AM

Richard Mellish wrote -
"It has been said often, but perhaps needs to be said again: there was nothing at all wrong with Bert adapting songs or even creating them from scratch, but what was very wrong was passing them off as having been made by and/or collected from someone else."

Totally agree, Richard. Bert Lloyd was an inspiring and admirable figure in the early days of the folk revival. If his deservedly respected place in the annals of folk song study has become somewhat tarnished, it is only because he has been less than straightforwardly honest about everything that he completed or 'improved'.
Robert Burns made a considerable number of alterations to the traditional songs that he included in the Scots Musical Museum and Burns and Lloyd shared the skill of being able to make their adaptations sound as though they fitted the bill.
The difference between the two is in the times that they were working in. Attitudes to authorship, copyright and intellectual property were different in the 18th and 20th centuries.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 08:03 AM

I think Martin Carthy has been at least Lloyd's equal in tinkering and recreating, but so far as I know has never tried to claim folk authenticity for his work.

I also think that most aficionados of trad are romantics at heart whose interest in and enjoyment of the songs is connected with a desire to get back in touch with a defunct and therefore exotic-seeming past.

This adds an extra aesthetic dimension to the question of altering songs - which, of course, can range from trivial unconscious changes to out and out forgery.

If we hear Lloyd sing a tinkered up song without telling us, we (OK,* I*) fancy a vicarious experience with 19th century folk culture.

When we hear Martin Carthy sing one of his own, often more extensively adapted pastiches, we're fully aware that much of what we're hearing is not only modern, but straight from the mind of Martin Carthy.

It's a different kind of experience, at least for me.

As students of folksong, Vic and Richard are right: like Carthy, Lloyd had an obligation to tell us what was real and what was Memorex (as the TV commercials used to say). But to do so would have changed the experience.

I'm not at all criticizing Carthy, nor defending Lloyd's practice (which I've criticized on other threads). I'm just noting what may be an interesting aesthetic point.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 08:14 AM

As singers, nobody was committed to "being honest" about what they did with their songs - it was not part of their job descriptions
Had it been, I can't think of a single revival singer who wouldn't have been standing in the dole queue looking for a new job
This has nothing to do with honesty
As for Burns - he adapted and improved folk songs and rewrite them to make his poems he collected as if they were going out of fashion without telling anybody
I think all this puts the Peter Buchan 'controversy' into context
Jim
I

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 08:25 AM

I think Martin Carthy has been at least Lloyd's equal in tinkering and recreating, but so far as I know has never tried to claim folk authenticity for his work.

Neither have I heard of Martin Carthy trying to pass of his reconstructions as anything other than what they were.
Peter Bellamy was another song tinkerer. When he sang Fair Annie he used to state openly that he changed the story a bit because he didn't like the way it went. His adapted version was taken up by Maggie Boyle, who, to my mind, made a much better job of singing it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 08:41 AM

Hello Richard

Two versions, though, of course, Lloyd doesn't explain that in 'Folk Song in England', which supports my criticism of his approach in that book. I assume that lack of clarity about the authenticity of the text as printed by Lloyd may be precisely why Harker was asking Lloyd about it in the first place.

But this looks like another of those ones that could run because the liner notes to a MacColl/Seeger version say that the written version of the song from JS Dell and the tune have different sources. I quote:

4. The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife
This ballad is believed to date from the Durham strike of 1844 and to have been written by William Hornsby, a collier of Shotton Moor, Durham. The ballad was discovered among a collection of papers relating to the strike by a studious Lancashire miner, J.S. Dell. The tune was supplied by J. Dennison. of WaIker and together with the text can be found in A.L Lloyd's 'Come all ye Bold Miners'.

Link to the liner notes:    https://www.wcml.org.uk/maccoll/maccoll/maccoll/music/industrial-songs/

Hello Jim

I'm sorry to disagree with you, in part.

If we alter traditional lyrics for performance we don't necessarily document the changes. I don't see why we should. Thus far I am with you.

But we don't (and could not due to the changes!) then give the impression that the lyrics we are singing are over one hundred years old, which would be dishonest, fake.


But I was not discussing modifying lyrics to suit different contexts I was discussing written work purporting to be 'research' into folklore.

The point I made about this song is in my view right. I was referring to Lloyd's book 'Folk Song in England' and not to performances. This is supposed to be a resource book, textbook. He printed his own 'tinkered'version and said how wonderful it was without mentioning his tinkerings and without printing the originals so that people could judge for themselves in possession of the facts. This is journalism. In view of just what a nightmare that strike was Lloyd's romanticising remarks about some medieval French genre strike me as verging on the crass.

I don't count Lloyd as 'working class', if that is what you are trying to say when you refer to a song being sung by somebody working class. Though I am now aware that he did misrepresent his background and that it was misrepresented on some LP covers. One thing that seems to emerge from the biography is that Lloyd doesn't seem to have had very much to do with working class people (the lifts he cadged from Jim Carroll, which might be an exception, not being mentioned).


Just to clarify one point in case readers of the thread misunderstood the context, Lloyd, I believe persuaded the Coal Board to let him carry out his project, it wasn't a case of them looking for somebody to do it. I think the prize for the best submission was his idea. The project was not especially successful according to Lloyd's biographer in that not much was submitted, not much of it was any good, and a lot of material was missed, including anything in Welsh, due to bad advice Lloyd was given, and, incredibly, accepted about Welsh miners not singing much or some such.

Nor was MacColl, who seems to have sung this song quite a lot, working class, though he may have started off as such. He was, from my perspective a sort of 'pop star', albeit one who produced 'lefty' stuff. (I was interested that the author of the Lloyd biography called Kenneth Goldstein a 'folklorist' when he was at that time a record company executive in the business of packaging up folk-like (revival?) performances and selling the results often with liner notes he wrote for money. the topic of liner notes crops up in the biography, with care being taken at one point not to spark a copyright suit! The commercial angle on the revival seems clear to me from my distant perspective. These people had to make a living, and Lloyd decided to do it out of folklore. )

And on one site I found it seems that on recordings 'The Coal Owner' was called 'traditional', odd since the actual author appears to have been known (usual for a 'folk' song).

The copy of Lloyd's book I have calls it 'scholarly'. This sort of journalistic and, in my view, less than fully honest praise of a piece that is at the end of the day of your own making, without offering the 'raw data' or a full account of the provenance is not 'scholarly'.

We do not appear to have a version 'unpolluted by commerciality' for several reasons; Bert got money for his book, and from his reputation as somebody who knew stuff and could and would communicate it. He was in the business of 'folk' both as a journalist and as a recording artist and live performer. It was obtained via a competition for the best song submitted. It isn't 'unpolluted' either, it is a tinkered version.

I don't know about this one, but lots of songs for the Durham strike seem to have been written by *literate* Primitive Methodists in order to support the strike by earning money. At least one miner's leader was a lay preacher. I believe they may have been 'sold' which is a form of commerciality albeit with a purpose I for one would agree with. There would have been quite a lot of literacy around if these Methodists had anything to do with it: they regarded it as important and would have been teaching it at Sunday Schools.

Moreover, I have an idea that the version JS Bell had was not passed down via oral tradition but was written. He found it in papers he had collected: he worked for the Coal Board but was doing research. This is how he got the papers. But I cannot find the web page where I learned about the background when googling the first time you came up with the song.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 08:47 AM

Before revival did it matter that singers changed songs, as they clearly did? No more polishing of stones allowed?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 09:18 AM

Just as a point of information, Goldstein began as a record producer, but he earned a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963 and was Chair of its Department of Folklore and Folklife for nearly twenty years.

He was honored by a Festschrift in 1995.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 09:31 AM

Thanks, Lighter. I know he moved into academia later in life. But his original education was in business, and then more business, and he worked in the recording business and the 'products' he sold were mostly revivalist material. There is a wiki page about him. Not criticising: we all have to make a living.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 09:35 AM

Jag wrote -
"Before revival did it matter that singers changed songs, as they clearly did? No more polishing of stones allowed? "

Your Honour, I would like to plead Not Guilty to the charge of tinkering with songs but Guilty to the charge of cobbling different versions together.
I was fascinated by The Unquiet Grave but could not find a set of words that seemed to flow easily and still tell the story. I can remember sitting at my kitchen table with 5 or 6 books and sleeve note transcriptions open at the correct place and taking a line from here and there, sometimes a complete verse, not adding a word of my own until I came up with something that suited me.
The tune I took from a recorded version of the ballad from a banjo-driven American version which I slowed down and loosened up rhythmically so that it suited my unaccompanied singing.
I remember singing it at a ballad event at the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh. At the end one of their staff, now deceased, rushed up to me with questions about where I had found the best version she had ever heard. The look of disappointment on her face when I explained how it has come about was palpable.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 09:50 AM

Massive thread drift but:

"The Primitive Methodists were particularly strong on the Durham Coalfield and in Norfolk and north Suffolk where they dominated the farm workers’ unions from the 1870s until the 1950s. It was probably the Prims that led to Hugh Gaitskell’s famous remark that 'the British Labour Party owes more to John Wesley than Karl Marx’."

http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/radical-objects-2/

http://hettonlocalhistory.org.uk/documents/ThomasHepburn.pdf

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 10:17 AM

Pseudonymous wrote:-
Kenneth Goldstein a 'folklorist' when he was at that time a record company executive in the business of packaging up folk-like (revival?) performances.

Lighter wrote:-
Goldstein began as a record producer, but he earned a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963

Neither of you are doing justice to a major figure of the recording of traditional singers. He recorded and produced one of the finest ever albums of traditional singing of Child Ballads - Lucy Stewart: Traditional Singer from Aberdeenshire Folkways FG3519


I'll give you a text scan of the first paragraph of Kenneth's long introductory essay from the album's booklet notes:-

INTRODUCTORY NOTE
From October 1959 through August I960 I had the great privilege to meet, know and work with the Stewart family of Fetterangus, Aberdeenshire. My project was to make a study of the folklore of a Scottish family in the' context in which such folklore existed. After several months of meeting and working with a number of families in the Buchan District of Aberdeenshire (long a stronghold of folklore traditions), the variety, quality and amount of the folklore of the Stewarts of Fetterangus convinced me that this was the family on whom I should concentrate my time and efforts. I reaped a handsome reward. After eleven months of working and living with this family - of admiring and loving them, and of collecting their vast treasure of tradition - I was to return to the United States with truely magnificent materials collected and studied in the context in which they normally exist. Numbers alone will give only a superficial index of these materials for the quality, creative functioning and meaning of their folklore is far more important. But the scope of the collection will surely excite interest: more than 200 ballads and songs, over 60 tales and legends, 185 riddles, more than 300 children's games and rhymes, innumerable superstitions and beliefs, examples of witchcraft, devil-lore, weather-lore, dream-warnings, omens, fortune-telling — indeed the full gamut of folklore traditions existed in this one marvelous family. I should like to claim that I was able to observe and collect the total folklore of this family, but I feel certain that even if I were to spend ten years more with the Fetterangus Stewarts I would still not touch bottom in their deep well of tradition.

On the album Lucy sings wonderful versions of The Battle O'Harlaw, The Twa Brothers, Tifty's Annie, The Laird O'Drum, Doon By The Greenwood Sidie-o, The Bonnie House o' Airlie, The Swan Swims Sae Bonnie-O
I sang that last named ballad, which is Lucy's version of The Cruel Sister at a concert at the TMSA festival in Blairgowrie, It must have been 1969 or possibly the following year. At the end of the concert a short, balding, bearded smiley faced man came up to me and said, "You don't have to tell me where you got that version from; I'm Kenny Goldstein!". I was mortified. I told him him that if I had known that he was in the audience, I never would have sang that one. He assured me that it was fine; that I had done justice to it and that was pleased that other singers were taking it up. We agreed to meet later for a drink and I was very impressed by his knowledge of and enthusiasm for Scots traveller culture.
Meeting him and meeting Jane & Cameron Turriff at the same festival lead to Tina and I being invited up to Fetterangus in 1971 where we spent a glorious week camping in the Turriffs' garden and hearing them and some other remarkable singers who all lived in the same street, Gavil Street, including Jane's aunt Lucy Stewart, her mother Jane Stewart and her mother's cousin Blin' Robin Hutchison.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 10:20 AM

Pseudonymous, you might find the 'Bertsongs' thread on Mudcat of interest. I've tried to do a clicky, but for some reason the clickies don't seem to work for internal links any more. Anyway, it's easy enough to find with a search.

Oddly enough, 'The Coal Owner...' wasn't amongst the Lloyd creations analysed on that thread.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 10:53 AM

Thanks Brian: when Jim first mentioned the song I tried to find it on Mudcat, and elsewhere. I didn't find much on Mudcat about the Arthur biography, which I am finding fascinating, either.

Vic: information duly noted. Thank you. I knew he did collecting later in life: I first encountered him via work done as a record company executive producer.

NB There is an amazing hedge in or just near Blairgowrie, isn't there?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 10:57 AM

As for Burns - he adapted and improved folk songs and rewrite them to make his poems he collected as if they were going out of fashion without telling anybody

He did indicate which of the songs he sent to publishers were straight traditional, which he'd adapted, and which he'd written from scratch. And usually got them correctly labelled in print. Did anyone before him take that much care?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 11:09 AM

"Lloyd doesn't explain that in 'Folk Song in England', which supports my criticism of his approach in that book"
He didn't have to - he'd already made the information available elsewhere
If that was a condition of writing such a book Roud's version would have been three times the size it already was
This song has only become an issue because later researchers have chosen to question it - as far as I'm concerned, without reason.

"why Harker was asking Lloyd about it in the first place."
Harker bent over backwards to undermine what earlier researchers wrote - why should we do the same?
I can't see how MacColl's notes can do anything but add to the information on the song - Ewan and Bert were friends (for a time) and all Ewan had to do was to ask Bert for the details
They certainly don't contradict anything Bert said:
"Text communicated by J. S. Bell" (presumably to 'Coal' Magazine)
" Tune and fragment - J. Dennison. of Walker" - presumably a live informant when Lloyd was engaged in his project

"which would be dishonest, fake."
Can't speak fro anybody else, but I never went to a folk club where the singers took an oath of authenticity that what they were singing was authentic - on the contrary, everybody assumed they were arrangements - nowadays there's an unhealthy tendency to copyright thos alterations as "arranged by"
Sorry - I'm getting a little lost here
I think it's a little different when they are published as genuine and are not - it is claimed that Bert did this but never proven 100%

I believe that Bert's failings of 'scholarship' were down to the fact that, rather than being an 'academic' he was an enthusiastic researcher who people want to be an academic.
Bert wrote Folk Song in England shortly after he and Ewan had attempted to draw the various strands of the revival together at a meeting in Central London and had been scuppered in doing so   
Ewan went off and created his own band of disciples and Bert wrote and made some of the finest radio programmes of folk music ever produced
For that, I'd have forgiven both of them if I'd come home to find them in bed with my mother!

As far as Bert's working class credentials are concerned, I never heard him speaking with a 'gpr blimey' accent or claiming his father worked "down t'pit
He was what he was - the son of a loweer middle-class accountant who fought as a private in the trenches, and a mother who was the daughter of a printer
Bert's contact with the working class - as an assisted passage emigrant to Australia who tried his hand at sheep farming was good
credentials for me to be trusted as being knowledgeable on working class culture

I am always disturbed by the smugness of hindsight that often surrounds discussions about Bert, Sharp and others (including Child, it would appear)
I think Mark Antony had it about right at Caesar's funeral.

I don't care if a song is sung by a chartered accountant or a high-court Judge (like Stephen Sedley) as long as they don't make a mess of it - it is who is likely to have made them that concerns me

This is getting far too long - I'll come back if I've missed anything
I'll certainly come back to deal with the "leftie pop star" son of a blacklisted iron moulder (who was transported back from Australia for his Trades Union activity), who grew up and educated himself in depression-hit Salford and co-founded an agit prop theatre to perform at factory gate meetings during the massive cotton strikes
That is an appalling misrepresentation of one of the greatest benefactors in these Islands   
I'll go and take a few pills I think!!
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 11:21 AM

Pseudonymous wrote:-
Thank you. I knew he did collecting later in life:

Kenneth S. Goldstein, PhD (March 17, 1927 – November 11, 1995) so he was only 32 when he gained a Fulbright Research Grant to travel over to Aberdeenshire and study Lucy's family.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 11:25 AM

Bertsongs
thread.cfm?threadid=110621


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[it's now
copy&paste the URL into the "blue clicky"
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=110621
delete the
https://mudcat.org/
> Create Link
= Cut and paste this into your post:

etc ]

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 11:34 AM

Jag

If nobody had changed any songs before the revival, then, it seems, a whole amateur 'industry' and some professional careers might never have existed. Where would Child had been in this case?

'Matter': I'm developing a 'thing' about being specific, so I wonder 'matter' in what respect, and 'matter' to whom, and when?

If I'm reading a book purporting to be a 'factual' history on a subject, then I don't want it to be written by somebody who had themselves produced the written materials put forward as examples of this history, and who then expounded upon their wonderful expressiveness as evidence of some past skill.

If I was thinking about the relationship between words and music in songs from the past, then I wouldn't want to be looking at versions of lyrics which somebody has 'tinkered with' to fit with their own conception of how lyrics and musical meter should interact.

I have been criticised for changing lyrics on the basis that it is 'disrespectful' to the originals. But my view is that using them at all implies respect, ie that I have found something in the piece that for some reason pleases me and that I want to use.

{Has anybody made the 'It's folk, Jim, but not as we know it!' joke yet?}

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 11:37 AM

Brian Peters wrote
you might find the 'Bertsongs' thread on Mudcat of interest.

Now, the name of that poster rings a bell; Brian Peters? Wasn't he the person mentioned in the post in this thread on 16 Jul 18 - 12:09 PM? Wasn't he the person that remade a version of Barbara Allen around a tune and a verse collected by Cecil Sharp from the black singer, Aunt Maria Tomes? He was? Ah, that means that we can add the name of Peters to those of Lloyd, Carthy and Bellamy as those guilty of Traditional Song Reconstructivism

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 11:41 AM

I just learned that according to Wikipedia the Jim Carroll who attended the Critics Group with MacColl was in fact a punk musician who died some time ago. Have we been haunted?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 11:45 AM

No, Jim's just his own doppelganger.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 11:56 AM

Pseudonymous wrote:-
"There is an amazing hedge in or just near Blairgowrie, isn't there?"

Yes! You must mean the Meikleour Beech Hedges

The Stewarts of Blairgowrie were famed for a wide range of Traveller Culture. Belle Stewart was a great singer but unlike many in her family, she would rarely tell a story. If she was pressed to tell one it would be the one about the beech hedges.

(I wonder if there have been any threads on Mudcat that have been subject to as many cases of thread drift as this one.)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 12:07 PM

"No, Jim's just his own doppelganger."
Thanks L
Saved me the touble of digging out the doll and the pins
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 12:37 PM

Doppelganger? "It's Jim, Jim, but not as we know it."

Beam me up, Scotty.

Pseudonymous wrote:-

Thank you. I knew he did collecting later in life.

Sorry of course I meant later than the time of his life he was at when he did the early work which was the first work of his that I encountered. He was it seems remarkably young to have been doing what he did in the recording industry. Not a lot of time to work your way up.   He also had a publishing company. A man who helped create and supply a niche market. And it would appear one who kept involved with it.

I'm not wholly convinced that academia is free from commercial 'taint' (can't find a better word at the moment).. I knew somebody whose PhD was industry funded and whose funding vanished when the results were not favourable to the commercial interests in question, along with the chance of a doctorate.

He recorded over 800 LPs for various companies, says wiki.

And, shock horror, he published a textbook on how to collect folk song. You mean he thought that there's a right way to do this, so that people might do it the wrong way? That is tantamount to heresy, I think, to some who have posted here.

I note from Arthur (p357) that Kodaly thought both 'Bert' and MacColl were 'pop stars' or 'pop singers' at any rate. It was the knowledge that such a figure had made the comment that emboldened me to repeat it. Maybe 'stars' was putting it a bit strong. 'Singers' was better. :) I'll happily withdraw 'stars'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 01:52 PM

"that Kodaly thought both 'Bert' and MacColl were 'pop stars' or 'pop singers' at any rate."
I go for all my information on the British folk song to long dead Eastern European Classical composers all the time - why wouldn't I!
Kodaly's heirs in Hungary welcomed us, feted us and fed us for our association with Ewan
Both Bert and Ewan are recognised worldwide as respected experts on British folk music
It really is refreshing to be now living in a country which largely escaped the backbiting and handbag swinging and accept and respect people for their creativity a nd contribution rather than their supposed reputations

One of the greatest frustrations for me is that MacColl and the Critics spent nearly ten years examining folk song under their microscopes, as a cultural phenomenon, a performed art and an important part of our social history
The mechanics of singing was examined and experimented with, exercises were devised, as were methods of making the songs the singers
Using the older songs to make new ones war a major part of the Group's work and actually managed to create some fine new songs
Most of these workshops were recorded and I have a copy of them (several hundred tapes) -
I am unable even to discuss them. let alone give them to someone who will use them and guarantee their survival thanks to the fact that any attempts to do so flounder on 'name changes' and 'war records'.
All because the lady cant recognise the uniqueness of folk song

THe present academia appears to be pandering to commercialism by attributing the creation of our folk songs to it
Never thought I'd live to see the day
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 02:29 PM

But Jim, I had only heard of Kodaly because Lloyd cited him as an expert on folklore in his 'Folk Song in England'. This is why Kodaly's comment on Lloyd and MacColl took my attention when I came across it. Kodaly's name crops up several times in Lloyds' book. If his ideas are irrelevant to the question of what is and is not folk song in England, then perhaps Lloyd should not have drawn upon him in a book of that title?


But tea is on the table. Yum.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 03:10 PM

"But Jim, I had only heard of Kodaly because Lloyd cited him as an expert on folklore in his 'Folk Song in England'."
Kodaly did wonderful owk on Hungarian folk song - I've got ten albums of his stuff
Bert was deeply involved in Eastern European traditional song and Kodaly was his hero in that field - he features strongly in one of Bert's finest Radio Programmes - 'The Savage in the Concert Hall
That doesn't make him like an expert on British folk music Personally, I prefer this:

"Thanks to the encouragement of many small successes, Kenneth Goldstein and Riverside have recently issued the boldest single venture yet in their eight double-sided LP set of Child ballads, sung unaccompanied by Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd. It is not, I think, an exaggeration to declare that this is the most important event in the field since the publication of Sharp and Karpeles’ Southern Appalachian collection.1 It may be short of ideal that eighty-odd ballads are sung by only two persons, but in spite of their professional status, both of these men, in their very different styles, carry conviction. Lloyd, although he has learned most of his songs from print, sounds more folklike; but MacColl is rooted in a strong family tradition, and wins our fullest assent.
The length of many of these versions as sung by MacColl and Lloyd is a new experience, and as such it prompts reconsideration of ballad-form by bringing into sharp focus questions hitherto unasked or but dimly perceived."
Bertrand Harrison Bronson 1957

We really needn't have sunk to this level
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 03:30 PM

"Ah, that means that we can add the name of Peters to those of Lloyd, Carthy and Bellamy as those guilty of Traditional Song Reconstructivism"

Indeed you can, Vic, and of course I make no apology for it. Many of us in the field of traditional song performance have felt the need (like yourself, too) to do a bit of collation, plug a few gaps, write the odd line, find a new tune, etc., from time to time. With some of Child's ballads it would be impossible to sing a coherent version otherwise. I would never condemn Bert Lloyd for doing that, in fact in my first post on the 'Bertsongs' thread I mentioned a concoction of his that I was more than happy to perform even after being disabused of the idea that it was an old English song. He was extraordinarily good at tweaking his songs.

Regarding the use of concocted material to illustrate historical points, Steve Winick – a researcher in the Library of Congress who unpicked Lloyd’s emendations to The Recruited Collier and Reynardine - expressed the opinion that, by the time he wrote FSE, Lloyd had become more careful about his examples and omitted both of those songs from his analysis. Some of the more suspect stuff, according to Winick (I seem to remember that Malcolm Taylor at the VWML once told me something similar) had been published previously in ‘The Singing Englishman’ and ‘Come All Ye Bold Miners’, neither of which I have here to check. In FSE Lloyd did, however, print The Blackleg Miner – about which doubts have been expressed - and was also rather selective in the stanzas he published from The Weaver and the Factory Maid, another of his songs with a mysterious source.

What Pseudonymous has written about the flights of fancy in Lloyd’s FSE is quite true, but I must admit that – as always – when I came to thumb through it again just now I found it as entrancing as ever.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 03:32 PM

And thanks to FreddyHeadey for explaining how to do internal clickies!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 05:06 PM

I have held off posting this - but quite a number of posts here on the Bert/ song alteration/amending thread drift have made me think of a song that I learned directly from Bert who sang it each time he was booked at our club in Lewes and at a number of other local clubs where I saw him appearing. I have never seen this song anywhere in print (has anyone else?) so I give the version that I have typed out from my song book. According to my song book, he called it The Weaver:-

As I walked out rather late last night
The moon was a-shining and all things bright
I spied a fair maid by the light of the moon
And underneath her apron she working at her loom

She says, "Young man, what trade do you bear?"
"Oh!" says I "I'm a weaver, I declare."
" If you're a weaver then" said she
"Would you like to come and work upon my loom for me."

"Oh, no fair maid that never can be,
For last night I wove for two or three
Two or three and girls so bright
And they'd keep me at it all that night.

There was Nancy Fairclough of this town
I wove for her a pattern called 'The Rose & Crown'
And for Elvira, fairer still
I wove for her a pattern called the 'Diamond Twill'."

"A very fine pattern is the 'Diamond Twill'
And the 'Rose & Crown' is a finer still
But here's £20 I would lay down
If you weave a better pattern than the 'Rose & Crown'.

So I laid this fair maid on the grass
I braced her loom both tight and fast
My shuttle in her way back flung
And I thought "Good God how her loom was sprung".

The heels of her loom they being well greased
This young girl she began to hug and squeeze
And there and then by the light of the moon
I wove for her a pattern called the 'Bride & Groom'

"Oh, there's fine weaving!" then said she
"Would you like to come and weave another piece for me?"
And a my shuttle went to and fro
I wove for her a pattern called the 'Touch & Go'

My shuttle to her weft I bent
And I wove on to a lively end
And as a finish to the joke
I topped off the pattern with a 'Double Stroke'.

I can even remember how he introduced it saying that he thought it was a rather clever song because he had visited a weaving museum and seen all the patterns mentioned in the song - Bride & Groom, Rose & Crown etc. - so the person who made it up certainly knew what they were talking about.
Decades ago I was in a four piece group made up of regulars and residents from our club and I learned this song to sing with them. The group stopped performing together before my first daughter was born and she is now 43 so I'm talking about a long time ago.
We sung it, me singing to melodeon, concertina and fiddle accompaniment at our club and when we were given gigs at other clubs in and around Sussex. It was at one of these gigs (I think it was Chichester) when someone older then me came up at the end and asked me if I thought that it was a traditional song because he knew the A.L. Lloyd wrote it.

I didn't.... but the knowledge upset me. I had assumed from Bert's introductions that it was a traditional song.

I told the other members of the group that I didn't want to sing it any more and they were horrified. What did it matter who wrote it? It was a bloody good song with a great tune and one that always went down well with audiences and they all enjoyed playing the accompaniments. Of course they were right so I relented.
After the group finished, I rarely sang it and soon I gave it up altogether.... not because it was written and not traditional but because I started to find the words a bit Monty-Python-nudge-nudge-wink-wink and not the image I wanted to put over as a performer.
However, the posts about Bert and songs has made me think of it again and I wonder if there is anyone who could confirm that it is a Lloyd composition.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 05:19 PM

"I had assumed from Bert's introductions that it was a traditional song."
Edith Forke collected it from an old farmer in Canada - we have her field recording of it - that traditional enough for you Vic?
Did you have the same objection to singing Eric Bogle songs, I wonder!
It seems Bert has joined Ewan as a no-no
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 05:21 PM

Whoops - another typo
Fowke, of course
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,John Bowden (not a typo!)
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 05:46 PM

It's from the magnificent O. J. Abbott, and is on the LP "Ontario Ballads and Folksongs" - it can be heard here: http://citizenfreak.com/titles/279670-fowke-edith-ontario-ballads-folksongs

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,John Bowden (not a typo!)
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 06:02 PM

And it's also on

"The Barley Grain for Me
and other traditional songs found in Canada", by
Margaret Christl and Ian Robb with Grit Laskin

Folk-Legacy Records FSC-62 (LP, USA, 1976)
Folk-Legacy Records CD-62 (CD, USA, 1997)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 06:21 PM

Vic, Roud 2311. Broadside at Bodleian Harding B25 (243) 'A New Song called the Bold Weaver' (No imprint).

Bert's version appears to be a composite of the 3 extant versions, the broadside, a manuscript American version from a whaling log c1845-48, and O. J. Abbott's Canadian version already mentioned. With a couple of extra stanzas which may or may not be Bert's. Steven Woodbury gave me a comparison of all 4 versions verse for verse written in 2015. As you would probably surmise some of the extended metaphors appear to be Bert's (or SOE)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 06:27 PM

Thanks very much John. I have never heard it sung by anyone other than Bert and after all these years, I am glad that my Chichester(?) informant was wrong. However, if I compare the version that is sung on the recording by O.J. Abbott, the version that I learned from Bert is much fuller than the recording you linked to; many more references to the different patterns, so I am left wondering if Bert's hand was involved in developing the song. If it was, then it's a fine job he made of it in my opinion.

I was just going to post this, John, when I saw your second post with reference to the release dates the first one of which was 1976. Now, I must have learned it from Bert about 1971 or 1972 so the question became "When did Edith Fowke record this and was it the source for Bert's version?" I scrolled down your website link to find that there was a small facsimile of the album sleeve. By saving this as a .jpg and enlarging it, I was able to read the notes. The recording dates of each track is not given but she writes:-

I bought a tape recorder in the fall of 1956 and decided to see if I could find any traditional song within easy reach of my home in Toronto.

so the recording could easily have preceded the album release by up to 20 years and a person like Bert was likely to have access to the field recordings of a famous collector like Edith Fowke

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 06:30 PM

Sorry, Steve, you can see that I have cross posted with you but thanks a lot for the information.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Phil
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 06:34 PM

Still, if the version collected from OJ Abbott is the same one Bert was using, it looks as if four verses have been bulked out to nine. Like other singers on this thread, I often smush different versions of a song together and occasionally interpolate a line or two of my own, but I'm not comfortable with a 50:50 ratio of old to new.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 06:55 PM

Vic, Edith Fowke recorded Mr Abbott in the summer of 1957, so Bert Lloyd would very likely have heard the recordings. I just referenced my old friend Ian Robb's 1976 LP as it's the only revival recording of the song I've heard (Ian and Margaret got a lot of help from Edith when making the record, I understand). I suppose I should have said "the only version I know originates from O. J. Abbott" rather than "it comes from...", since there are clearly other traditional versions. Anyway, it's definitely traditional, not a composition of Bert's!

Sorry I missed you at Bradfield by the way - I was looking forward to hearing your Johnny Doughty presentation, but was at Newark Traditions Festival and only made it for the Sunday night closing session!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 07:15 PM

It's late and I'm half asleep, so I'm not expressing myself very well! When I said "it's from O. K. Abbott" I was referring to Jim's mention of Fowke's "old farmer - I didn't mean to imply that Lloyd's version was the same as Mr Abbott's, just that Mr Abbott had a version and it was therefore a traditional song. Was Lloyd's tune anything like Mr Abbott's Vic? Did Lloyd's extra verses come from other versions, or are they his own invention, Steve?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,John Bowden
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 07:18 PM

And the last 2 Guests were me! Time for bed...

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 07:37 PM

I've just checked in the Canadian Book of Folk Songs, edited by Edith Fowke
She give O.J. Abbott's version - her note says he got it from an Irishman, but she also indicates there was a 10 verse version
She also makes clear that she believes it to be of English origin but pointing out that the Carpet weaves in the song were common to the English weaving industry
Technically, it is as English as I am Irish - by heritage
I recollect that O J Abbot's tune was identical to Bert's
I recollect that a number of Berts songs were acquired in the same way - Fowke being one of his sources - not so much dishonesty as an occasional ambivalence - Bert wearing his singers hat, in fact.

When Fowke was working on The Penguin Book she recruited Peggy Seeger to transcribe many of the songs and tunes - she sent her a large number of field recordings to work from.
Ewan and Peg were always generous with the recordings they owned and the Fowke Collection was on their shelves - the rest is history
I treasure that collection as a research guide to what was taken from Britain and Ireland by the emigrants in the 19th century
It is been of immense use in my current work in gatherings examples of Irish versions of Child Ballads
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 26 Jul 18 - 09:54 PM

Lloyd's version is very like the text learned by American sailor Lewis Jones (1823-1906) in the mid nineteenth century - except for being a little bit bawdier, little bit smoother - and a stanza or two longer. (I wonder why....)

Jones's version is still in manuscript, but Lloyd may have had access to a copy. I'd need special permission from the East Hampton, N.Y., Library to post Jones's text on the 'Net.

An undated broadside text ("A New Song Called the Bold Weaver") is online at the Bodleian site (Harding B 25[243]). But Jones's version is actually fuller!

My thanks to Steve Woodbury, who brought these texts to my attention in 2016!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 03:01 AM

I really don't see much reason in pursuing this song other than to prove Bert a chalatan - that maybe worth the effort to some...
We have established that it is traditional and that it possibly had it's roots in England, just as we established that Bert's statements on 'The Coal Owner and the Pitman's came from a collier rather than from Bert's invention
There will be no evidence that The Weaver originated on a broadside - that evidence doesn't exist for any of our folk songs
THat Bert as a singer may or may have added to it with verses of his own is surely immetarial?
I seriously hope that such as an important influence in my life as Bert was doesn't end up as MacColl has, as someone who is dug up regularly and rewarded for his work with a regular ritual kicking
Surely one sacrificial lamb is enough for people who get pleasure from that sort of thing!

Much of this argument has been little more than academic shadow boxing - the actual songs and singing has taken second place.
I spent the week before last as part of a week-long annual school which was set up 48 years ago in memory of a traditional piper (and singer) to promote the teaching and passing on traditional song and music
It has proved an essential part of the massive rise in the fortunes of Irish music that has occured here - that music has now been guaranteed at least another two generation-worth of future

Song hasn't fared quite as well, partly because the Traditional singers involved at the beginning, Tom Lenihan, Martin Reidy, Straight Flanagan, Nora Cleary, Katie Droney.... and the rest (all personal friends or acquaintances, to one degree or another) went and died before their influence began to kick in.

I decided some time ago that most of the rest of my conscious life would be dedicated to promoting people like these with the assistance of the works of people who have gone before - MacColl and Lloyd feature strongly in my intention.
Any examples I have of any of these generous enthusiasts`and the singers who left is such a rich legacy I intend to pass on to those who wish to avail of it
I can't think of anything more positive I can do with my time at present

During the six daily workshops at the Clancy school I met a number of enthusiastic singers who were happy to take up my offer of recordings and information - I made a similar offer on this thread some time ago and was deafened by the silence of the response.
I have opened a Dropbox and am regularly circulating material to those who gave me their contact number.
Once again I make the offer here
Anybody who wants to listen to the work of MacColl via 'The Song Carriers' or Bert with his magnificent 'Songs of the People' or 'Folk Song Virtuoso', or selections of traditional singing from source singers is welcome to be linked to the Dropbox, which will be filled and regularly replaced for as long as I have time to do so (we really do have a lot of material here)

I'm around till Sunday, when we are going off for a few days to celebrate(?) my being another year another year older and deeper in frustration.
Then those who seem happy to knock Ewan and Bert without having heard what they actually had to say or a consign our the role of our traditional singers to customers or parrots can hear what they had to say and sing up close

If some people consider my attitude immovable or unreasonable, I should think carefully about how much time and effort has been put in here by people who have bent over backwards to show that all previous folk scholarship has been based on starry-eyed naivety, or by the efforts of people to show that untalented bad poets (hacks) were the authors of our folk songs rather than those who sang them and passed them on
Off to link up a few more requests
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 03:47 AM

If some people consider my attitude immovable or unreasonable.
yes, it is.
here is another example three score and ten, originally a broadside but improved by the people, but the author was william delf and it was a broadside,Jim you have been proved wrong,will you please now desist from digging yourself a hole
you remind me of Trevor Bailey playing cricket immovable and reminscent of a stone wall

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 04:59 AM

I've been reading this thread with some interest - the polite bits, that is - but made no contribution so far because my knowledge of folk songs, as opposed to folk tunes, is minimal. However, I think the question of the literacy or illiteracy of the working class (for want of a better phrase) - with a bearing on the transmission of songs - in the 19th century and before, is not a straightforward, black & white issue.

It would be a grave error to assume that, up until such-and-such a period, working class people were largely illiterature. Many undoubtedly were, but a surprising number were not. I'm lucky enough to have family records which throw some light on this. My father's family were mainly generations of Lancashire miners up until the 1920s, and my mother's family were East Anglian agricultural labourers and blacksmiths for a similar period. Quite apart from the signatures or "X" marks on marriage and death certificates, denoting an ability to write or not, we have a treasure trove of letters written in Norfolk and sent to Canada between 1837 and 1890 by relatives of ancestors who had left as part of the great emigration of the 1830s.

The letters, luckily, have been kept and transcribed. They were written, in the main, by carters, labourers, smiths and the like. There is one in particular which is fascinating - written by the widow of a labourer in 1858 (at the age of 80). By contrast, much of the documentation on the Lancashire side of the family reveals a high degree of illiteracy.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Will Fly
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 05:00 AM

Sorry - last post was mine without cookie.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 05:37 AM

A good point well illustrated, Will.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 05:39 AM

"I really don't see much reason in pursuing this song other than to prove Bert a charlatan - that maybe worth the effort to some..."

Jim, I don't think anyone here is trying to prove Bert a charlatan. All of us have expressed admiration for his work as an arranger of old songs, and for the quality of the writing in his FSE. The 'Weaver' song that Vic brought up (which I remember Steve Mayne, an old friend of Bert's, singing in Manchester during the 1980s) is yet another example of the kind of thing that was so fascinating about the 'Bertsongs' thread: the detective work involved in unpicking his editorial process.

If his historical analysis had rested to any significant extent on songs that he’d altered himself, that of course would be a serious problem. As far as FSE goes, this isn’t the case (barring possibly two examples amongst a vast number). His earlier published work was probably less scrupulous. Those flaws need to be acknowledged while praising Lloyd’s enormous contribution.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 05:56 AM

"Jim, I don't think anyone here is trying to prove Bert a charlatan. "
Unfortunately I think some have Brian - I am not alone in thinking so, Mike Yates felt the need to comment on it.
Bert has been a long standing to me of the rebvival's vitrionl, as has MacColl
Neither got everything right but both got enough right to be spared the abuse
As Peggy once said in an uncharacteristic outburst of anger in a letter, "they are no longer around to speak for themselves"
Bert, Ewan and a few others were dedicated to popularising folk songs - some of the treatment they have and still are receiving continues to anger and disappoint me "serpent's teeth and thakless children" spring to mind when the "name change, "finger-in-ear" mob bring out the rope and look for a suitable tree
It's not exactly as if somebody has stepped in their shoes and did what they did
I can't think of a single one

"Steve Mayne"
Of 'Mayne Coaches' fame
Another warm blast from the past - a close friend when I lived in Manchester
We argued from opening to closing time on many occasions, but still remained friends
Good days!
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 06:33 AM

"Steve Mayne"
Of 'Mayne Coaches' fame
Another warm blast from the past - a close friend when I lived in Manchester... We argued from opening to closing time on many occasions, but still remained friends.

Ah, that's interesting, Jim. Steve was a resident at Harry Boardman's club at the same time I was. I used to go back for coffee to his luxurious home (he had made more than a few bob from the coach company) after I'd played Warrington Folk Club. He always used to find it amusing that a rich capitalist like him should count so many lefties amongst his friends, and recalled that Ewan always enjoyed a dip in his swimming pool!

Sadly no longer with us.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 06:47 AM

"Ah, that's interesting, Jim. Steve was a resident at Harry Boardman's club at the same time I was
More and more interesting - I was a resident at two of Harry's clubs for a time - I remember "The Anchor(?)" - can't remember the other
I remember one incident particularly
I had the last song (just after closing time - I chose to finish with 'Ballad of Sharpeville" which I always became emotionally involved with and sang with my eyes closed
As I was reaching the end, I heard a murmur from the audience and opened my eyes to find two buly people trying to clear the room - a traumatically formative experience

Harry, if you remember, was a great singer but had a tendency to rise in pitch sometimes
I went with him one night (in the swingin' sixties) to watch him perform at the Manchester Uni Club - An The Toast-rack)
Harry launched into 'The Flying Cloud' which he sang with his eyes closed, and gradually rose in pitch until he was bulging at the gills
During the performance, two students sitting on the edge of the stage attempted to light up a joint and in the process, set the stage curtains on fire
Harry finished the song to a backdrop of floor-to ceiling blazing curtains, very apt for the song
Certainly good days
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 06:57 AM

Ha ha, good tale, Jim. I heard Harry sing The Flying Cloud more than once, and it being terrific - maybe he'd got over his pitching problems by then.

If everyone else can bear with us for a moment while I reply to Jim's Harry Boardman story:

In my day Harry's club was at the Unicorn just off Shude Hill. The 'old guard' of residents consisted of Harry, Steve, Joe Kerins and Bob Morton - Terry Whelan was a more occasional visitor. Harry then recruited a bunch of younger residents including me, my wife Margaret, Mark Dowding and Mary Humphries, amongst others. There were some really good regular floor performers too, representing styles from blues to political song to poetry. Harry and Steve gave me a lot of encouragement with my singing and playing - Terry less so!

Happy times!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 07:03 AM

The Weaver (continued)

I would only have had to cross from my desk to my desk to my wall of bookshelves to pick out The Penguin Book of Canadian Folk songs* edited by Edith Fowke and turn to page 142 to find The Weaver. It has been there since we moved to Lewes in 1978. I have learned quite a number of songs from it, most notably Mary Ann. It is only today looking for Edith Fowke books on the North American shelves that I came across it.
The fact is that this song had slipped from my conciousness between around 1974 when I stopped singing it until now when the current turn of this thread to the discussion of 'Bertsongs' brought it back to my my mind so I had no reason to look it up and at I can confirm that the version given here is as on the album that John Bowden linked to.
I'll give a text scan of Edith Fowke's note on the song:-

6i. The Weaver Fowke TSSO 38 (Prestige/International 25014)
This much rarer ballad Mr Abbott learned from Dan Leahy, an Irish farm labourer, in Marchurst, Ontario, around 1890, when Leahy would have been about seventy. It has not been reported from oral tradition elsewhere, but a ten-stanza version appears in the nineteenth-century Jones-Conklin manuscript of an American sailor which Kenneth S. Goldstein is preparing for publication. The song apparently dates from the pre-industrial era when handleom weavers travelled from town to town weaving the yarn that housewives had spun. Both 'the Rose and the Crown' and 'the Diamond Twill' are traditional patterns listed in a British dictionary of the weaving trade.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 07:03 AM

jim, do you agree 3 score and ten was originaly a broadside?and it has improved after the people folk processed it, it is an example of nothing being black and white, you said
or by the efforts of people to show that untalented bad poets (hacks) were the authors of our folk songs rather than those who sang them and passed them on. abad poet was the author and it got improved. another example is gentle annie[stephen foster not badly written] but made more interesting in its australian variant that was folk processed.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 07:23 AM

The Weaver (continued from the post of Dick's that separates mine)
Now there are two questions arising in my mind from these song notes:-

1] "It has not been reported from oral tradition elsewhere, but a ten-stanza version appears in the nineteenth-century Jones-Conklin manuscript of an American sailor which Kenneth S. Goldstein is preparing for publication." Did this 'preparation' ever reach conclusion? It is not mentioned under 'Publishing and Recordings' in Goldstein's Wikipedia entry

2] The song apparently dates from the pre-industrial era when handleom weavers travelled from town to town Is there any evidence for this 'apparent date' as modern scholarship would require?

I also put an * by the title of this book. This was because I wanted to make a rather more frivilous comment -
When Canadian singers were introducing songs learned from this book, did they say "Here's a song I learned from the Canadian Book of Penguin Folk songs" just as the introduction of songs from its sister publication of English songs - the Vaughan Williams/Lloyd book - caused thousands of folk club audiences to groan?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 08:18 AM

Guest

Your family documents sound wonderful. In my own family I know that in the 19th century literacy was in the family, and one man could read but his own son could not. Crosses on certificates and job descriptions are clues. A parish clerk has to be literate. If a person could not even write their own name their skills were limited.

I'm thinking maybe blacksmiths might in some earas have been more likely to be literate, but not sure about this.

I also know from studies of the places where my ancestors lived that richer people would leave the income from specified fields towards the cost of a local school. So if you lived in that area you might get to go to the school. Date 18/19 century.

I think though that it is more complicated than this. I found it hard to grasp/accept this at first, but it seems people in some eras could read but not write.

A lot of protestant sects taught literacy as they believed reading the bible was important. Maybe they did not believe writing was so important.

I have several times come across assertions that once a society has literacy, even if not all its members have it, then that affects the whole society. Which is why I said that England has not been non-literate for a long time.

Vic Gammon referenced a book on the history of literacy once, showing we are not of course the only ones to be exercised by this question.

The best example I can think of to show that non-literate people knew stuff that literate people got from books might be stories of scripture. This example comes to me because Gerould comments that no English folk songs are about the lives, even though they must have been to the forefront of the minds of medieval people. He blames the protestants who he says must be the cause of this. And a lot of these saints' lives were written down. In the bible. As well as in stained glass windows.

In medieval times plays were performed by travelling groups, using scripts which have come down to us. Interchange between literate and non literate.

I don't think it would be right to imagine a non-literate sub-section of society completely cut off from what was in print and maintaining over centuries a tradition that arose orally and was transmitted without interaction with written materials. The 'truth' for me has to be somewhere in between.

I am sorry, Jim, but it does seem to me as if at times Lloyd did behave like a charlatan, though I might have chosen a less polite word. Maybe we all do. I'm with whoever said that so much has been shown to be false that you have to take everything with a pinch of salt.

Brian comments that he finds Lloyd's FSE entrancing. I think it is, but, at the risk of upsetting Jim again, for me, speaking as a person coming to it looking for information, I can only be 'entranced' if I turn off my critical faculties and let the rhetoric wash over me. Otherwise I get frustrated by his lack of sources for his ideas, especially when they are what you might call on the grandiose side.

Arthur includes some comments on Lloyd's prose style, and again, if reading the book for information, this can, in parts, be frustrating. There seems to be to be a lot of 'waffle'. Arthur comments, rightly, on Lloyd's idiosyncratic choice of adjectives, saying that some of them come across as dated. I agree completely with this thought. It almost comes across as 'camp' in places, in the old sense of somewhat 'theatrical' in style. There is also a lot of metaphor. A lot of it is subjective aesthetic opinion, and in my view, often highly romantic.

For me, it would be the prose style and the rhetorical features of this that produce the enchantment, rather than closely argued theories based on evidence. Lloyd presents stuff more as fact when it seems clear that it is a 'theory', and one cannot always be sure when it is the source that Lloyd may or may not be relying on as an authority who came up with the theory or Lloyd himself.

A good example might be the section on Lady Isabel and the Elfin Knight discussed above. P144. We're back to delousing. Lloyd writes 'A fold-plated sword-scabbard ornament in the Hermitage collection … shows that as long ago as 300 BC the imagination of Siberian craftsmen had been struck by precisely the same scene'. How one would know from this ornament that the woman was delousing the warrier I do not know. How we know that the craftsmen were 'imaginatively' struck as opposed to churning out something traditional automatically I do not know. And I cannot check what Lloyd says as he gives no reference other than 'Russian scholars'.

Then after what seems to me to be at best a suppositional and theoretical account, Lloyd throws in a rhetorical question ( and simultaneously begs the question) 'How many English ballads are based, in whole or in part, on such venerable and far-travelled stuff?'

'venerable' is an emotive word; the question is a rhetorical device.
I admit to chuckling when reading in Arthur that Harker described FSE as 'megalomaniac', even though this was taken somewhat out of context, because it summed up for me how Lloyd was happy to make sweeping statements, almost about the whole of human history.

Here's another bit: 'What ancient Shamanistic duel suggested the theme of the amorous metamorphosis of man and maid, wizard and witch, known in Britain through the rare ballad ...'? I can only read so much of this. This idea about a Shamanistic duel being the source of the ballad strikes me as 'Jackanory', as does much of the book. Sorry, and not denying that the book may have inspired many people, but it doesn't really do it for me.

If you publish a book like FSE then it is only to be expected that people will want to read it analytically, and so I for one don't feel any guilt about doing this, while accepting that Lloyd played an important part in a 'revival'.

The idea that he did this wholly out of altruistic motives, or purely for love of the songs, or even wholly because of instructions from Moscow (see Arthur on this, and also see Arthur on the apparent blindness of the 'Stalinists' within the revival to how Traveller culture was treated in Hungary, a country still not always highly noted for its cultural liberalism), would to me to be unconvincing. He is said in Arthur's biography to have made a deliberate decision, at a time when he had no work, to try to make a living out of folk music. He was forever 'pitching' ideas to the media, mostly but not always about folk.

I think one can take a 'critical' view of something without acknowledging its strengths as well.

I don't think anybody could step into the shoes of Lloyd and MacColl because they were products of their time. Things move on.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 08:57 AM

"I am sorry, Jim, but it does seem to me as if at times Lloyd did behave like a charlatan, "
It appears that you are not supported by either evidence notr the experiences of people who actually knew him
If you can't take our word for it there is nothing more to say on the matter
You mention the 'delousing' the illustrations of which are fairly accessible or where when they were used in an article on the ballad in a folk magazine some forty years ago

Your 'shamanistic duel' is one of the most common motifs in folk tales - and well understood by the tellers - we'v recorded half a dozen of them an I know The Stewardts of Blair had a number of them in their family repertoir

Lloyd's book wasn't intended to be an academic thesis - it was intended to inspire an up-and-coming generation of folk enthusiasts to respect and love folk songs
It seems to me that the latest trend is to prove that the songs are neither unique nor are they distinguishable from everything else a traditional singer sang
That's an awful lot of silk purses down the Swanee

It seems we've reached a stage in academia/research where we demand finite proof for things that don't suit our own views but swallow wholesale views that do - like 'the folk didn't make folk songs' for instance or 'Ewan and Bert were pop singers'
Mosyt of the information we are seeking here either never existed or remains hidden somewhere, yet to be found
In which case, we need to apply logic and common sense
If a 'peasant' can take a 'pig's ear' of a ham-fisted broadside ad turn it into a 'silk purse' of a folk song, whyy could they not have made that folk song in the first place?
Add to this that, up to the first half of the 20th century Irish rural dwellers were making folk songs in their hundreds reflecting their lives and surroundings
Were their British counterparts so untalented or unimaginative that they had to pay somebody to do the job for them?
I'd like to think not

The longer I read and argue about what people have to say on this, the more I become convinced that many of these arguments have more to do with a dying revival than they do an honest examination of a people's culture
I'd hate to think that research ended up in the same sad state as has the clubs
Then I really would have to re-learn "Where have all the Flowers Gone?"
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Man of few words
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 09:23 AM

Shirley Collins knew Lloyd, and described him using those words

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 09:33 AM

Which words - I hope not "Man of his time"?
She owes more to Bert's encouragement than most of us though he did once desib her performance as 'bucolic'
The problem with Bert and Ewan was that when people asked them for their opinions, they gave them, not realising that enquirers were seeking unqualified praise rather than constructive criticism
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Man of few words
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 09:39 AM

Charlatan was the description.The problem with Bert and Ewan was that they were charlatans and posers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 10:04 AM

On Goldstein, the way I see his early work as I do is because I read something about the history of the US record industry. Originally it produced recordings of 'art' music, with, it is said, educational aims. Finding this did not make much money, they then devised a strategy of 'niche' marketing, applying this both to the various nationalities/cultures/musics of their own immigrant population and to musical cultures abroad. The 'race' labels dedicated to certain forms of African American music being a general example of this. There was another strain of white music, eg Jimmy Rodgers. When abroad, I read, again seeking national music to record and sell, they often found music from different cultures, I think the Chinese example was given, 'noise' because they were not attuned to it. With more experience, they sometimes grew closer to appreciating/understanding it.

Goldstein recorded folk as well as blues, and if my sense of the history is right, this was at a particular when some on the left were seeing blues as 'political' as well as 'folk'. I don't know whether Goldstein was particularly political, seems unlikely if he got academic work back then. Lloyd came into contact with this as Arthur and E David Gregory tell us. But he backed a blues singer who apparently told all to the McCarthyist witchhunts, as well as Burl Ives, who did the same. Not getting at or blaming Lloyd here. Or Goldstein. His move into if not creation of the traditional 'English folk song' market seems to me a continuation of that particular commercial practice. Also part of a continuing strand in US of tracing 'their' culture (or the culture of some Americans, possibly with a rather monolithic Anglo Celtic view of what American culture was) back to these islands.

I quite like 'Where have all the flowers gone?' I appear to be beyond hope. :(   :)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Shaman
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 10:06 AM

On shamanistic duels, maybe the spirits have possessed us and unbeknown to us that is what this long and argumentative thread really is!

:) Tzu/Pseu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 10:10 AM

Shirley's book makes totally fascinating reading. You can buy All In The Downs from the publisher here though there are probably cheaper places on the internet if you don't mind patronising multinationals that are renowned for exploiting their workforce.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 10:26 AM

'Charlatan' is clearly unfair. There's a huge amount of perfectly good information in Lloyd's FSE, and if it's not all footnoted that's because it's a general interest book, not an academic thesis. Personally I'm happy that I first read it at a formative age and was able to be excited by Lloyd's prose. Plenty of time to interrogate the detail later.

I think Jim might be right about babies and bathwater.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Tom Turner
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 10:30 AM

Where have all the Flowers Gone?" A well written song.
Describing Collins as Bucolic is a put down, would he have described Harry Cox as Bucolic, Unlikely because he was a revered Traditional singer. Double Standards again, Bucolic is an accurate description for Harry Cox.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 10:44 AM

Where have all... wasn't meant as a put down of the song - I quite like it
It was a plaintive cry asking where our love of folk songs have gone
I once wrote a notorious article asking "where have all our folk songs gone" - I'm sure Brian will remember it
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 11:18 AM

"Describing Collins as Bucolic is a put down,"
I think you're right but I don't believe it was aimed at Shirley specifically, rather to the imitators who pranced around the stage with floral dresses singing the the dreaded head-voice
I don't know what she is doing now other than she seems to be prominent in a EFDSS which seems to have lost the folk-plot

"But he backed a blues singer who apparently told all to the McCarthyist witch hunts"
If you mean Josh White, I think this is true to an extent, but a little misrepresentation of the real situation
I had the opportunity of discussing this with Goldseing when Bob Thomson took me to meet him in London and I have to admit his arguments made sense.
Goldstein was a ballad pioneer - his Riverside and other labels gave us access to some of the finest British and American traditional music
I did resnt his buying up some very rare books from British bookshops for his Singing Tree Press

I was delighted to here of an incident in a bookshop in Carlisle when he found himself in an Aladdin's cave of books son song, music, lore and tales.
He piled up a few doxen of them, plonked them on the counter and asked the propriorter if he gave discount for Trade
The proprietor replied, "We don't sell to trade", swept them off the counter and placed them back on the shelves

"The problem with Bert and Ewan was that they were charlatans and posers."
Now we are getting down to serious grave-dancing - about time we got to what is actually being said
Sorry - this gets more distasteful by the minute
If only you people had provided a workable alternative - all I can see is a pile of researchers and singers corpses amid the ruins of a failed revival - and "folk songs that ain't got nowt to do with the ones I know
How utterly depressing
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 11:37 AM

Pseudonymous -
On Goldstein, the way I see his early work as I do is because I read something about the history of the US record industry.

Unusually for you, I find this post somewhat confused. You talk about the early ethnically specialised and 'Race' records as though he was part of this. The real boom era of these labels OKeh, Victor, Brunswick etc. was roughly the decade from 1923, For the first time the urban Black communites of large American cities had some disposable income and the various immigrant groups - Polish, Jewish, Irish, Italian etc. were establishing themselves. These companies nearly all wanted their culture represented on 78s and these smallish independent labels provided it. And thank goodness that they did! If I look at my record collection, I find very many blues, early jazz, Old Time, Irish, Klezmer and other genres compilations from that era. Many were just single run pressings but others by the likes of Louis Armstrong and Johnny Dodds remained in the various catalogues for years. They nearly collapsed in the long depression of the 1930s.
By the time that Goldstein became involved as record producer in the 1950s, the record industry was a totally different place dominated by the big corporations like RCA each with their own stable of top selling stars. To become involved in recording minority folk music and blues became almost a political statement in itself. The two of his productions that have been mentioned recently in this thread were unlikely to make a pile of money for anybody.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,EFDSS Member
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 12:01 PM

EFDSS Lost the plot? how have they lost it?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 12:57 PM

"EFDSS Lost the plot? how have they lost it?"
Sorry member
If you don't know I don't know I can tell you
There has always been an imbalance between Dance and song - the latter seems to have disappeared from the agenda complete apart from a choir (just checked)
The Library never had the space to cater for the books it held thirty years ago when I was actively working to support it - now I know it has been turning down major collections because of lack of space
The listening facilities always poor and uncomfortable - are now non -existent
The website is poor
I suppose the Cellar Club is still in existence - last time we were there it was full of 'singers' reading their songs from I-phones   
I worked wit Malcolm for a while helping to produce cassette albums of field recordings - half a dozen great albums -
The project was abandoned and all the albums lost
Is there a shop - there wasn't lat time I was there?
Does EFDSS promote anything but dancing?
What exactly is it doing to promote folk song, music and dance proper?
What is it doing to promote song and music outside London?
How much of their holdings have gone on line?

The ray of hope was when the plan was mooted to sell The House and move into somewhere more user-friendly - kicked to death by neanderthals

Apart from that, I can't think of anything!!
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 03:20 PM

The ray of hope was when the plan was mooted to sell The House and move into somewhere more user-friendly.
Yes,Jim.
"Describing Collins as Bucolic is a put down,"
I think you're right but I don't believe it was aimed at Shirley specifically"
of course it was, but no worse than the Twit who called MacColl a poser.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 03:22 PM

Re Vic's posting at 11.37

He is exactly right Pseudo doesn't seem to be aware of the recording business in the States. As Vic points out it wasn't until the fifties or so that Ken was involved and it is to him and others like him that we owe a vote of thanks.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 03:27 PM

Thread drift apology!

To some extend I agree with Jim about EFDSS. For quite a while it has been repeatdely re-inventing itself, most recently focussing on "folk arts", which apparently include writing and performing new "folk songs".

However it has also enhanced the Library and it has made a vast amount of material available online including the Carpenter stuff.

And I must disagree with Jim on this
> The ray of hope was when the plan was mooted to sell The House and move into somewhere more user-friendly - kicked to death by neanderthals

If those who killed the plan were "neanderthals" that includes me casting my vote!

The plan to sell Cecil Sharp House and use the cash to set up a new EFDSS HQ somewhere else would have made sense if that new HQ would have offered better facilities. But the intention seemed to be for it to accommodate just the offices and the Library: nothing else. No places where people could sing, dance or play music. That was why the plan was killed.

Back on topic (or closer anyway). After the discussion of The Coal Owner and the Pitman's Wife I'm still unclear how much of the song as printed in FSE was as originally written and how much, if at all, Bert doctored it besides (quite reasonably) putting together words from one source and tune from another. (And, having consulted my copy, I'm surprised to note that there are two more verses at the end than I have ever heard sung. Does anyone sing those two?)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 03:45 PM

"online including the Carpenter stuff"
The Carpenter stuff - I'll grant you, but how long has that taken ?
I found out about the collection in 1960 from Bob Thomson, I persuaded the librarian to buy it
They had reel-to-reel recordings and poor microfiche texts that were virtually unreadable for about twenty odd years before the moved to make it generally available.
That is no way to serve our folk traditions

Beyond that, what is there?
I assume ther is still no shop and the moving the Library upstairs was a no-no because the floor wasn't safe
Moving it into the basement was out of the question as that would lose them precious dancing space
The building is not a suitable place to research yet was hung onto in memory of 'Dear Cecil' - that was the argument put forwards at the time
THe hall is too big for dancing and the small downstairs hall is too small to be taken seriously
Renting ouside venues would have solved many of the problemas and it would have inroduced the EFDSS to the outside world (though I think some of them would have crumbled to dust in the sunlight
If the building is treated as C# House was it becomes a shrine

Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 06:31 PM

Can someone clarify the above two posts?

Richard states "However it has also enhanced the Library and it has made a vast amount of material available online including the Carpenter stuff.".

Jim seems to imply that the library is no longer accessible.

Who is correct

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 06:51 PM

The library has just undergone a major refurbishment and is, to the best of my knowledge, fully open.

As for Carpenter, it was a mammoth task to sort through and catalogue what I understand was a huge and disorganised collection, and those who worked on it, and did the necessary tech stuff to get it all online, deserve a big vote of thanks.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 08:12 PM

Jim is wrong, what is new

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 08:23 PM

"Jim seems to imply that the library is no longer accessible."
No I am not - I an sying it was never practically usable in the past (not foor more than a couple of people) and, unless space has been freed, thirty years ago books books were being stored in cupboards
I know of one major collection of books and broadsides that was refused because there was no space to accommodate it
Can I just say that, as an electrician, I was contracted by Nibs Mathews to carry our a fairly large amount of electrical work in The House and am fully aware of the wasted and unused space, the potentially very usable rooms that were neglected
The listening facilities were a joke - they were uncomfortable, inadequate and unprotected from theft because there was nobody to supervise their use
Up to the time I (voluntarily) transferred the BBC collection onto tape, they were held on fragile acetate discs - if you wanted to use them, you were handed tham and pointed to a deck - hence the appalling state of the discs containing our folk heritage.

I realise much of this is down to lack of funding, but as few folkies took our music seriously, you could hardly expect the Arts Council to do so.

I have helped run clubs where, if the club room needed cleaning up to make it hospitable for club nights, volunteers would be called for (and got willingly)

As fior the Carpenter Collection - as an instigator of obtaining the collection, I was able to pull a few strings and get a fair number of the microfiche songs poorly photocopied
That was pre-computer days so I bought some spring grip golders and stuck what I had on a shelf so I could use them without going blind
Since then, I have digitised them - it took a long time due to the state of the Xerox copies
It took me a few months
I am over the moon that, after a little over 40 years of having obtained them they are now accessible

I have every respect for the team, but as people seem to be prepared to believe that folk songs are not particularly special and are little different than the pop songs churned out by the music industry, I hear the sound of swinging stable doors and bolting horses.
It seems to me that all this would have been possible decades ago if the will had been there

We once booked Irish whistle player, Micho Russell to play at our club only to find that a week before he was due to go on we lost our premises
We were then asked to run a singing night with our guest in the cellar of C # House on the night of the AGM
We wre in the basement singing and playing our Tradition stuff, while our officers and their guests where swinging away in the big hall in their bow ties and long frocks (don't think HRH Maggie was there that night)
During their interval, they sent down for us to send up cabaret to entertain them during their caviar and champers - out of divilment we sent up Micho in his gansey and cloth cap.
He held is own - as we knew he was well able to, the ladies and gents upstairs kepr peering out of the window looking for the hovering space-ship
I remember a science fiction film in my youth entitled, 'When Worlds Collide' - that was the night it happened
It was then I realised that EFDSS was run by people who neither knew or cared very much about our music
If things hadn't been this way, Pat and I wouldn't have had to go to Limerick Uni to seek a home for our archive (we know of archives similar to ours who haven't bees as lucky as we have been
A gang of us actually approached the N.S.A. to see if we couldn't set up an archive to store our heritage somewhere were it would be guaranteed a future - nothing happened until the B L moved to Euston Road

I'm not blowing trumpets here - we failed
I'm just trying to show I'm not throwing stones from an armchair
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 28 Jul 18 - 03:17 AM

Jim,

EFDSS has changed enormously since you last had anything to do with it, not least in the matter of vastly improved funding. The Dance faction lost control of the reins many years ago. The Library is thriving under the stewardship of Laura Smyth and her team, and the work that has been done to get their archive material online is absolutely priceless. The Society promotes regular music events in the (refurbished) hall, and Sharp's Folk Club still runs in the cellar, often with a number of young singers in attendance. They are also involved with all kinds of other projects, some of which I'm more enthusiastic about than others.

You should pay the library a call next time you're in London!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 28 Jul 18 - 03:33 AM

No reason to disbelieve Jim's account of an evening at C# House; but EFDSS has changed since those days, and changed and changed again. Not all the changes have been for the better (depending on one's point of view and tastes) and like any organisation it is still far from perfect. But overall it does much more for folkies in general than it did of old, giving similar weight to dance, song and music.

Besides participatory events and concerts it also runs seminars and conferences on various subjects. Bob Askew hosts occasional "ballad chats" where we listen to one or two version of a ballad, sung by one or other of us and/or recordings of transitional or revival singers, and then discuss the ballad, somewhat as we do on here but in real time face to face.

One development of which some of us would approve, but Jim presumably would not, has been several courses about folk song by Steve Roud.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Jul 18 - 03:50 AM

but as few folkies took our music seriously" yet,more insults

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Jul 18 - 04:17 AM

"Jim presumably would not, has been several courses about folk song by Steve Roud."
I would be first in the queue Richard - I hope someone is there to fill in for me
I'm delighted that things are changing - not before time (how long has the society been in existence?)
From what I have seen I am left with the feeling of 'dumbing down, but I may be wrong - (I hope I am)
It really isn't that long since I was there and I am in touch with people who are, so I'm not entirely out of the picture - my last visit still left me with that 'mausoleum' feeling
The last time I visited the Club will be just that - the last time
Am I wrong about the listening facilities - I hope I am
The combination of a large collection of books and a sound library to back them up is an essential pert of research - difficult enough when you don't live in London
It cost us a fortune and took half a century to make research possible at home

Whatever is happening - I certainly hope it is not a case of 'too little - too late' and I hope the new incumbents can tell the difference between Van Diemans Land' and 'When Father Papered the Parlour'
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Jul 18 - 04:52 AM

The last time I visited the Club will be just that - the last time"
Jim, I would be interested to know your opinions of the club. if you want to PM me.
It is some years since i was there, I was the booked guest performer, I was singing a song when a resident thought it was appropriate to join me, unfortunately his concertina arrangement and mine were not compatible, it was the sort of thing that should never ever happen in a well run club, a guest performer is booked to be just that , if he wants anyone to join him ,that should be his decision, the club owed me an apology which of course i have not had

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Jul 18 - 06:28 AM

Can I make it clear that my criticisms of the EFDSS do not include the Library and its staff, who I have always had th greatest respect for - my relationship with them all was always a warm friendly one
The first qualified Librarian, Barbara Newlyn, turned the Library around and had 'them upstairs' quaking in their bath-chairs - she brought a professionalism to the job
The two ladies that followed, Theresa Thom and (?) were not as fiery, but they too up what Barbara had created with skill and friendlines
Malcolm Taylor was a dream and a good friend who quietly negotiated the bureaucracy and got the job done - the Library Lectures and the Cassette series remain medals on his chest
The problem was they were all swimming against a stream of ignorance, indifference and sometimes antipathy   
I have little doubt that the present Librarian is just as dedicated as these unwritten heroes.

Dick
I haven't been to 'Sharps' for several years
My described experiences are based on two particularly bad nights and a feeling that things weren't going to improve - that feeling was the cause of my cutting many clubs out of my diary - eventually it drove me and many thousands of others out of the fok scene altogether
You want a view of how it is now, ask somebody who knows - I'm certainly not going to title-tattle behind anybody's back
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Jul 18 - 09:06 AM

hat feeling was the cause of my cutting many clubs out of my diary - eventually it drove me and many thousands of others out of the fok scene altogether" any evidence that what you drove you out affected thousands of others

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Jul 18 - 09:52 AM

Yes

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Jul 18 - 11:36 AM

but of course you are unable to show us.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Jul 18 - 11:47 AM

"but of course you are unable to show us."
I have, a dozen times Dick
There was long correspondence in the folk press at the time - then there was a rapid decline in the number of clubs - then the folk shops and labels disappeared - then the folk press itself dwindled down to half nothing
Finally the clubs began to bomb

I believe this was down to two things
THose going out to look for folk song at the clubs were coming away from many without hearing a folk song - their choice of what they wanted to hear had been removed
THere is a certain stupidity in the assumption that people who like The Rambling Blade and Banks of the Nile would be happy to sit through poor versions of Buddy Holly songs

THe second reason - in my opinion, was that the standers of performance bombed; the crib sheets that began to suggest that 'singers' were not even bothering to learn the songs - now we have them being read fom obile phones and I-pads
What do you suggest happened?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Jul 18 - 01:59 PM

I talk from my experience and i visit the uk more frequently than you, the crib sheets occur much more frequently in non guest folk clubs singaround type clubs, there are fewer guest booking clubs so the standard has dropped partly because of that, however in the guest booking clubs the standard [in my experience] is as high.
the availabilty of venues is another problem the singing of buddy holly songs was started by a perfprmer called AndyCaven, in 1980, 38 years ago.
the club he is resident of, Colchester, do book trad artists but ,i think your crticism although over exaggerrated has some basis in truth. I know that I do not want to go and listen to an evening of buddy holly songs

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 29 Jul 18 - 06:40 AM

Vic

I don't think I am confused, though my post might have been.

I am not saying that the 'niche' marketing was a necessarily a bad thing, and maybe it did preserve stuff that might otherwise be lost, just that it was something that continued.

Okeh was a subsidiary of Columbia by 1926, and prior to that was part of another company. Columbia was a 'big' firm. And for me, the fact that they marketing certain music as 'race' music was political, as I am sure you will agree, reflecting political realities of the time, including Jim Crow segregation, but not necessarily the way that American music actually was at the time or the way it developed. The marketing, I believe, helped to form the way that people thought about musical genres.

Companies had specific 'labels' marketing at niches and still did into my youth, when you associated certain sorts of music with certain labels. In the US they even had different 'charts' for different categories of music, some 'racially' based until recently and might still do.

There is a book that goes into this in some detail; you might enjoy it: https://www.dukeupress.edu/Segregating-Sound/

Hope that link works. It is a thought provoking book, and very good on early US folklorists and the racialist thinking behind their work which I referred to earlier.

And the folklore revival was a specific 'niche' which Goldstein as far as I can see both helped to create and then fed the demand for. So I think it is fair to see Goldstein's business practices (and he had two degrees in business) as a continuation of a strategy initially developed earlier in the century.

And in so far as Goldstein 'produced' records featuring Bert and MacCall then these two latter were making a living in part out of participating in what was, to use jargon, a capitalist enterprise, whatever their political motivation for doing this was.

And this, quoted above, sounds like marketing spiel to me:

Thanks to the encouragement of many small successes, Kenneth Goldstein and Riverside have recently issued the boldest single venture yet in their eight double-sided LP set of Child ballads, sung unaccompanied by Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd. It is not, I think, an exaggeration to declare that this is the most important event in the field since the publication of Sharp and Karpeles’ Southern Appalachian collection.The length of many of these versions as sung by MacColl and Lloyd is a new experience, and as such it prompts reconsideration of ballad-form by bringing into sharp focus questions hitherto unasked or but dimly perceived."
Bertrand Harrison Bronson 1957

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 29 Jul 18 - 12:08 PM

Pseudonymous recommended to me:-
There is a book that goes into this in some detail; you might enjoy it: https://www.dukeupress.edu/Segregating-Sound/
Thanks for that. I may well try to get my hands on a copy of that though I did read the description on that website that includes:-

Focusing on the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, Miller chronicles how southern music—a fluid complex of sounds and styles in practice—was reduced to a series of distinct genres linked to particular racial and ethnic identities.

Now, this era in the early days of jazz and jazz-blues is one that I have been interested in (obsessed by?) since I was a schoolboy and the whole area of the ethnicity and racism in all aspects of commercial recordings is an area that I do know a great deal about so I feel that my reading time ought to be devoted to areas than I feel I do not know enough about.

Here is another quote from that post:-
I am not saying that the 'niche' marketing was a necessarily a bad thing, and maybe it did preserve stuff that might otherwise be lost, just that it was something that continued.
Well, if you are talking about Soul music, Reggae, South African Township, the vast, growing and fascinating number of Manding jali recordings (amongst other genres) well. yes, specialist labels continue, but there is certainly a far higher proportion of entrepreneurs, recording engineers and other record label staff that come from the ethnic groups concerned than there were in the 1920s-ish era. The most interesting part of that quotation to me is it did preserve stuff that might otherwise be lost. You are right! There are numerous examples of exploitation, missing royalties, mistreating of source singers and musicians on both sides of the Atlantic. Just mention the name of Peter Kennedy on Mudcat and see the explosion that you get! However, we need to be eternally grateful for the recorded lagacy that such offenders have left behind. It is a difficult dilemma.

Another quotation from that post that I would like to respond to is this one.
And the folklore revival was a specific 'niche' which Goldstein as far as I can see both helped to create and then fed the demand for. So I think it is fair to see Goldstein's business practices (and he had two degrees in business) as a continuation of a strategy initially developed earlier in the century.
The companies and record labels that Goldstein was producing his albums included Stinson, Folkways, Prestige and Riverside Records. His 500+ albums mainly in what might broadly (without precise definition!) be called 'Folk' and they included a wide range of ethnicity of performers. If you investigate the ethos of all those American labels in this area of music from the late 1950s onwards, you will find a close association with campaigns against segregation and in favour of racial equality.
Yes, they were commercial enterprises and yes, as you have mentioned more than once, Goldstein had degrees in and an acumen for Business. That does not in itself put him in the wrong. I have always regarded Goldstein as one of the better guys in the murky music business unless you, or anyone else, is able to point out any exploitative element in his methods. If there are, I might have to change my opinion.
There is more in what you write about the business degrees than in the vast contribution that he made. He did drift between academia and music industry, but this was a very common experience in America in the second part of the 20th century.
I'll finish this overlong post with a reference one of his great achievements, the 1963 publication of Folk Song Of The North East by Gavin Greig. Goldstein worked on this with Arthur Argo, Greig's grandson. This main element of this work is the complete texts of the weekly articles contributed to the Buchan Observer of Peterhead between Dec. 1907 and June 1911. This is one of the richest publications for folk song texts from a part of Britain that was one of the strongest surviving traditions at the time. Goldstein's business acumen must have failed him because this priceless outstanding book did not sell well. What did Goldstein do with the excess copies? He shipped them over to Scotland for the TMSA to distribute and sell at a very much reduced price. That is where my copy came from. I would have to nominate it as being one of the books that has enriched my life.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 29 Jul 18 - 06:00 PM

Vic

Thanks for your thoughtful response; much to ponder here. The amazing thing about Mudcat is how much you can learn here.

I would not want to labour my point about Goldstein, or to deny he did work that had uses beyond the commercial, or to say bad things about him that he did not merit.

Thanks again.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 30 Jul 18 - 06:19 AM

Dave Arthur raise some interesting thoughts about Bert Lloyd", yoUr quote from BERT SONG THREAD guest Pseudonymouse you are remrkably well informed for a newbie, Do you know Dave personally

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 30 Jul 18 - 07:23 AM

Funnily enough, Dave Arthur is (probably) coming round to our house next week. I could put any specific questions to him.

Dave's book has been referred to several times in this thread without the details ever being mentioned, so here they are:-
Bert: the Life and Time of A.L.LLOYD (2102) Pluto Press ISBN 978-0-7453-3252-9
I have been a friend of Dave's since the 1960s and I know that the gestation period of this book must be the longest one on record. He has always been a very busy man who takes on all sorts of projects and I would say that his main motivation has been deadlines whether it was writing scripts for Roland Rat the TV-AM puppet show or the long years transforming and editing English Dance & Song.
This meant that his own projects were often put on the back burner. I would venture to suggest that one of Dave's problems - and I would say the same about Reg Hall - is that he does not know the point where research finishes and the writing process should begin.... but Dave did eventually complete the book and a publisher was found. There was a point where the publisher got cold feet and wanted to withdraw and there was a campaign by supporters of the project to inundate the publishers with assurances about how important this book was.
Looking at the book's dust cover, I see the EFDSS linked swords symbol which reminds me that I did hear that the quiet financial support from that organisation - much maligned in this thread - was the tipping point that ensured publication.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: KarenH
Date: 30 Jul 18 - 08:34 AM

I see that Goldstein and Lloyd are mentioned here.

In 1956 Goldstein released a Lloyd version of 'The Unfortunate Rake', a version I believe to have been one of Lloyd's tinkered versions. This was on the Folkways label.

Goldstein was submitting articles to the folkloric press as early as 1959, because in that year he published a piece on a group of songs which had come to be referred to as 'The Unfortunate Rake'. I listed his sources on the thread headed H M Belden Ballads and Songs.

Some of these are now to some degree discredited, eg Lomax on Cowboy songs. On the other thread, it was pointed out that the first words of this song cannot be checked from the recording of Ironhead as they are missing. Lomax admitted to tinkering with his cowboy songs.


Goldstein did not go back to the early sources referred to in the articles he drew upon, and repeated a false assertion that a version of the song had been published in Dublin in 1790. He had also referred to some of the early English Folk Song Society journals. So Goldstein had done some book research on the song, but seems at this time to have had no training in folklore or music or history or any other relevant discipline.

In 1960 Goldstein released an LP called "The Unfortunate Rake", also with Lloyd's version on. That LP referred to Lloyd's version as a 19th century broadside text, which it was not. It also referred to an article by Lloyd in the list of 'references'. The Lloyd article had been published in an English magazine called 'Sing', and was a rehash of an earlier Lloyd article on the same topic. This article was long on conjecture and short on information, omitting reference to what is now the earliest known version of the song, (which was not set in any sort of hospital), and setting out a trajectory for the history and travels of song which appears to be largely conjectural. However Goldstein was relatively 'open' in saying that these link were in his opinion not coincidental.


I assume that it was Lloyd himself who supplied Goldstein with his article, and since Goldstein cited it in the liner notes, it would appear that Goldstein never thought to question Lloyd's credentials or to request evidence that the lyrics sung by Lloyd were genuinely those of a 19th century broadside. Not only were they not the words of a 19th century broadside there is no direct evidence that the words St James Hospital were ever sung in 19th century England.

Bizarrely the liner notes comment on St James' Palace which has little to do with anything, and The Mall, which though it does permit some digs at George III and his court at St James, including an assertion to the effect that 'houses of amusement abounded' in it that appears to be completely false .

The notes assert that various songs have 'borrowed' the funeral request from The Rake, but this seems to be a case of opinion presented as fact. These included 'In Newry Town' and 'The Tarpaulin Jacket'.

Should Goldstein have known that Lloyd's version wasn't a 19th century broadside? Neither Lloyd not Goldstein emerge well from this.

If we are asked to read these flawed liner notes as a work of a folkloric expert, questions have to be asked about the quality of folkloric 'expertise'.

Moreover, the liner notes suggest that the LP and the somewhat 'shoddy' notes could be used in educational settings, and recommend the works of a number of record labels with which Goldstein was involved for that purpose.

Goldstein invites the reader to follow up the references listed. I did precisely this and came to the conclusion that the liner notes are flawed and overstate what is 'known' about the song.

However, presumably on the basis that Goldstein later achieved academic qualifications, and on the basis of a related topic, song collection, his word on this song and its history and relationship to other songs seems to be taken as gospel and the liner notes are quoted word for word as authorititive sources of information on it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 30 Jul 18 - 10:24 AM

A very interesting post by KarenH above
The section on Unfortunate Rake / St. James Hospital needs to be read in conjunction with the information given on the same group of songs on the Mainly Norfolk website which sometimes seems to agree with what Karen says and in other places contradict the statements.
I would not like to be the person to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jul 18 - 11:14 AM

'The plan to sell Cecil Sharp House and use the cash to set up a new EFDSS HQ somewhere else would have made sense if that new HQ would have offered better facilities.'(Richard Mellish 27 July). Sorry, I've only just noticed this. The reason (a far more pressing reason) people like me voted against - I mean railed against - the idea of selling the House was that most of the money would have been used to get the Society out of its then serious financial difficulties. Selling the Society's biggest capital asset, a freehold in one of the most expensive parts of the capital,in order to solve a problem of bad management,would have been crazy, a self-inflicted wound from which the Society would never have survived and would not have deserved to survive.

Te fact that we have a strong, successful Society today, able to take part in arguments about what more it could be doing, what it could be doing better and where, geographically, it should be doing it, is down to the fact that we decided in the bad years, not to commit suicide.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 30 Jul 18 - 11:54 AM

Oh dear! The Guest submission of 11.14 was me, cookieless. Richard's memory of the proposed sale of the House, seem to differ from mine, but as a member for the last 60-odd years, I recall this as a terrible time - the nearest the Society approached to complete dissolution.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 30 Jul 18 - 12:22 PM

Re my post at 30 Jul 18 - 07:23 AM - I said that Dave Arthur took years to prepare the book but it was published in 2012 and not, as I suggested above, 2102.
I would hate it for anyone to be placing long-term pre-publication orders!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Jul 18 - 02:05 PM

2 excellent posts there from Karen and Billy.

You really have 2 choices here: Accept what you read, or go out and do the research yourself. I know which I prefer.

Once people like Lloyd, Goldstein, Lomax have been found out, you cannot rely in a scholarly way on anything they have written without at least going back and checking sources.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Jul 18 - 06:30 PM

Here's another one for discussion. No need for any insults please! Sharp wrote 'Some Conclusions' based on his collecting experiences. He published many anthologies BUT has anyone seen ANY evidence that would suggest that he was a folksong scholar regarding their history and texts? Yes, he knew something about the tunes which could be considered his expertise. His comments in the Journals are largely confined to the music.

Kidson was something of a self-taught music historian and Baring Gould did a lot of research into the history of some songs, but the rest were solely collectors/composers and there is little evidence that they knew anything of the history of the material they were collecting. I would also include Greig and Duncan in this. Annie Gilchrist did a lot of research into the history but she came along later. I'm pretty sure Maud Karpeles was quite knowledgeable but haven't seen a lot of evidence even there.

This is not a criticism of any of them, just observations/queries/opinions.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: KarenH
Date: 31 Jul 18 - 03:40 AM

Vic

The Mainly Norfolk website was one of the first places I looked for info on 'The Unfortunate Rake'. It quotes Lloyd as saying on another LP that the the tune was collected in Cork. The tune was collected in Cork, and so was a fragment which was interpreted as being a version of the ending of the song. Where Goldstein went wrong was in asserting in the liner notes 'Dublin' instead of Cork. The date 1790 is right. I went right back to the original publication of the fragment by PW Joyce to check this.

The mainly Nrfolk web site also points up mistakes in what Goldstein says about the version sung by MacColl.

Happy to learn where you think I differ from that web site. As it stands I cannot look at this because I don't know where you mean. ANd I honesty would want to change my ideas if they were shown to be wrong. I am not denying that this song was taken up and transformed, becoming something of a favourite with revivalists, perhaps because its taboo content appealed to their sense of how 'repressed' society was over some subjects.

The Mainly Norfolk web site gives two Lloyd versions, one called 'St James Hospital'. Both in my view are Lloyd tinkerings. It was originally a 'homiletic' ballad with a sad ending: Lloyd makes the character more unrepentant, wanting to go out with a bang. He misses out a self-critical repentant verse in all of the 19th century broadsides.

The earliest known version was set in Covent Garden. It is a broadside. I learned this from Bishop and Roud's book of English Folk Songs. Nobody up to and including Lloyd seems to have known this. There were several more or less identical 19th century broadsides, all called The Unfortunate Lad, none set in St James, and one having a blank instead of a place name.

Do let me know where you think I contradict Mainly Norfolk.

I have read what you say about Goldstein above: I am sure he made a positive contribution to a revival of interest, just that on this one piece he seems not to have been quite thorough enough in terms of historical accuracy and in terms of the authenticity of what he plainly presents as a genuine 19th century broadside version. None of the sources cited by Goldstein claims to have seen a 19th century version featuring the words 'St James' anything. I think Lloyd realised this himself, so he came up with one.

Karen

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 31 Jul 18 - 04:17 AM

Steve's question is a good one. I just have one book by Karpeles, and I wouldn't say off the top of my head that she tried much to go back far.

I haven't read Some Conclusions, only FSE, and the one song I looked at in detail was Lady Isabel, where Lloyd was trying to argue that there were pictures of somebody delousing somebody on sword-scabbard ornaments in Leningrad. It isn't clear whether this is original research on Lloyd's part, or whether he has taken this from a Russian Language piece he cites as a reference. I doubt he could read Russian, though it is claimed in Arthur that he could read it. Lloyd then makes vague claims about shamanistic duels. I looked up shamanistic in wiki and decided this word was far too vague to be useful, as well as questioning how reasonable it was to describe the stuff in the song as looking 'shamanistic'. And because I cannot read Russian I cannot check what Lloyd says; I just find the whole sweep of the argument rather 'grandiose' and 'romantic' and not very convincing.

But the question that passage and Steve's email raises for me is one about 'methodology' ie knowledge about how to do this tracing. What criteria are to be used in deciding that two songs with some similarities, and in some cases similarities as small as a 'motif' are actually linked 'genealogically', as opposed to having similarities because they are both about human relationships, or whatever. Nowadays if you do a thesis you are supposed to start off as often as not with a section about your methodology, so that readers can see where you are coming from (and I guess to impress your supervisors with your intelligence, and to show you are not just setting down subjective impressionistic ideas). In some cases a relationship seems clear, in others (eg sword scabbard ornaments) it might seem less so.

The next thing would be to present thoughts about origins as what for me they have to be, theories, arrived at via the application of a methodology, whether or not this methodology has or has not been clearly thought through and articulated.


just putting out ideas for consideration.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 31 Jul 18 - 10:05 AM

Hi Tzu
If I read you correctly the methodology you describe, as far as I know, has not yet been proposed by anyone academic. Remember our subject here suffers from a distinct lack of academic interest. The last serious academic treatise on this was carried out more than a century ago by Professor Child. Even that dealt with a very small corpus of ballads and he struggled to come to any sort of concensus/conclusions generally; although we all accept that by and large his tracings of the histories of the individual ballads was exemplary.

Forming the Roud Index has presented problems in this area. Steve still hasn't got to grips with related ballads and hybrids yet. I have made some inroads on this by sorting out the many 'Died for Love' family ballads and allocating new numbers based on this, but then Richie comes along with one of his detailed studies and tells me that even one of these oecotypes should actually be split into 2 separate ballads needing a new number for one of them. New evidence is appearing all the time as more and more collections come online.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 31 Jul 18 - 01:06 PM

Sharp wrote 'Some Conclusions' based on his collecting experiences. He published many anthologies BUT has anyone seen ANY evidence that would suggest that he was a folksong scholar regarding their history and texts?

Do we know, for instance, how big a collection of broadsides he had in his possession (which we do in the case of Baring-Gould)?

I'm not quite sure what you're looking for here, Steve, but if it's any help I found the following in Sharp's correspondence from North America:

“They ][mountain people] are wonderful singers and fond of singing and of their own songs and sing far fewer of the 19th century broadside versions of the words than do the English peasants.”

To a 'Miss Smyth' regarding claims that most folk songs had originated in Ireland:
"Stopford Brooke says that the English language was not used for particular purposes in Ireland prior to 1790. All of the Irish folk songs to English words are, therefore, subsequent to that date. As a matter of fact, what really happened was that the Irish ballad-printers copied freely from the ballad-broadsheets issued by Pitts, Evans, Such, Catnach and other English printers. I have a very fine collection of Irish broad-sides, which make this quite clear."

And this to his wife:
“By the way when you get back home and you have some time to spare will you copy out the words of my broadside called ‘Nancy of Yarmouth’. It is in my very first vol. of broadsides – the one you indexed for me… I wanted to compare it with certain songs I am getting here.”

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 31 Jul 18 - 02:48 PM

Sharp's broadside collection is on the Full English. It wasn't massive and was largely the common mid-19thc stuff. Baring Gould's knowledge and collection were far superior. He was very wrong about the Irish broadsides. By the late 18th century printers like Goggin in Limerick were printing a mixture of native Irish, Irish-English ballads and some derived from the pleasure gardens, including a fair amount of macaronic material. In the north there were printers printing Irish songs like Willy Leonard, Polly Vaughan, Fanny Blair, Streams of Nantsian which came across to England via Liverpool. Baring Gould also spent a lot of time in The BL looking at broadsides from 16th to 19th centuries. It would be far fairer to say there was an exchange of ballads between the 2 countries (actually one country at the time)

All those quotes show is that he knew very little compared with Baring Gould, who would have been well aware of the earlier Irish ballads.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 31 Jul 18 - 03:37 PM

Tzu
If you haven't already read them, I can strongly recommend you read through Child's headnotes, skimming over the foreign analogues, but noting their existence. If you want to do this I can present you with some opinions based on my own experiences and more recent approaches. If the musical side appeals to you more, then Bronson is obviously the best possible start.

If Child's headnotes are the way forward then I recommend you start with his introduction and Dover Vol 5, p182, in the headnotes to Young Ronald. Perhaps his most telling statement.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,KarenH
Date: 01 Aug 18 - 05:31 AM

I once read that Cork was a centre for broadside ballad production at a time when copyright laws were a problem in England, and Cork produced what you might call 'pirate' broadsides for export - to the colonies I think - because the copyright laws did not apply there, the laws being different in Cork. But I cannot now find the source or remember the date. It stuck in my mind because of the suggested Unfortunate Lad connection.

Can anyone help about this?

NB This thread seems to have drifted so far that this post won't do much more damage on the relevance front.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 01 Aug 18 - 06:48 AM

Steve

Thanks for your thoughts.

The bit where Child says he is following Grundtwig's advice not to leave out anything if there is a remote possibility it might contain relics of something better? But he says he has ignored this in more cases than he has followed it. Where he suppresses his 'disgust'?

He gives several reasons for rejecting it as 'genuine' but you have to guess what the underlying criteria are. He dislikes the hat lifting, perhaps because he regards this as a sign of relative modernity. He doesn't like the 'mint in the meadows', but I'm not sure why. It seems an unusual detail. Maybe he dislikes the omission of the definite article?

The song reads 'oddly' to me: the bit about the boy being still at school doesn't ring true. Especially if, as Child said, he regarded the ballads as being from pre-literate times!

But it doesn't really help with what I was thinking about, which was not so much whether a song was originally old or not, but how people concluded that different songs were in some sense 'the same'.

Child I know at one point in an encyclopaedia article said that songs were written by higher classes in a complex pre-literate but not 'primitive' society and got ruined when the lower classes got their hands on them. He seems to think this might be an example. He doesn't seem to have subscribed to a 'folk process' idea. Or have I got this wrong?

I don't find his introduction much help, except that he was trying to collect and focus on manuscripts, but I note the reference to the 'mother island'; this suggests to me a relatively narrow view of who Americans are. It would appear to exclude the Irish for example. (Not sure where the Welsh fit into this!) Was Child what they sometimes call a 'nativist', I wonder? Not trying to undermine his achievements, however.

This is probably a topic where it would take even more years than usual to get to grips.

I think Roud comments that there is already an 'industry' of Child scholarship!

Also, if the academics did start to debate it, then, without meaning any disrespect to academics, I can see that this might become an 'industry' in itself with different ideas and ideologies tangled up in things. So just getting to a shared methodology might not be practicable.

I can imagine that 'hybrids' would cause problems! Floating verses and so on.

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Aug 18 - 04:05 PM

Child's purpose is certainly an enigma. When on Grundtvig's advice he chose to be inclusive, at first he could include almost anything without having to go into detail about why he included certain ballads; but later-on I certainly detect a weariness about some of the suspect items he felt duty-bound to include, for instance, one off items with little real likelihood of ever having been part of oral tradition. In the first 2 volumes (Dover 5) he was quite sarcastic and scathing about those pieces he felt had been heavily tampered with by the editors and their contributors; but after that he becomes strangely silent in this respect and largely includes suspect pieces with no comment. I have my opinions on why this happened but they are just opinions, though the Young Ronald statement would appear to bear me out. I think the fact that he didn't produce the longed for definitive statement was a deliberate act.

>>>>>The song reads 'oddly' to me:<<<<< I presume you are referring to No.3 but several of the ballads refer to scholars/school and also one he didn't include, Trees they do grow High.

I can't remember reading >>>>>songs were written by higher classes in a complex pre-literate but not 'primitive' society and got ruined when the lower classes got their hands on them<<<<<< He may have written this before he got well into studying the ballads. It certainly goes against modern scholarship which tells us very few of the surviving ballads (in ballad form) go back beyond 1500 and many are much later. One has only to look at the historical ballads to realise this. Some of the stories are certainly a lot older but not in English ballad form. (Hind Horn, Lord Randall)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Aug 18 - 06:00 PM

"It is not, I think, an exaggeration to declare that this is the most important event in the field since the publication of Sharp and Karpeles’ Southern Appalachian collection"
THen perhaps you'd like to avail yourself of my offer to listen to some more of the contributions to folk song by Ewan and Bert rather than having to rely on the word of an Eastern European Classical Composer !
I've made this offer before but people seem to prefer to rely on the words of the New School of Academia
Perhaps actually listening to the stuff might help make your mind up who wrore our folk songs rather than trying to show the hacks did
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Aug 18 - 08:34 PM

> he didn't produce the longed for definitive statement

Steve, are you familiar with FJC's lengthy article on "Ballad Poetry" in Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia, Vol. I (1890).

Maybe not "definitive" but quite substantial.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 01 Aug 18 - 09:21 PM

Lighter

Thanks for mentioning this article.

I was trying to base my comments on Child's views on the Cyclopaedia you mention. I had read somewhere it was the nearest thing he wrote to a 'statement' and found it via a journal that reproduced it. This was The Journal of Folksong Research, a double issue dated 1994.


I may not have summarised the findings quite fairly in the bit quoted by Steve at 4.05 pm, but it isn't far off.

This article does seem to go against the date of emergence of the modern ballad form if this is dated to 1500 and later. But he counts some very early narratives as ballads of a sort. Child thinks that some Robin Hood ballads come from the 13th century. He thinks that the story of Hereward the Wake, which we have in Latin, probably came from ballads. But he says there are very few old English ballads.

It is quite an ambitious piece, covering a range of countries.

In the opening section, Child says that the 'popular ballad' (ie the sort he liked) predates "the poetry of art" towards which it was a step. He specifically states that it was not the work of lower orders because he imagines that it comes from some sort of unified society.

"The primitive ballad, then, is popular, not in the sense of something arising from and suited to the lower orders of a people...An increased civilisation, and especially the introduction of book culture, gradually gives rise to such a distinction (between higher and lower orders, in terms of knowledge, desires etc, my explanation here) the poetry of art appears, the popular poetry is no longer relished by a portion of the people, and it is abandoned to an uncultivated - or not overcultivated - class ... "

He repeats this idea of a united, almost 'classless' society later in the article. He then describes ways in which what we now have is altered from the original ballads, including 'willful' change, which he thinks is less likely to come from the uneducated, 'professional singers', and 'the modern editor'. He says that in all cases there will be drifts in language.

As I think I said before, he contradicts himself by saying that most of the best ballads were created by the people depicted in them, the higher orders.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 01:45 AM

"In the opening section, Child says that the 'popular ballad' (ie the sort he liked) predates "
Popular = of the people - nothing whatever to do with what Child liked or disliked
It seems confirmed that New Age Scholarship is based on dismantling and undermining the work of the past - academic Luddism in reverse
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 05:56 AM

Hello Jim

I hope you had a nice birthday.

I am perfectly aware of the derivations of the word 'popular', but thank you for reminding me of them.

It is not the case that my summary of Child arises from any bent towards 'dismantling and undermining the work of the past'. It arises from a desire to be as clear as possible about the work of the past, about what people in the past with an interest in ballads said about them. This work includes the piece by Child.

Child did like a particular kind of ballad; he did not like other sorts. I think you have yourself often quoted his remark about dunghills. My comment is perfectly reasonable.

I then go on to say something about his opinions about those ballads he did like, and about their place, as he saw it, in relationship to 'the poetry of art', and about who, in his view wrote those songs.

On the latter point, the article, as I have said before, seems self contradictory. This is not 'dismantling and undermining' the work of the past: it is an attempt, however clumsily truncated', to spell out that work.

On the former point, Child sees the ballad as the forerunner of a more civilised and cultivated written literature, which he calls 'the poetry of art'.

Unlike some other folklorists, Child did not see folk songs as originating with peasants or the lower ranks in society. He makes this crystal clear several times in the article. I did not want to quote large chunks of his piece, but as you took up my use of the word 'popular' I will quote some more to demonstrate how Child used the term at the start of the article.

" The 'popular' ballad, for which our language has no unequivocal term (interesting caveat applied by Child here), is a distinct and very important species of poetry. Its historical and natural place is anterior to the poetry of art, to which it has formed a step and by which it has regularly been displaced, and, in some cases, all but extinguished. Whenever a people in the course of its developement reaches a certain intellectual and moral stage, it will feel an impulse to express itself and the form of expression to which it is first impelled is, as is well known, not prose but verse, and in fact narrative verse. The condition of a society in which a truly national or popular poetry appears explains the character of such poetry. It tis a condition in which the people are not divided by political organisation or book culture into markedly distinct classes, in which consequently there is such community of ideas and feelings that the whole people form an individual'"

It seems to me worth making Child's points clear when discussing the work of the past. It was not as monolithic as your comments appear to suggest. Moreover, given what I know about the intellectual context in which CHild was writing, and the views about race to which the early folklorists mostly subscribed, it seems to me that much of this stuff about the stages of development of the societies which in Child's view produced ballads is on some level intended to differentiate the productions of early Europeans from those of other peoples who were not in the view of many Americans as developed (eg African Americans). Because such racialised thinking is clear and explicit in the early folklore journals that I have quoted before.

As far as I can judge on the basis of your own interesting points on these threads, there are a number of points where you do not agree with Child. Your own post reads to me like a 'shoot the messenger' approach. but I think your argument is really with Child.

Sorry if this post is a bit garbled; have to go out soon.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 06:05 AM

When I said self-contradictory I was thinking that Child's view of ballads as expressing some classless society contradicted his plainly expressed view that it was obvious that they were not written by lower orders but by the higher orders.

He wrote in the same article

"From what has been said it may be seen or inferred that the popular ballad is not originally the product or property of the lower orders of the people. Nothing is more obvious than that many of the ballads of the now most refined nations had their origin in that class whose acts and fortunes they depict - the upper class - though the growth of civilisation has driven them from the memory of the highly polished and instructed and has left them as an exclusive possession to the uneducated"


By "the most refined nations" Child seems to mean mostly Western Europe. This seems a tad ethnocentric. He comments, for example, that the 'Servians' have not outlived the original ballad society.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 07:37 AM

"It is not the case that my summary of Child arises from any bent towards 'dismantling and undermining the work of the past'."
Not just yours pseu - since I became involved in this argument it has become increasingly obvious that in order to accept the basic tenets of this book it is necessary to forgt everything you thought you know and start again
I should have realised this from day one when half a century's experience was swept aside as "starry-eyed" naivety
I just don't buy any of it, especially as the only way these ideas could possibly be taken seriously is to remove the idea that folk song is in any way unique, but is, as the 90% pus academic claims, the products of a fore-runner of the present pop scene and created for profit (I've dug out the quote often enough, and am happy to do so again)
This contradicts virtually everything I and virtually all folk song enthusiasts from day one have come to regard as folk song
I began to suspect an agenda when these percentages were applied also to folk tales, music and dance.
I'll need far more than unprovable claims that the first editions of all this appeared in print or in Pleasure Gardens productions
The structure and function of folk songs as distinct from the broadside "russh-job" approach to song making is indicative of which way to look for me and comparing to to song-making in Ireland, Britain's nearest neighbour, confirms that even more

I have read Child fairly extensively and have never been left with the impression that he liked folk song particularly - he worked at them as as a sudy ing as aspect of culture
Mind you - he did try his hand at songmaking - made quite a good job of it too
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 07:52 AM

Hi Jim

Thanks for your response.

Still hoping you had a good birthday, by the way.

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 07:57 AM

The assumption that ballads are primal or foundational may be correct, but it has nothing much to stand on.

Without being an expert on either Child or ballad studies, or attempting to be definitive, I'd point out that after Darwin (1859 and 1871), the fashion in Western thinking swung strongly toward evolutionary schemes of cultural development.

These developments always moved from "simple" to "complex."

Thus it was irresistible to assume that the relatively simple ballad must have been ancestral to the complexities of modern "art song."

In broadest outline, this picture must be correct. The most ancient artistic artifacts yet discovered (e.g., beads from 100,000 BC, a bone flute from 40,000) are very simple.

But the cave paintings in France and Spain, which likewise antedate all existing European cultures, are technically more complex than much of what followed for the next 10,000 years.

To make an analogy, Hemingway is noted for his short, choppy sentences, often linked merely by "and." Arguably, then, Hemingway's art is more primitive than, say, Homer's or Henry James's, and to a Martian researcher would "obviously" be far older than either. Of course, there are definitions of complexity other than style, but if we were to conclude that Hemingway is somehow just as complex as Homer or Shakespeare, we're back where we started.

I don't see anything in the ballad's form, or its direct and concise method of sung, rhymed, stanzaic story-telling, to suggest that it *necessarily* arose early in European history.

It's possible. of course, to sing a story without stanzas, or without rhyme, or mostly improvised at each performance, or with non-repetitive tunes, etc., etc. Pre-balladic story-singing of that sort must have arisen not long after singing itself. You don't need the ballad form to sing a story.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 08:25 AM

"Still hoping you had a good birthday, by the way."
Sorry i forgot to say I had
Nothing to do with you, I'm a bit harassed trying to assmble my sound unit
****** technology

Basically, Homer (or whoever) approached his subject as a ballad-maker
Irish storytellers appeared to follow the same disciplines using the same motifs and commonplaces similar plot structures, concentration on narrative plot rather than description and devices such as incremental repetition
There is also a tendency to assume the listener is familiar with the subject matter rather than having to explain it
I've spent time with older generation storytellers and made a practice of recording the same material more than once - I was always intrigued by the way the narratives hadly ever altered from telling to telling
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 08:40 AM

in order to accept the basic tenets of this book it is necessary to forgt everything you thought you know and start again

You just need to accept that what Roud wants to investigate is worth investigating on its own terms, even if it isn't what you're used to looking for.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 09:23 AM

"You just need to accept that what Roud wants to investigate is worth investigating on its own terms"
The way it has been produced to date has been pretty definitive, as has been the dismantling of the work of others.
The eagerness with which it has been taken on board both here and the reviewing press disturbs me deeply
I don't believe you present a book that size as 'work in progress'
At least the '54 definition was agreed upon by a committee - this seems to be an 'Easy Rider' road trip by a couple of people
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 10:29 AM

I think Lighter is right about evolutionary thinking and his argument about the ballad not necessarily being older because 'simpler' very interesting.

But Lighter is also right to suggest that views about what is 'simple' and what is 'complex' might quickly get complicated.

For me, one basic tenet of Roud's book is that what music and song ordinary people of middling and lower 'ranks' or 'classes' enjoyed, played and sang in past times is interesting in itself. He provides masses of interesting information, based on contemporary written accounts.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 11:19 AM

"He provides masses of interesting information, based on contemporary written accounts."
He does of course, there is no argument on thet
If he had called his book 'The History of Popular Music' there would have been no argument from me.
Th result of his not doing so is evident here - people have rused to give folk music an entirely different provenance.
If it's done that to theose of us 'in the know' what chance is there of winning new people to the real thing?
We are now saddled with the 'singing horse'
definition (pun intended)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 11:22 AM

As Bert might have put it at the end of his book, "If Steve Roud's 'folk song in England' is about English Folk Song, then we need a new name for Bert Lloyd's 'Folk Song in England'
They are about two different types of song
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 11:58 AM

I was amused to note that Child, referring to the Percy collection, especially disliked certain ballads therein, saying they were not the 'harmless coprolites of a remote age' but 'rank and noxious specimens of comparatively modern dirt, such as would suit the age of Charles II, in whose the collection seems to have been made'.

He had quite a turn of phrase, didn't he?

[Ref: Article by Sigrid Rieuwerts from the '90s.]

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 01:25 PM

We can at least assume one thing from Child's collective comments; his desire to obtain material from field notes and manuscripts, and his scathing comments about the redactions of relatively sophisticated editors, demonstrate clearly that he prized material that had come direct from what we would call source singers. However, even in this he was not consistent in that he prized Anna Gordon's redacted pieces above all else. Your quote, Tzu, is chickenfeed alongside some of his attacks on later editors.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 03:51 PM

NEWS OF STEVE ROUD - ANOTHER PUBLICATION AT THE PLANNING STAGE!

This is part of the latest Traditional Song Forum circular from Martin Graebe -

Steve Roud and David Atkinson are planning another publication on Street literature. They write:
We are acutely aware that in the recent upsurge of interest in, and publication about, cheap print and street literature, the early modern period is getting a great deal of attention, and the nineteenth century is also being gradually opened up for scrutiny. But the gaping hole in our knowledge is the eighteenth century.
Our plan, therefore, is a new volume of essays, composed of a mixture of full chapters and shorter case-studies, on aspects of the subject in Britain and Ireland, which we hope will break new ground and be a welcome addition to the literature.
If anyone might be interested in contributing - please contact us. And if you know of someone else who might be interested, please spread the word.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Aug 18 - 03:03 AM

I was looking forward to reading the books on street literature now being published and adding them to our collection, along with the earlier works by pioneers like Hindley, Shepherd, Collison and Vicinus.
Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America: The Interface between Print and Oral Traditions, edited by Steve Roud and David Atkinson, particularly interested me because of its links between broadsides and folk songs - I caught my breath when I found that a paperback copy (290pp) would cost me £39.99
Luckily, a friend gave me a pdf copy
When 'Street Literature of the Long 19th Century' hit the shops last year I found a modest sized book of 387pp would have cost me £64.99 or $148.00
pension, this is elitist literature
I decided to wait to see if that one was ever remaindered

At these prices, certainly for a pensioner like me living on a State pension, this is elitist literature.
I fully realise that the authors have no control over the prices of their works, but I suggest that they seek publishers with a more realistic approach to their pricing policy, especially considering the subject matter, which I find a little ironically whimsical, given Roud and Atkinson's description in the blurb
cheap print and street literature !!!
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 Aug 18 - 04:12 AM

sympathies for your plight, Jim. Publishing in a limited market is always a problem. I produced a book of photographs of my village last year - stuff I'd taken over the past 30 years or so - with descriptive text. 78 landscape, A4 pages containing 300 photographs, perfect bound with a flexible thicker paper cover. I paid for the total production.

My initial run of 100 cost me £760 - £7.60 each, and I sold them for £10 each. A profit of £2.40 for most of them. (I say "most" because some were sold by the village museum, and I donated £1 per copy sold by them to the museum funds).

I managed to get a better price for the next 100 - £680 - which means I make a little more when they get sold. The first 100 sold out very quickly; the second run is selling, but more slowly. So - £10 for an A4 78pp paperback... value for money? Anyone's guess!

No real comparison with proper publishing, I know, but unless you can get reasonable quality bulk publishing at a reasonable price, print costs can seem ridiculously high. I suspect the Roud book has a limited marketplace in terms of subject matter.

My s/h copy of "The Italian comedy" (£12, reasonable condition) came through the door the other day, by the way - just starting to have a good read of it. Thanks again for the heads-up.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Aug 18 - 04:40 AM

Publishing folk material in Ireland is just as problematical in a way but as the Traditional arts is quite well represented on the Arts circuit it is still possible to get grants for research and publishing, though not as easy as before the bankers naused up the economy
We were helped enormously by two very generous grants from the Arts Council of Ireland in the transcribing of texts and music fo out Traveller collection.
If we ever get round to producing a book the main work has been done and Limerick Uni will possibly be interested
Clare County Library's taking up our Clare Collection was a dream realised - this is what we were hoping to acheive in the U.K. when we had given up hope on E.F.D.S.S.
I hope things haven't deteriorated so far there for than not to be a possibility.

I hope you enjoy The Italian Comedy and much as I did - (that's not a bad price for a book of that quality and importance)
If you haven't already, you might try 'The Commedia Dell' Arte by Giacomo Oregalis (Methuen University Paperback 196)
It concentrated more on the scenarios of the plays rather than its history - I found the two complimented each other perfectly
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Bert Fan
Date: 03 Aug 18 - 09:54 AM

How about calling it" A Bert in a Day"

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,1594
Date: 03 Aug 18 - 10:42 AM

1954 Definition made by a Committee?
"We always carry out by committee anything in which any one of us alone would be too reasonable to persist."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Aug 18 - 11:14 AM

The alternative to deciding by committee is either not to have a definition or to allow a 'superior' power to decide what it means
George Orwell had a very good take on the latter - he called it 'Newspeak'
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 09 Aug 18 - 05:42 AM

I'm sorry, but in the end I felt this touched on too many aspects of the discussion not to post the link.

http://cottonfaminepoetry.exeter.ac.uk/database/poem.html?id=as_1862-11-08_unkno

Tum's opening words made me smile. Note also the comment about the tune.

I came across it via https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/09/mill-workers-poems-about-1860s-cot

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 09 Aug 18 - 06:54 AM

I saw this article too. Interesting, though some of this work has been published early in the 20th century too, so it isn't quite the new discovery the Guardian article seems to suggest.

Thanks for posting it, Jag.

I have ancestors who worked in Lancashire mills in the early 19th century. I didn't think this line were non-literate (which seems to be a requirement for some definitions of folk) in the 19th century. Some were tee-totallers and involved with Chartism, albeit it tangentially as far as I know, and this collection seems to support my views on their literacy. They had moved to Lancashire from the Dales of Yorkshire, for the work presumably, several members of the same family at about the same time. So who knows what 'dialect' they and their children would have used.

One poet cited, Samuel Laycock, was born, like my ancestors, in Yorkshire and worked in a cotton mill in Stalybridge. So they may call it 'The Lancashire' cotton famine, but a lot of it wasn't in Lancashire, but in Cheshire. Put simply, a lot of Manchester was once in Cheshire.

There isn't just one Lancashire accent nowadays and I don't suppose there was just one Lancashire dialect then. Complicated also by moving county boundaries and vanishing counties. I recognise some dialect words used (eg clammed) and I'm not from Lancashire. So they are right to comment how difficult it must be to speak these poems as their writers would have.

The poet quoted in Jag's link bemoans the fact he cannot send his kids to school, and I was trying to remember whether you had to pay a penny at this time. This was written before Forster's 1870 education act, certainly. This seems to show that literacy was important to many in the working class at that time.

My understanding had been that there was a lot of support for abolition in Lancashire despite the cotton famine. I accept that you can't interpret the choice of tune one way or another.

The tune choice is presumably the sort of evidence drawn upon by Roud in commenting about how much American music, including minstrelsy, had influenced what ordinary people in England were singing and how early.

As the web-site states, this poetry is evidence of 'a thriving literary culture'. It also points out that the 'voices' in the poems are fictional, and not necessarily those of the authors.

Edwin Waugh (one of the authors cited) wrote a book about the cotton famine which is on line. He seems to have been a collector.

There was a programme on Radio 4 recently about poets writing in dialect in which some of the names on the Exeter web-site were mentioned.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 09 Aug 18 - 07:39 AM

From Edwin Waugh's book about the time:

"Any one well acquainted with Lancashire, will know how widespread the study of music is among its working population. Even the inhabitants of our large towns know something more about this now than they knew a few months ago. I believe there is no part of England in which the practice of sacred music is so widely and lovingly pursued amongst the working people as in the counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire. There is no part of England where, until lately, there have been so many poor men's pianos, which have been purchased by a long course of careful savings from the workman's wages. These, of course, have mostly been sold during the hard times to keep life in the owner and his family."

"Even in great manufacturing towns, it is very common, when passing cotton mills at work, to hear some fine psalm tune streaming in chorus from female voices, and mingling with the spoom of thousands of spindles. "


"Now, when fortune has laid such a load of sorrow upon the working people of Lancashire, it is a sad thing to see so many workless minstrels of humble life "chanting their artless notes in simple guise" upon the streets of great towns, amongst a kind of life they are little used to. There is something very touching, too, in their manner and appearance. They may be ill-shod and footsore; they may be hungry, and sick at heart, and forlorn in countenance, but they are almost always clean and wholesome-looking in person. They come singing in twos and threes, and sometimes in more numerous bands, as if to keep one another in countenance. Sometimes they come in a large family all together, the females with their hymn-books, and the men with their different musical instruments, ? bits of pet salvage from the wrecks of cottage homes. The women have sometimes children in their arms, or led by the hand; and they sometimes carry music-books for the men."

"Their faces are sad, and their manners very often singularly shame-faced and awkward; and any careful observer would see at a glance that these people were altogether unused to the craft of the trained minstrel of the streets."

You can read more here:

http://gerald-massey.org.uk/waugh/c_cotton_famine_(4).htm#XXIII.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 09 Aug 18 - 08:02 AM

Both my grandfathers worked in the Lancashire cotton mills. From one I have the Laycock volume I quoted from earlier, from the other several books given as Sunday school attendance prizes in the 1890's

Back to the Laycock volume in which his (sympathetic) biographer says

"At six years of age Laycock was fortunate in being sent for a short time to a day school. This implies some self-denial on the part of his parents, for it was not uncommon for children to begin work at the early age of six. Then, as usual, there came the Sunday School. Only those who are familiar with the days of which we are writing will know the immense influence of the Sunday Schools in Lancashire had upon the lives of the working people, not only in regard to religious training, but also in reference to their education ... ... At the Sunday school which Laycock attended writing was taught as well as reading ...

Laycock was born in 1826. His father was a handloom weaver, his grandfather a hill farmer. Neither of those are the lowest in society but Laycock started work in a woollen mill at the of nine.

I think that 'the collectors' give a more 'bimodal' view of society than my reading (and limited personal geneologic research) suggest. We have the middle class collectors showing interested in what the peasantry were doing and in the next wave were socialists highlighting the creative skills of the farm labourers and urban wage slaves.

I don't think it was like that, there were a lot of people in between many of whome were literate. Most villages would have had a blacksmith, some of whom left detailed day-books, all towns had tradespeople. Some of their children did well in life financially or in terms of time in which to be creative, others went down in the world. Where does being a pleasure garden or music hall performer put someone in society?

I suspect it was every thus.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 09 Aug 18 - 08:03 AM

Crossed with Pseudonymous

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 09 Aug 18 - 08:17 AM

Thanks for Waugh link. The Laycock volume is here: https://archive.org/details/collectedwriting00layc

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 09 Aug 18 - 08:38 AM

Hello Jag

I checked and Roud does in fact refer to a couple of Waugh's works. Didn't check for Laycock, but I don't suppose Roud will have missed that.

Re blacksmiths: another set of my ancestors were blacksmiths generation after generation, across Cheshire, then comes the mid-to-late 18th century and you find a descendent putting a cross on a certificate! So literacy definitely came and went. Agree on families and children going up and down (within limits of course!)

Another lot were publicans and at the same time coal merchants in Lancashire at about the time of the famine. I must look back over the records in the light of the famine. Because I don't suppose pubs or coal merchants did too well then.

Agree with Laycock's biographer on Sunday schools too, and not just Lancashire. It was partly about reading the bible, and yes, some people could read but not write or just write their names but not always even that. One of my Lancashire ancestors appears to have ended up at some sort of charity day school after being partially crippled as a child, and ended up working in printing and publishing(of anti-alcohol tracts as I understand it). So literacy came to him as a result of a combination of bad luck and charity.   

My father in law (long since passed away) used to go to Sunday Schools because they fed him: he ended up with the Methodists, so he told me, because they had the best dinners! This would be the thirties, I guess. So the role of Sunday Schools lasted into the 20th century.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Aug 18 - 05:58 PM

50s, Tzu
I don't remember much about it but I definitely attended. Will ask me mam tomorrow.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 02:56 AM

Just linked by FreddyHeadey (thank you Freddy) on the "Folk on BBC tonight & this week" thread, a BBC programme germane to the discussions here of what is folk song, who made it, who the "folk" are, etc, including some words from Steve Roud himself.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 04:04 AM

Whenn I lived there Manchester Central Library used to have a large number of newspapers and other publications from the Cotton Famine and Chartist period, many of them carrying columns of songs and poems from textile workers, describing their work (or lack of it) and the conditions brought aabout by slave-like work, poor pay and harsh treatment
Alongside the poems of Waugh, Axon, Bamford and the other weaver poets, they proved an interesting contrast in style to the smaller collection of broadsides also carried by the library
These are proof positive of the creative skills of working people and the desire to put them down on paper.
I got the impression that the langage used in the songs sent in were not so much dialect, but an attempt to phonetically reproduce the words by people unfamiliar with putting pen to paper - the difference between genuine compositions and the pastiche of Dibden and the hacks

"who the "folk"
The BBC aren't generous enough to allow us ex-pats to listen to their programmes
I wonder if anybody records this, would they let me have a copy
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Will Fly
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 04:22 AM

Jim - you can get to the programme (my copy) by clicking this link:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ah5KuRT6IqVhgdln4yV8XKWpxjNieg

Will

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 06:10 AM

Thanks Will - I never cease to admire the generosity (and initiative) of members of this forum
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 06:49 AM

'Waugh, Axon, Bamford and the other weaver poets',

Waugh was not a weaver, though he may have been a poet. He worked in printing and publishing.

Here's a bit of Bamford:

God help the poor, who in this wintry morn,
Come forth of alleys dim and courts obscure;
God help yon poor, pale girl, who droops forlorn,
And meekly her affliction doth endure!
God help the outcast lamb! she trembling stands,
All wan her lips, and frozen red her hands;
Her mournful eyes are modestly down cast,
Her night-black hair streams on the fitful blast;
Her bosom, passing fair, is half reveal'd,
And oh! so cold the snow lies there congeal'd;
Her feet benumb'd, her shoes all rent and worn; ?
God help thee, outcast lamb, who stand'st forlorn!
                                           God help the poor!

To me, this is fairly standard 19th century 'literary' stuff. Basically iambic pentameter, with some variation for interest. Interesting rhyming scheme. Christian symbolism with mention of 'lambs' and of course 'God!'. Repetition and replacement. Some archaic language choice, reminiscent of bible 'doth' and 'thee'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 07:11 AM

Hello Jim

'Alongside the poems of Waugh, Axon, Bamford and the other weaver poets...'

Just to clarify, Waugh seems not to have been a 'weaver poet'.

If the Axon referred to is William Axon, this person was a journalist.

Bamford attended Manchester Grammar School for a while, presumably at a time when it still had more of its original charitable intentions, so he was by no means a naive uneducated 'poet', unused to setting material down on paper.

Your point on what is accent and what is 'dialect' is interesting, though I don't quite follow it. There is a fine line between the two. Dialect is, as you suggest, often seen more a matter of grammar and vocabulary then just pronunciation. I agree that some of this material attempts to convey pronunciation, but then I lose you.


Some of the quotations given by Waugh seem to include examples of vocabulary varying according to dialect, including 'hond' for 'hand', 'yo' for 'you' 'co'de' for 'called' (pronounced a bit like code) and so on.

I'm guessing that some of these writers might have been to some extent 'bi-dialectical' as a result of their education and other factors.


Here's some Bamford. He was a fan of Byron, it appears. Fairly typical 19th century stuff.


God help the poor, who in this wintry morn,
Come forth of alleys dim and courts obscure;
God help yon poor, pale girl, who droops forlorn,
And meekly her affliction doth endure!
God help the outcast lamb! she trembling stands,
All wan her lips, and frozen red her hands;
Her mournful eyes are modestly down cast,
Her night-black hair streams on the fitful blast;
Her bosom, passing fair, is half reveal'd,
And oh! so cold the snow lies there congeal'd;
Her feet benumb'd, her shoes all rent and worn; ?
God help thee, outcast lamb, who stand'st forlorn!
                                           God help the poor!

Interesting rhyming scheme. Iambic pentameter with some variation. Some biblical references and lexical choices eg 'thee', 'lamb', 'doth'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 08:13 AM

I think I understand Jim to be saying that much of the material is not dialect but people trying to render the language as people spoke in the street and mill.

I used have a Lancashire accent (but fairly close to Saddleworth which was Yorkshire then). I had, and still have, great difficulty reading Laycock and getting any feel that it sounds as intended. I have no problem with the dialogue in the introduction to the poem from the Exeter database that I linked:

“Come Jim, sit down, and I’ll sing thee a song of my own composin’; th’ knows I’ve a good vice, and they told me last club neet, after I had sung ‘Spencer, the rover,’ that I had a bit o’ music in me, some said ‘there’s life i’th’ owd dog yet.’ I’ve made this song to th’ tune of ‘O Susannah,’ becose I thowt everybody ud know that. Join chorus, and give it bant.”

That is presumably intended to be how people spoke, with a few dialect words. The poem itself is mainly in standard English.

So I wonder if the dialect of the dialect poets was archaic even then.The mid 20th century dialect poet Harvey Kershaw seems to be somewhere in between and is fairly straight forward to read aloud with a Lancashire accent.

What do people make of "they told me last club neet, after I had sung ‘Spencer, the rover,’" ? I wonder when the mill social clubs, still going strong in the 1950s, started. (assuming it's not a modern spoof that has crept in...)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 08:29 AM

" Fairly typical 19th century stuff. "
Where the traditions isn't thriving, poets borrowed styles from elsewhere
That was the case everywhere
Jim

Bamford
The Hand-loom Weavers’ Lament
You gentlemen and tradesmen, that ride about at will,
Look down on these poor people, it s enough to make you crill;
Look down on these poor people, as you ride up and down,
I think there is a God above will bring your pride quite down.

Chorus
You tyrants of England, your race may soon be run,
You may be brought unto account for what you’ve sorely done

You pull down our wages, shamefully to tell;
You go into the markets, and say you cannot sell;
And when that we do ask you when these bad times will mend
You quickly give an answer, "When the wars are at an end."

When we look on our poor children, it grieves our hearts full sore,
Their clothing it is worn to rags, while we can get no more,
With little in their bellies, they to work must go,
Whilst yours do dress as manky as monkeys in a show.

You go to church on Sundays, I'm sure it's nought but pride,
There can be no religion where humanity's thrown aside,
If there be a place in heaven, as there is in the Exchange,
Our poor souls must not come near there, like lost sheep they must range.

With the choicest of strong dainties your tables overspread,
With good ale and strong brandy, to make your faces red;
You call d a set of visitors—it is your whole delight—
And you lay your heads together to make our faces white.

You say that Bonyparty he's been the spoil of all,
And that we have got reason to pray for his downfall;
Now Bonyparty’s dead and gone, and it is plainly shown
That we have bigger tyrants in Boneys of our own.

And now, my lads, for to conclude, it’s time to make an end;
Let s see if we can form a plan that these bad times may mend;
Then give us our old prices, as we have had before,
And we can live in happiness, and rub off the old score.

Attributed to Bamford
HOW TO LIVE ON THREE SHILLINGS A WEEK, OR THE POOR SURAT WEAVER’S LAMENT.
Hungry, weary and wan,
Useless the kettle and pan;
I applied for a pass,
To the sewing class,
To a kindly reputed man.
“What have you in earnings, now?”
Asked he, with a clouded brow.
I, with modesty meek,
Said, “Three shillings per week;”
He said “There’s no stitching for you.”
I replied, whereupon,
“My chemise are done;
My underclothes all worn to rags;
The dress I now wear,
You see is threadbare,
And the soles of my feet on the flags.
“Three muffins per day,
But no coffee or tea;
A penny for ‘tatoes at noon;
Three farthings for fuel,
A farthing for gruel,
Leaves nothing to pay for my room.
“My three shillings are gone,
I’ve no light but the sun;
Not a candle to see me to bed;
Not a penny for clothes,
Not a farthing for shoes,
No bonnet or cap for my head.
“No mutton or beef,
From such scale of relief,
Can th’ poor Surat weaver e’er taste;
No butter or grease,
Can e’er have a place,
On the table where she has to feast.
“This little support
Is to encourage work!
Good gracious how shuttles will fly!
What ribbons and lace
Will adorn my pale face,
Made rosy with pudding and pie!”

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 09:04 AM

For me, this is the most interesting song/poem to come out of that period
Jim Carroll

The Surat Weavers   Samuel Laycock (woolen weaver)

Confound it! aw ne’er wur so woven afore,
Mi back’s welly bracken, mi fingers are sore;
Aw’ve bin starin’ an’ rootin’ amung this Shurat,
Till aw’m very near getten as bloint as a bat.

Every toime aw go in wi’ mi cuts to owd Joe,
He gies mi a cursin’, an’ bates mi an’ o ;           keeps         back         part of payment
Aw’ve a warp i’ one loom wi’ booath selvedges marr’d
An’ th’ other’s as bad, for he’s dressed it to’ hard.

Aw wish aw wur fur enough off, eawt o’ th’ road,
For o’ weavin’ this rubbitch aw’m gettin’ reet stow’d;        fed up
Aw’ve nowt i' this world to lie deawn on but straw,
For aw’ve nobbut eight shillin’ this fortn’t to draw.

Neaw aw haven’t mi family under mi hat,
Aw’ve a woife an’ six childer to keep eawt o’ that;
So aw’m rayther amung it at present, yo’ see,
Iv ever a fellow wur puzzl’t, it’s me!

Iv one turns eawt to stale, folk’ll co me a thief,              steal
An’ aw conno’ put th’ cheek on to ax for relief;
As aw said i’ eawr heawse t’other neet to mi woife,
I niver di nowt o’ this sort in me loif

One doesn’t like everyone t’ know heaw they are,
But we’n suffered so lung thro’ this ’Merica war,
’At ther’s lots o’ poor factory folk getten t’ fur end,
An’ they’ll soon be knocked o’er iv th’ toimes dunno mend.

Oh, dear! iv yon Yankees could only just see
Heaw they’re clemmin’ an starvin’ poor weavers loike me,
Aw think they’d soon setde the’r bother, an’ strive
To send us some cotton to keep us alive.

Ther’s theawsands o’ folk just i’ th’ best o’ the’r days,
Wi’ traces o’ want plainly seen i’ the’r face;
An’ a future afore ’em as dreary an’ dark,
For when th’ cotton gets done we shall o’ be beawt wark.   all be without work

We’n bin patient an’ quiet as lung as we con;
Th’ bits o’ things we had by us are welly o gone;    almost all gone
Aw’ve bin trampin’ so lung, mi owd shoon are worn eawt,
An’ mi halliday clooas are o on ’em “up th’ speawt.”    pawned

It wur nobbut last Monday aw sowd a good bed—
Nay, very near gan it—to get us some bread; gave
Afore these bad toimes come aw used to be fat,
But neaw, bless yo’r loife, aw’m as thin as a lat!

Mony a toime i’ mi loife aw’v seen things lookin’ feaw,   ugly
But never as awk’ard as what they are neaw;
Iv ther’ isn’t some help for us factory folk soon,
Aw’m sure we shall o be knocked reet eawt o’ tune.

Come, give us a lift, yo’ ’at han owt to give,
An’ help yo’r poor brothers an’ sisters to live;
Be kind, an’ be tender to th’ needy an’ poor,
An’ we'll promise when th’ toimes mend we’ll ax yo’ no moor.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 09:14 AM

Jag

You may be right. Thanks.

I wasn't sure if Jim was trying to state that the 'weaver poets' were not very used to writing things down, and that deviations from standard English in their work reflected this rather than dialect. This was what he put:

"an attempt to phonetically reproduce the words by people unfamiliar with putting pen to paper ... "

This suggests that the writers had some grasp of how to represent things 'phonetically', which seems to refer to pronunciation, which is one aspect of dialect, yet Jim is saying he did not feel that the poems were like dialect. The examples of writers he gives confused me more. But maybe Jim himself can clarify this.

I agree with you about the introduction to the piece on the Exeter web site, and also with their comment about the variety of dialects in the poem that follows.

I think I can get a feel for Laycock, though you have to read it through a couple of times, and some of his dialect words are somewhat familiar to me eg 'yead' for 'head', but I feel he uses a lot more of the letter h than was probably pronounced. His biography says he learned a 'free-flowing' hand at school, and he was involved in literary circles all his life. I am thinking he would have been bi-dialectical. And not a drinker it would appear.

Jim

Hello

I agree that poets never exist in a vacuum and will be influenced by one or more of the styles around at the time. That, I think, is partly what enables people like Roud to date 'traditional' songs to specific periods. Thanks for the additional examples of the same sort of 19th century thing. Very little dialect in these examples, though.

It would appear that Laycock's poems sometimes appeared as broadsheets. He needed the money. I just found one online, price 1d, printed in Blackpool, where, like many Lancashire folk before him, he retired. So maybe he isn't the best choice of contrast between 'good' stuff and the product of 'hacks'.

There is a lot of stuff about Laycock here:

http://www.gerald-massey.org.uk/laycock/b_broadsheets.htm

He seems to have been an interesting chap.

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 09:31 AM

Samuel Laycock (woolen weaver)

He was a cotton power-loom operative for 17 years, then got a "lift in the world" and became a 'cloth looker'. When the 'Cotton Famine' struck and he wrote work that appeared on broadsides. Then he was librarian and hall-keeper at Stalybridge Mechanics Institute for six years. Acted as curator to the Addison Literary Club. Later failed as a book-stall holder on Oldham Market and then had a successful small business (type not given) in Blackpool.

I gave a link to the book with a biography.

'Woolen weaver' is romantic and wrong.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 09:47 AM

Thanks for the link Pseu'.

Jim. Before universal primary education kids were employed, or doing something practical and useful around the house or farm, from an early age. They would grow up knowing the technical terms for the work they and their family members did. Layock's life illustrates how someone writing songs can know the technical terms for a trade without being employed in it for more than few years. Like him, those who learned to read and write might get a 'lift in the world'. We don't know how many of the folk who wrote songs really were illiterate.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 09:52 AM

He was a mill worker
The point I was trying to make was that most of them had their roots in the communities they wrote about and a great number of them did not romanticise those communities or patronise them with pastiche
The fact that some of their compositions appeared on broadsides was incidental - the broadside trade was a predatory one that took its songs from wherever they appeared
Many, in my opinion, remade them to sell to urban customers and in doing so took the reality from them
It's interesting to compare this practice with the 'ballad-selling trade' in Ireland, wheer the songs were taken directly from the mouths of the singers, printed and sold as heard
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 10:18 AM

Hello again Jim

I know that one of your tradition bearers sold his songs direct to ballad makers, but I don't think it is accurate to assert that the whole trade in Ireland went like that. I have read that Cork was a centre for pirate broadsheet song making to sell to the colonies at a time when Irish copyright laws were not like English ones.

Also, I'm not sure that the point stands in relation to Laycock who made songs and sold them to printers to make money because he needed the money during the cotton famine, more or less the same as your tradition bearer except that your tradition bearer may have had to sing it rather than writing it down.

I think Laycock does 'romanticise'; it is one of the ways he tries to create sympathy, and it seems to me to be in line with Victorian ideas of the 'deserving poor'. Note the 'modesty meek' description. Of course this is just my view.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 10:32 AM

Jim. Back in January, something I quoted something that Roud quotes from Charlotte Burne in the last part of the 19th century:

"One such song-maker, commonly called 'the Muxton carter' ... ... used to think the verses over in his mind when he was going with the horses... ... It was doubtless such unlettered poets as these who supplied the matter for the broadsides which emanated in great numbers from Waidson's press at Shrewsbury during the earlier years of the present century"

Laycock was an urban writer and Burne thought that the rural Muxon carter was supplying the broadside presses.

I don't know, but the Waidson of Waidson's press could just have been a small town tradesman putting food on his family's table by providing a service for which there was a demand just like the blacksmiths, coal merchants, publicans, tailers, tinkers and candlestick makers.

If you want to get into politico-economics the question would be whether or not the broadside printers were adding value commensurate with their income after expenses. You seem the regard them like 'rent seekers'. What is your evidence for that?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 11:14 AM

"I think Laycock does 'romanticise'; it is one of the ways he tries to create sympathy, "
I disagree totally
My understanding of romanticising is producing a roseate pastiche picture of the characters and their backgrounds - far from what these writers were - and a thousand miles from the output of the broadside presses
In some cases, their stly may have been borrowed thus their subject matter is nearer to Engles 'Conditions of the Working Class in England' than it was to Harrison Ainsworth
Jag mentioned Harvey Kershaw - a romantic poet, even though he was writing from his own background
I remember seeing him and Harry Boardman perform on numerous occasions and comparing the 'Reet Lancashire' songs with some of Harry's traditional songs - Harry was as much as chalk and cheese as to be two different singers   
Some of these poets were political activists, Bampton being a prime example - it was their activism that inspired their writing, noth their need to put food o the table

It's interesting to compare this song making tradition with that of the Irish over the same period
Both were making songs, the difference being that the Irish had rich and thriving oral tradition to draw from whereas industrial Lancashire appeared not to have.
This is certainly reflected in the songmaking
Rather than basing these arguments on the printed word you really need to judge the songs as sung.

"but I don't think it is accurate to assert that the whole trade in Ireland went like that"
The rural trade did - the towns of course were influenced by the bad poetry of the broadsides
The rural 'ballad selling trade' has been very much neglected and lumped in with the urban one - they really were very diifferent repretoires
Ironically, the ballad trade was almost exclusively the domain of non-literate Travellers, who were also the saviours of some of our best examples of Traditional ballads and folk takes - an almost pure oral tradition
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 12:08 PM

Hi Jim

Thanks, I knew the Irish ballad trade wasn't quite as simple as I thought you had suggested. Do you know any more about the pirating in Cork, by any chance?

Thanks again.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 12:47 PM

I agree with Jim about Laycock. I have just been dipping in at random. I find it mainly descriptive and mainly in the present rather than appealing to nostalgia. Description of things with emotional interest of course.

"Bowton' Yard" is well know but not typical.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 01:15 PM

"Do you know any more about the pirating in Cork, by any chance? "
I know little about the broadside trade in Ireland, beyond the influence that O'Loughlin's street ballads and James Healey's publications had on the oral tradition I'm afraid
I do know that most of the 'big' traditional singers and storytellers mistrusted the published songs and would only use them to supplement their own oral texts
The broadside influences appeared to be largely urban
I was once told by Hugh Shields that very little is known about the trural 'ballad' trade apart from reports of it having happened
It was fascinating to interview a ballad seller
I intend re-reding Bamford’s Passages in the Life of a Radical’ tonight to see if he mentiones songmaking – it’s decades since I read it
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 10 Aug 18 - 08:22 PM

I know I heard a radio programme about dialect poets a short while ago, and here is a relevant link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4xDyV5CQKLMDPcrnyWMBLj8/an-ear-for-an-aye-listening-to-englands-dialect-poetry

I also foundsomething about the cotton famine poets on the BBC web site, and here is a link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-37836654

These people were mostly poets not song writers, though.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 02:51 AM

I think we seem to be walking up the old blind alley here once again
Instead of askin who made our folk songs we should be asking why they were made
The 'print origins' people have provided their answer - for money - after half a centuries experience in folk song, that is the very last conclusion I would have reached
I think the answers to the origins and the functions of our folk songs lie in the songs themselves, not their manifestations on paper
For me, the greatest omission in Roud's book is his failure to include song-texts leaving us unable to place his arguments next to the subject of his eponymously chosen title a work on folk songs with the subject matter removed.

I firmly believe that our songs are an important part of our social history - you can't deal with them in this manner if you believe them to be commercial commodities; you can't even do that if you believe them to me merely 'entertainments'

They were made to entertain in part and they were taken up and sold, but once you start to examine them in their social context you have to realise thay are something much more than that.

I flicked through Bamford's thumbnail autobiography last night - his only reference to his songs (pooms) was the effect one of them had on his fellow-radicals - they were part of his life as a worker and a radical, not a way of putting a crust on the table.
This made them a voice of working-people's experience and struggle.
These industrial songs are only a tiny part of the equation.

WE were privileged enough to be able to look at two major traditions - one still living (for a time), and one moribund but still warm.
Apart from the repertoires the common feature of the two was the obvious desire, even need to make songs in order to capture the experiences and feelings of the communities.
That, for me, has to be a major clue of who made our folk songs.

Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 04:37 AM

"Instead of askin who made our folk songs we should be asking why they were made"

They were made for exactly the same reasons people write songs today:

To express an emotion;
To express a grievance;
To entertain;
To make people laugh;
To make people cry;
To win the heart of a potential lover;
To make a living (either money, shelter, food, or drink).

And sometimes, for the sheer hell of it.

etc, etc, etc.

A few people would have been good at at it; the majority shite.

Those few that were lucky enough to be able to live by their art would have either been inspired or have 'borrowed' their ideas from extant sources.

Plus ça change . . . . .

It's archaeology (not history) and, in the absence of supporting documentary sources, the artifact (the song!) will sometimes help one to discover the "when", "where", "what" and "how"; but very rarely can one identify the "why".

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 04:50 AM

My thoughts exactly guest (not sure about you valuation - all songs are "shite" to those who don't like or understand them)
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 05:00 AM

Getting back to the book. Roud sets out clearly early in the introducion what the book is about and then goes on to do that. If people want something with song texts then they know by a few pages in that they are not going to get them and why.

It does what it says on the tin*. If you want baked beans with little sausages don't by a tin that just says 'Baked Beans'.

*OK, so it may not be specific from the label but you can read a few pages of the Introduction standing in a book shop or get the whole Introduction for free from Amazon.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 05:33 AM

"It does what it says on the tin"
Actually it doesn't - it claims to be about folk song but it is in fact a history of but it is fact a history of pop song down the ages
The earliest reaction to it I read was "oo - look, the folk didn't make folk song"
A very damaging reaction if ever there was one
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 05:36 AM

It's a much more interesting book than the one you want him to have written.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 05:44 AM

It was stated above that the hand loom weaver's lament was by Bamford.

I'm not sure this is right. a) can't find it in online collections of Bamford's work b) found a book dated 188ish online saying it was taken from someone else.

Bamford was a special constable during Chartist times, some of his work seems to reflect a dislike of the movement.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 05:44 AM

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll - PM
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 02:51 AM

I think we seem to be walking up the old blind alley here once again
Instead of askin who made our folk songs we should be asking why they were made
The 'print origins' people have provided their answer - for money

Then as now, people with something they wanted to say wrote a song to say it. And if they then wanted to publish it and get paid, why not, be it now or 400 years ago? Does "Duncan Campbell" read like money was the only thing in the broadside writer's mind?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 06:24 AM

"And if they then wanted to publish it and get paid, why not, "
No reason at all
It has never been a question of them appearing on broadsides - that has always been accepted
It is a question whether the orinateded there
Much of the argument suggests that they did and the reasons given for that (when they have been given) I find unconvincing
If it is true than i means our scolars have been barking up the wrong tree from day one and people like me who have been approaching our folk songs as social history have wasted our lives.
It also meand, of course, that working people have always been recipients of (even customers for) our oral and musical cultures and not participants in their making.
Doew 'Duncan Campbell' sound as if it was made for money - of course it doesn't
Do the Beethoven Quartets sound as if they have ?
Money or sponsorship certainly played a part in the circulation of both but that is no indication of the motive behind their creation.

What do sound as if they were created for money are the many thousands of badly written and largely unsingable broadsides which, it is claimed, share their authorship with our ballads and folk songs
"It's a much more interesting book "
"Interesting" doesn't really come into the equation - I love John Griham anc C J Sansom, but I go to them for something else
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 08:35 AM

Hello Jim

As usual, your post covers a range of issues.

I am afraid I do not agree with the comment in the post above and elsewhere to the effect that for over a century people believed that the working person wrote 'folk songs'. I have quoted what Child said on this a number of times. The picture is more complicated than this, something Roud helps us to understand.

Songs are not 'social history'; history is basically the study of the past. Songs may be 'historical sources'. As such, they may be reliable or unreliable, biased in various ways and so on. For example, one would be unlikely to come to a full understanding of the cotton famine's causes and effects by reading the dialect poems about it that have survived.

I also agree with those who have pointed out that writing ballads is 'work' and was therefore done by 'working people'. I see no reason, in fact, why ballad sheets should not be used by social historians, and I know that they often are. Once again, there is much of interest in Roud.

It seems to me that arguments about the literary merits or demerits or the 'singability' of broadsheet balladry, especially when contrasted with the merits of 'our' folk songs, are aesthetic judgments, not historical ones. They seem difficult to maintain and prove, especially when the earliest known versions are broadsheet ones. You'd end up saying 'The people can't have written that, it's unsingable rubbish.' or 'I don't have an early version uncontaminated by print, but I'm sure it would have been much better than this.'

You write: It also meand, of course, that working people have always been recipients of (even customers for) our oral and musical cultures and not participants in their making.

I don't think it does, though in the sense that the Christian religion, for example, which influenced working people immensely, took off because a Roman Emperor was converted to it, and then there were centuries of political influence wielded by the Christian Church across the whole of Europe, then, yes, plainly the working people of this country have to a significant extent been 'recipients' of culture rather than making it.

Using the mid twentieth-century term 'pop song' in this context is, for me, an unhelpful anachronism. I am interested in the history of what ordinary people heard and sang, and since this plainly included a lot of the commercial or popular music of the day, than that is part of social history and it is worth writing about.

I would rather read Roud's account, based on written evidence from the times in question, than vague waffle about 'shamanistic duels' of the sort one encounters in connection with Lady Isabel and the Elfin Knight (there has recently been an interesting thread on that song here). Or stuff from Lloyd trying to argue that the song has its origins in one of the communist countries whose regimes so admired.

I don't think anything I have said invalidates the collecting work done by Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie or renders their lives 'wasted'. I think it might be just a tad over-dramatic to see it this way.

I found a Henry Boardman song on Spotify. He plays that old traditional English instrument - the banjo! And not particularly well.

To Guest (4.37) The "why" is tricky. The Americans devised the term 'the intentional fallacy' to describe problems in this area; the French pronounced that the author was dead not long afterwards. There are two points here, I think. First one can never know for sure what a person 'intended' and secondly,

To Jack: I agree with a lot of what you have said.

And I have now promised myself not to go round this particular circle again.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 08:48 AM

I see I missed out the part after 'secondly', so

and secondly, no song has 'content' to be neatly decoded in some sort of uncontroversial right/wrong manner; all we can offer are interpretations which will always reflect our own social contexts. Vic Gammon is quite good on all this. "In that I fashion something out of these materials, I do that in terms of my own cultural and historical
perspectives. Future writers with different perspectives might find different things to write about in these same materials. We cannot escape being historically constituted subjects. " (From his book on drink, death and desire).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 09:27 AM

From Roud's Introduction: ""... instead of asking "What folk songs did people sing?, we are more concerned with the question "What songs did the folk sing?".

Roud stopped at about 1950. In times to come Jack's woman on the bus leading Caledonia, with a smartphone as a prompt, will be part of what the folk sang. Part of the social history of non-for-money singing by 'the folk'.

I think there is an argument that my childhood experience of people on a works outing singing (probably) Music Hall and WW1 favourites on the back of a bus is closer to the folk's music than a folk club on guest night.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 09:44 AM

Our literature never questioned that the people created the folk songs
Child never dealt with folk song in general and was working from printed copies, some of which, he conceded might have been literary creations
Collectors warned against interfering with what 'the peasantry' had passed on
Folk songs contain chunks of social history, as you say - what makes them important is that much of the history they contain is not available elsewhere
You can go to military records to found out how The Battle of the Nile was fought, but you have to go to the songs to find out how it felt for a ploughman to be ripped out of his roots and sent off to fight in Africa

The difference between broadside compositions and the folksongs is not similar to that of an assembly line worker helping churn of cheap ornaments for the tourists and a whalerman carving a piece of scrimshaw - one leaves a piece of himself in his creation, the other doesn't
The pressure to produce the broadsides is, I have no doubt, the reason why so many of then were unsingable
An unsingable song is simply that - unsingable - that is certainly not and aesthetic judgement; in my case if is the view of a singer who has searched the collections searching for songs
I have no idea if you are a singer - I don't even know who you are or what your involvement is
I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve

"Using the mid twentieth-century term 'pop song' in this context is, for me, an unhelpful anachronism. "
I din't introduce it into this argument - one of the leading 'print origin' advocates did when he said these songs were made for money - somewhat gleefully, I seem to remember

If I have spent thirty years placing these songs into a social context and treating them as unique and am suddenly told that they were the products of desk-bound urban hacks producing them at a rate of knots I have been wasting my time - I can take comfort from the fact that so were the rest of my generation of folk song enthusiasts
I can also take comfort from the fact that this claim doesn't hold water

A semi- literate (if that) cottage dweller buying songs and carrying them home to his ill-lit cottage to learn, adapt and lovingly remake so he or she can then turn them into the gems they are - I don't think so really
It neither makes practical nor cultural sense
If we've found out anything in the last four decades it has been that people did make songs and they could make songs, my the many hundreds
THe singers called their songs their own, they identified with them socially, personally and geographically
They may have sung all different genres of songs but they discriminate between the different genres
The actually visualised their folk songs and placed them in familiar surroundings

All this, for me, identifies these songs as being what they have always been regarded as (up to now) - "the songs" or "the voice of the people"
It will take me a lot more than earliest printed dates to show me otherwise
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 12 Aug 18 - 07:00 AM

Going back to dialect poetry:

The subject of accents is interesting, not least because the 'folk songs' we have are so seldom in them or in the dialects of the past, in which old songs by 'the people' would have been sung. Some early recordings are sung with a local accent but that is about it.

For anyone from abroad interested in hearing English accents, here are some sites where examples have been collected:

https://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/BBC-Voices

https://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/Survey-of-English-dialects

On song in social history: Roud cites sources to show that non-literate people did own broadsides, they stuck or pinned them up on their walls, in the expectation that somebody who could read would call in and decipher them. (There is also evidence that musicians who could not read music would buy sheet music and get somebody who could read it to decipher that. But I'm not sure that this is mentioned in Roud).

The argument about ballad broadsheets being unsingable would appear to be undermined by the fact that such a high proportion of the songs collected by Victorian and Edwardian collectors appeared on ballad broadsheets.

'Localisation' appears to have been in existence for some time: nowadys we have 'glocalisation' as a term. What I have read about Lady Isabel and the Elfin Knight seems to show that. The fact that people put local contexts to songs isn't necessarily here or there in terms of their actual origins.

To say more would be to go back round a circle again.

Interesting discussion.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 18 - 07:39 AM

"Some early recordings are sung with a local accent but that is about it. "
Sorry - I don't understand that at all
The last major collecting project in Britain was carried out in the first half of 1950s by the BBC and it covered the entire British Isles - everything that was recorded during the five years was in local accents
The greatest indication for me that these songs were 'of the people' wa their displays of accent, vernacular and insider knowledge
This is why I believe that, rather than paper chases, it is essential to examine the songs in these terms - aurally if possible
The earliest recordings we have of English traditional singing were made by Percy Grainger in 1906, all in that gentle Lincolnshire accent
How the collectors transcribed the songs for print is a different matter altogether
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 12 Aug 18 - 08:04 AM

Sorry Jim,

Insider knowledge about an elfin knight? Somebody's 'away with the fairies' then! Sorry, could not resist that.

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 18 - 08:18 AM

"Insider knowledge about an elfin knight? Somebody's 'away with the fairies' t"
The Elfin Knight is a centuries old ballad, but even so, it contains elements of folklore that supercede the the study of the subject - they are part of 'folk' heritage, as are many other motifs contained in the ballads
When it comes to sea songs and songs about the effects of the enclosures, broken token songs eyc. - pure folk - as is the language
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Sue Allan
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 05:20 AM

Dialect poet/song writer I know most about is Robert Anderson (1770-1833) of Carlisle, sometimes styled 'The Cumberland Bard'. He certainly aimed to make money out of his poetry and song. His first productions were songs for London's Vauxhall pleasure gardens at end of eighteenth century, and were set by James Hook. Back in Cumberland after his London interlude he found his dialect ballads had some local popularity and was encouraged to publish them. He was keen market and promote his creations as the textile industry in which he worked (he was a pattern-drawer for a calico printer) was in a bad state in the early nineteenth century.
Some of his 'Cumberland ballads', usually with a specified 'air' like those of Burns, who Anderson admired, were published in broadside and chapbook form - for most of which Anderson would have received no remuneration - but most were collected into popular editions for local consumption, usually published by subscription.
Some of his ballads were still being sung in the twentieth century and were collected by Vaughan Williams, Annie Gilchrist and others, and recorded later in the century. The songs which persisted longest though seem to be those arranged by local composers in nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and performed at local concerts. It's a complicated picture and not one easily reduced to 'folk' and 'commercial' categories.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 05:35 AM

As someone said yesterday in another mudcat discussion "When something becomes popular, it gets monetized".

I can imagine a skilled Neanderthal singer and bone flute player being being enticed to a party in the cave further down the cliff by the promise of a belly full of mammoth steak.

People, including poor people, "making money" out of their skills seems to be a late 20th century (so in the this context "second revival") concern.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 06:03 AM

"(so in the this context "second revival") concern."
I would have become very rich if I had been given a pound for every time a veteran traditional singer or musician said "the tradition was ruined when music appeared on the scene"
You want to know how much of an issue money was with traditional singers - go find out how many of the thousand or so singers the BBC recorded were paid for their time or generosity - go find out how many of the performers bothered even to ask for payment.
To me, it is incredibly cynical to claim that people made and sang songs just for money
The folk revivals in Britain and America took place to escape the commerciality of the music scene and virtually everybody who became involved did so for free.
We had our professionals, sure we did, but the best of them dedicated their lives to the music, not their careers (I was a lifelong beneficiary of one of them)
What is a new (and probably the most disturbing) aspect of the modern   scene are the far-too-many people coming in with careers in mind.
The refreshing thing about the Irish music scene is the thousands of youngsters flocking in for the love of the music
Good luck to them if they make a few bob out of it, but the ones I know couldn't give a toss whether they do or not - they love the musc and that's what counts
If you want to see the end result of moneterising music you just have to look at how the Music Industry did a runner from 'The Folk Boom' and left us in peace to do it for the love of it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 06:16 AM

Sue

I think I read your piece on John Peel and so on. It was very interesting.

Jag

I think your last point may be right, and this seems odd given the general 'left-wing' thinking of those involved. Also the fact that many of these themselves made money out of their interest, ranging from the Lomaxes, who were notorious for it, through Lloyd and MacCall, to Peter Kennedy.

On the other hand, I don't think all music and song making would have been done for money, just as people today do these things just for the fun of it, or for religious purposes, say.

I think that maybe the idea of people doing it for money seems in confict with the view that 'real' folk music was passed down via an 'oral tradition'. Also maybe the idea of making money out of music is seen as difficult to reconcile with a Lloydian view that the history of 'folk music' reflects the emergence of new 'classes' within society as for example when the feudal system began to decline and so on.

The question also arises (semi-seriously) of whether a nice song collector visiting to take down whatever you sing and showing an interest in it is in some sense similar to the party lower down the cliff.

My view is that 'personal' and 'commercial' uses of music probably interacted. The fact of non-literate people pasting up ballad sheets in their houses seems to suggest that even the artefacts connected with commercial song-writing were seen as desirable, as well as the songs themselves.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 06:46 AM

Also I suppose some within the revival hoped that by singing 'folk songs' of a political nature they would advance the cause of the left, so they did it for nothing. And maybe felt that stuff not done for money was in some sense symbolic of anti-establishment beliefs?

On the other hand, it does seem clear that selling ballads for money was a strategy of trade unions and organised labour going back at least to the early 20th century. I have a book by Roy Palmer with some examples.

Complicated topic.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 06:47 AM

Not attempting any 'prods' here.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 06:57 AM

Wrong again
The left never had any problem with making money from performing
The problem came when people like Kennedy bagan copyrighting and selling it
MacColl (correct spelling) and Seeger earned money as performers - that could have been much richer had they sold out to the big boys
The only big money came from a love song Ewan wrote for Peggy which was taken up nearly twenty years later
Ewan and Peggy devoted their lives to working with less experienced for free
They opened their home and library to people like me weekly for nearly ten years - while the superstars were working away at their own careers
Even the hundreds of songs they made were handed out on request
Bert earned his money as a jobbing researcher, broadcaster and writer

Can't speak for Lomax but I suspect that there are as many Urban Legends and Chinese Whispers about him as there are about MacColl

Kennedy was the only shark in the bucket - he ripped of singers and the taxpayers and he attempted to copyright the material he collected - a thoroughly bad caharcter
He got away with his behaviour because he had friends in high places
   
I'm afraid your obvious lack of knowledge of the folk scene has given you all the prejudices that bedevilled and soured the folk scene for so long

There used to be a very telling joke doing the rounds - "how do you MAKE $1,000,000 from folk music - start ofF with $2,000,000"

Please don't lower this discussion to folkie backbiting
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 07:09 AM

Mist a bbit
None of this had anything to do with "anti-establishment belief"
Making folk song profit free gave people like me (an electrician) a voice I would not have otherwise had - the chance to become a creative artist
After nearly sixty years at it, it still fills my life with pleasure and recent events have guaranteed that the people we met, recorded and worked with in the form of recordings and documentation will still be listened to long after we're gone
That is the only and the best payment we could ever hope for
THere's not to many people in our position who can say that
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 07:11 AM

My view is that 'personal' and 'commercial' uses of music probably interacted.

I think that in the past, as now, music for local dancing (not just traditional) was often provided by people with days jobs who also played recreationally and may have done a bit of busking at the markets.

Somewhere on the web (I though it was Village Music Project but I can't find it now - can anyone point to it?) is a transcript of the diary of an early 19th century jobbing hand-loom weaver and fiddle player which includes how much he earned from different sources.

Paying a singer for performance was presumanly less common and probably more commercially promoted. But I thought we were talking about the creators of songs sung non-commercially by 'the folk'.

I my experience sour words about people 'making money' (including from some of my friends) come from left of centre people who have secure jobs or pensions rather than those getting by on short term work or 'the gig economy'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 07:24 AM

In that last sentence I guess I am partially agreeing with Jim. The 'making money' comments mainly come from armchair socialists.

Where I don't follow Jim is how it is OK for a shepherd make a few bob playing for a dance but not for a poet to get something for his efforts if there is market for them.

Related to that (but not directed at Jim's comments) I think when it comes to creative output there is a view amongst some (but not all) on the left that the songs are intellectual property and that 'property is theft'. It's a red herring but one that I think may be lurking in the muddy waters.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 08:26 AM

Yes, Jag,

I'm thinking the 'property if theft' thought may be there.

Also I fully acknowledge deep unease about the way, say, that the Lomaxes (and, some people argue, Peter Kennedy) copyrighted material they collected.

I did read something from Mayhew by a poor chap who made a small bit on money selling verses to broadsheet printers: that sticks in my mind.

Is there also some feeling that 'work' has to be manual, not mental, to count as 'proletarian', or is this a red herring?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 08:51 AM

"who have secure jobs or pensions rather than those getting by on short term work or 'the gig economy'.
You want to try living on a state pension
I do so out of necessity - the 'giggers' do so out of personal choice and most of them also hold down 'day jobs'
This is getting somewhat personal
The left wre the saviour of our folk songs because by and larg they recognised it as 'The Voice of the People'
Sharp was a Fabian Socialist, the current revival was launched by the Workers Music Association - later to become 'Topic Records'
MacColl was singing for pennies from a Manchester cinema queue and went on to help form a breadline agit-prop Theatre - (probably the best in British history) and became a playwright feted by Shaw, Yeats and many of the leading literary figures
He, Peggy, Bert Lloyd and others went on to launch the second folk revival which filled so many lives with pleasure and a sense of achievement
The Lomax's dredged the U.S. prisons for their material and left a treasure store of American music - I can think of no greater contributor to American (and world-wide culture
His reward was to be chased from his home country by the Right wing McCarthy witch-hunts - singers like Pete Seeger were not so lucky and fell victim to that outburst of American democracy.
I knew many of those dedicated people and find this sour-grapes right-wing attack rather distasteful - they did what they did because of tehir commitment to the music - I never knew their politics to in any way intrude on that

I have no problem with a poet being remunerated - I welcome it - most are not
In my experience, shepherd, lad workers, labourers were not paid for playing at dances, most of them did so for the sheer pleasure of doing so - money has only recently become an issue and has, in my opinion, done as much damage as 'the Folk Boom, in killing off the democracy of the music and replacing it with a need to 'make a name'
This at the time folk song in Britain is sinking out of sight and needs all the volunteer dedicated support it can get

The best example of the old attitude to playing was related to us by radio broadcaster Ciaran Mac Mathuna, who scoured Ireland looking for songs and music at a time when there was very little money for such luxuries
One night he recorded an old fiddle player farmer in Kerry and, at the end of the session said, "Well now there's the business of a small recording fee"
The old man thought for a minute and said, "Well, there's no money in the house right now, but I'm taking a bullock to the market in the morning if you don't mind waiting"
That has been our experience through our thirty odd years of collecting - payment was an anathema, raher than an objective
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 08:54 AM

Is there also some feeling that 'work' has to be manual, not mental, to count as 'proletarian', or is this a red herring?

Way back in the discussion I asked, the first time Laycock came round, "when does someone stop being one of the 'folk'". Being paid for mental work may be crossing the threshold for some people. Where does management fit in? A 'ganger' might be OK if still getting his hands dirty, but an 'overlooker' may be debatable.

The recent phase of the discussion would seem to allow starting off working with one's hands in a low-paid job as being enough. However, and a reason why I have been probing the point, if Laycock is 'allowed in' a lot of other people would be.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 09:18 AM

Jim. It's not a 'right wing attack'. On my part it is attempt to understand why a composer 'making money' is enough for them to be dismissed out of hand.

What are the pre-20th century examples, or accounts, of working people writing songs that when into oral transmission. Everyone seems to accept that it happened but what is the evidence?

And it is not intended to be personal, it is just that you are the only person in this discussion saying things that people I have known say.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 09:29 AM

Hello Jag

Speaking for myself, I don't know where Laycock would fit in, or even whether he would on some definitions of 'folk'. Do we have to ask what Laycock's relationship to the means of production distribution and exchange were?

I'm bouncing ideas around and learning from the discussion.

And there are questions to be asked about whether even being a 'ploughboy' (an occupation that appears to post-date the use of oxen drawn ploughs) was 'merely manual'. Presumably some sort of knowledge of what to do when and why and about animal husbandry and so on was needed.

What I do feel is that Laycock and his like are important in the social history of music. And interesting for all sorts of reasons. I'm not really about keeping people in or out, and I'm not sure whether doing this just ends up producing a distorted view of the history of music. Which is something that works like Roud's help to guard against.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 10:00 AM

Hi Pseu

In the last few days 'manual' and now 'merely manual' were terms introduced by you. Complex concept (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_labour ) but I don't think it helps here.

I have watched someone work an ox plough (for real) and adjust the plough and harness. I wonder how much handed-on knowledge that has served for thousands of year will vanish with the last of them. I don't know about that ploughman but his community included people who could improvise songs, shanty style, and also sing songs borrowed from neighbouring cultures.

We think it 'must have happened' but if someone didn't believe it what is the evidence from England before the 20th century?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 10:07 AM

I wondered whether this should be the start of a new post but with so much that has been written on this one about Bert Lloyd, in particular in relation to his part in 're-writing' traditional songs that I thought that this was the place for it.....

On the Musical Traditions website there has just appeared a transcription of an interview with Bert Lloyd that dates back to February 2nd, 1974 when it was conducted by Barry Taylor. In the newly written introduction, he describes himself as being in the "Singers' Workshop, the 'beginner's group' that was closely allied to the Critics Group" though "I had been involved with folk music for around fifteen years and closely connected with the Singers' Club since the late 'sixties." He gives the reason for the interview as "We thought that it would be a good idea to have a magazine that would run parallel with the Club, featuring articles on the regular singers, as well as the guests, plus any other topics that we thought germane. After some thought, we decided that our choice for the main article in the first edition would be an interview with Bert Lloyd. You can read the interview (and people taking part in this thread really ought to) by clicking here
The interview itself, I find fascinating though not much of it came as news to me having read Bert's books and articles as well as Dave Arthur's biography and had several quite long conversations with the man when he stayed at our house after appearing at our folk club in Lewes.

For me the two biggest surprises came in Barry Taylor's introduction where he writes:-
" by 1974, Lloyd had become a rather peripheral figure for us but I believe that we still admired his work."
Really? Bert Lloyd peripheral to the Singers' Club? Surely he was one the the main reasons for the existence of that club with its distinctive approach?

and

"A hot topic at the time was 'folk-rock' or 'electric-folk' and I was really surprised with Lloyd's approval of this treatment of traditional music but I did not realise just how involved Lloyd had been with Fairport Convention."
Again, this comes as a surprise. If Barry had been involved with the folk scene for 15 years surely he would have known of Bert's strong involvement with the folk scene. I am fairly sure that we got full houses at the folk club for Bert's appearances at the folk club was because he of his reputation as the leading guru of the folk scene - the Penguin book, his own widely read Folk Song In England, the many Topic sleeve notes, the fact that every time you heard the likes of Carthy & Swarbrick, the Watersons, Dave & Toni Arthur and quite a few others, they would be singing his praises as an inspiration, an influence and a source of material. Why should it be any different that Sandy Denny and her Fairport mates should look anywhere else?
One memory comes back to me in writing this. Once when Bert stayed with us he was talking about a band that he had heard who he described as "a sort of Hungarian Fairports" and that he wanted to be able to get an English tour but he did not know how to go about it. I suggested that he contact Joe Boyd and he slapped his head and said, "Of course, Joe... why didn't I think of that?" I never heard if such a tour ever happened, I would love to think that the Hungarian band's Sandy Denny was Márta Sebestyén but she would only have been 17 in 1974. It would still be some years before I fell under Márta's magical musical spell but I still have her as one of my all-time favourite singers.

In his introduction Barry Taylor as links to another transcribed interview on the Musical Traditions website; one conducted by Mark Gregory on 20 September 1970. That's been on MT since 2009 but I am off to read it again.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 10:13 AM

"why a composer 'making money' is enough for them to be dismissed out of hand. "
It would be helpful if you could point out where this has happened
If we are talking about the revival making money only became a problem when it became the objective rather than an offshoot
Splitting hairs about 'by hand or brain' s a diversion - a folk songs became folk songs when the folk took ownership of them and made them their own rather than just repeating them - they underwent 'the folk process'
We know of about fifty songs made in this area during the lifetimes of the singers we recorded, nearly all distinguished by their anonymity - they were taken up and absorbed into the local oral tradition
Publishing them would have acted against that
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 10:21 AM

I looked in Lloyd again. Referring to the 14th century, when, he says, the break up of manors led to minstrels having to get a living from the peasantry, he says

'...from this synthesis of peasant and minstrel, amateur and professional, private and public entertainment grew the kind of song that remained dominant in the lower-class repertory for the next five hundred years, in short folk song as we most readily recognise it today.'

I am not going to get involved in more 'origins' discussions. This isn't why I dug out this quotation, but if (big if) what Lloyd says is right, music made for payment is deep at the heart of what he defines as 'folk song'.

Jim: I am fully aware of MacCarthyism, thank you. My parents were fans of Paul Robeson, who was one of its victims, so I learned about it as a young child.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 10:38 AM

>>>>>>>I don't know about that ploughman but his community included people who could improvise songs, shanty style, and also sing songs borrowed from neighbouring cultures.<<<<<<



Neither of these are unusual although they are quite rare in collections in England. I am currently very happy to be involved in projects with Nick Dow:

He recently gave me some wonderful recordings of traveller families he knows and one of the songs is of the shanty type although actually from a navvying situation, no doubt composed by navvies themselves or their families.

Nick and his friends in Dorset also discovered that a good number of the songs in the Hammond Mss are obviously Scottish and they were able to put this down to the visiting Scottish regiments in the early nineteenth century.

Just as a matter of interest where were you observing this?

A good song is a good song no matter what the source!

Regarding evidence of this prior to the 20th century, the best evidence lies within the songs themselves. The bulk of the songs collected in England since the 1880s are of the narrative sort obviously written by a single author, albeit at times using stock phrases and even stock stanzas.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 11:17 AM

" what Lloyd says is right, music made for payment is deep at the heart of what he defines as 'folk song'."
That is not Bert's point at all
Bert's origins drew largely from the writings of the musicologists who described the ritual and function making of our earliest songs
If you look at collections of minstrel songs you will find that they don't bear comarison with the stripped down, economic folk compostions.
The first reports of traditional singing wer by the Venerable Bede (672-735) who described cattlemen passing around a harp and singing ribald songs
This (I'm not getting involved...") is shadow boxing Pseau - you obviously have decided that commercialism was the motivating force, despite what our old singers said.
There is no evidence that traditional singers either sand or made songs for money - that is a very twentieth (21st even)century view of the tradition
Ji

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 12:44 PM

Jim

Lloyd AL 'Folk Song in England' Paladin Edition, 1975. Pages 104 to 105.

Lloyd is quite clear that folk song arise from a "synthesis" of "peasant and minstrel, amateur and professional". That is precisely the point he makes on those pages.

Lloyd argues that the minstrels of the 14th century were 'sardonic, plebeian oriented, outrageously subversive' and that when manors were broken up the minstrels found themselves 'on the road', with a 'new set of patrons, the peasantry". This is when, he asserts, this synthesis resulting in folk music took place. He suggests that the influence of minstrels improved the music of the peasants.

I think that one the basis of Lloyd's arguments in this section, it is fair to comment that they put music originally made professionally at the heart of what we now know as 'folk music'.

Thank you for this interesting discussion.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 01:08 PM

Folk song began centuries before the the minstrels - lllyd describes prin=mitive honey gatherers singing to bees to calm them while they gathered he hobey
Bowra in his work on primitive song gives gives a similar description
This becomes a depressing nonsense - I don't know how long you have been at this (you give the impression of not very long) but you are flying in the face of a century of scolarship with out-of context quotes you seem not to have digested.
This really becomes tiresome - sorry
Folksong as we have it, is the result of ordinary people turning their emotions and experience into verse
THey wouldn't even have had access to the work of minstrels - go compare the songs in minstrel books and the difference if stark
Thank oyu for confirming many of the views I and thousands of others have held for decades
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 01:24 PM

I suggest you read the first few pages of lloyd's booy to find why he believes folk songs existed
Jim carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 02:16 PM

Thanks for the discussion.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 02:28 PM

Hi Jim,
On numerous occasions now you have used the phrase 'insider knowledge' to state that you don't believe the broadside writers could have had this 'insider knowledge'. I think it's time we investigated this statement in a little more detail as it seems to be a crucial standpoint of your argument. Before we look at specific songs in the English canon perhaps you would put a little more meat on the bones.

I have in front of me the MTCD set of Walter's 'Put a bit of Powder on it, Father'. CD2 is pretty much a collection of parlour songs and Music Hall, however CD1 must be those songs Walter got from his dad and his uncle who got them from their father who learnt them from broadsides (as Walter tells us). Now using this CD1 set could you perhaps tell us which of these 'folk songs' you think contain 'insider knowledge'?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 02:50 PM

Walter dismissed music hall songs - it was difficult to get him to sing them
He went to great lengths to specify the differences between them and what he described 'the old folk songs'
His family songs came with pictures, characters and locations
However - water didn't make the songs he sang - he acquired them, first because he thought them uniquely important and later to sing them
I thought we were talking about the making of the songs - walter played no part in that - the inside knowledge came with the making, not the singing
We have Walter's opinions of tape - we recorded hem for twenty years
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 02:55 PM

Sorry Jim,
Cookie vanished. But you must have guest(sic) it was me!

You are absolutely right, we are talking about the making of the songs, so let's look at those 22 songs in Walter's repertoire, typical of the genre? and decide what might be 'insider knowledge' in them.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 03:50 PM

"Walter dismissed music hall songs - it was difficult to get him to sing them"
Looking at the Musical Traditions CD mentioned above it would appear that Mike Yates had no problem getting Walter to sing this material that he dismissed.

As an amused onlooker looking at much of the above I am reminded of the story of a well known collector visiting Walter and spouting off in a "scholarly" manner about how important his material was etc etc. At the end of the guy's waffling on Walter took a long draw on his pipe looked up and slowly said "Well XXXXXXXXX, I reckon you could be right"

I wonder if this guy then went away thinking that Walter had just given his approval to what had just been said to and about him.

Just a thought.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 03:53 PM

Thanks, Vic Smith, for the links to the Lloyd interviews. Very interesting reading. It's hard to believe he was speaking 44 and 48 years ago**

For me his answer including "If one's dealing with a thing on any plane of scholarship, then it's necessary to be as precise as one can. In the past, I've certainly not been precise enough." addresses the (mainly later?) criticism well enough.

When taking about the relationship between pop (and the variants he notes), folk song and art music he comes over as being extremely broad minded. Interesting comment about the exclusive blokes with 'spiky titles'.

I don't see any significant inconsistancy between his view and Roud's conclusions. There is just the difficulty of identifying which in the body of songs originated amongst 'the folk'.

I see that he includes the lowest levels of management, mine deputy George Purdon, in 'the folk'.

** Said in 1970 the bit about computers is almost prophetic.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 07:18 PM

"Mike Yates had no problem getting Walter to sing this material that he dismissed."
Mike was an occasional visitor to Walter - he had the ggood r=grace to ask if we minded him recording Walter, though he had no need to - Walter was his own man
If you are suggesting I am inventing Walter's attitude to Music Hall songs then we're finished here Steve
You no damn well what Walter thought if you've followed these arguments - I've put the interviews up verbatim several times
When Tom Munnelly fell ill, several of us got together to put together a feststshrift for him - Pat's and my contribution was entitled 'Walter Pardon - a Simple Countryman?'
It was based on the crass suggestion of a well known folkie who said just that when we suggested Walter could sort out the wheat from the chaff when it came to folk songs "How could he - he's a simple countryman"?" (more or less what Hoot has just put up)
Our article was based on what Walter actually said about his songs and their importance
Anybody who wishes to read a coppy of that article is welcome to a copy, thouugh I don't seem to have had a lot of luck persuading people to actually listen to what our singers and scholars ahd to say - it seems people would rather make up their own minds without any of that stuff.
You fellers have never broken free from the "You sing them", we'll understand them" world.

You know damn well what I mean by "insider knowledge" Steve - we've argued it out often enough
Your argument was that these hard pressed broadside hacks assiduously researched newspapers to familiarise themselves with sea terms or the use of farming equipment, or the superstitions which appeared in our folk songs - excuses rather than researched facts, of course
We had a long, stupid argument about chimney sweeps I seem to remember

Walter said what he said and believed what he believed - as I have described it.

In my opinion, some of the views expressed here represent the cause of the greatest gap in our knowledge, collectors treated the songs as artefacts instead of what they really are - pieces of the lives of past generations.

We went to collect songs, thefirst singer we ever recorded, an Irish Traveller, convinced us immediately that what singers had to say was just as important as their songs - if not more.
The singer, 'Pop's' Johnny Connors sang us 'The Ballad of Cain and Abel' and told us how it told that the story it told was an explanation why Travellers first took to the road - it was the centuries-old ballad, 'Edward'
Not a bad motivation for a non-literate Traveller, don't you think?
Singers had their own agendas and carried a great deal of information that could have cut across much of this argument - what a shame nobody sought to gather it in.

Incidentally Vic - Barry Taylor's interview, which I, as the editor of the Singers Club Magazine, instigated.
Barry was right to an extent - Bert had become a peripheral figure - by choice, when that interview took place.
He no longer sang at The Singers Club, nor anywhere else in London at that time, he had largely ceased broadcasting - a couple of television programmes - one on Doc Watson, another on Hebridean music - little else
I would have loved to hear Bert sing, but was never given the opportunity

A rather strange thing happened after that interview - Barry spent the day doing it and the following day received a phone call from Bert with a list of subjects he had covered he wished not to be used.
Bert had a fairly definite opinion of which face he chose to show to the world - he was a very private man.
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 09:11 PM

When Walter Pardon's name was mentioned previously I looked him up on Wikipedia. It says there he sang music hall songs and gives the title 'Old Brown's Daughter as an example. It also says that Pardon learned many songs from an uncle who learned them from Pardon's grandfather. It says that Pardon believed that his grandfather got his songs from broadsheets.

You end up not knowing what to believe.

Did somebody say he used his melodeon to work out tunes: this suggests that he was learning new ones from a non-oral source?

I think it would be interesting to carry out Steve's suggestion. It would be good if the songs chosen were ones on Spotify, so that those of us who don't have the CDs can listen to them. Could we have a list?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 09:22 PM

I got to a Pardon song about Cupid the Ploughboy, and I'm afraid it just doesn't do it for me. I've also found something on Mustrad which was interesting.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 02:57 AM

Walter had several hundred songs 'Cupid' was among the poorish broadside versions
If that's the only effort your prepared to make to find out about one of the three most important singers in England I'm afraid you're wasting your time, and so am I
I really can't be bothered arguing with Wiki researchers

THere were at least six albums of Walter's singing the best o them in my opinion were the first four
AS far as going through the "insider knowledge" thing again - I've done that and found it to be pointless
If people can't see the different approach Traditional singers ahd don't believe what I have said about what we have been told, I see no purpose in going through it all again
Personally, I find someone who reads an anonymous Wiki entry and takes its information above twenty years of fairly intense interviewing and who says "You end up not knowing what to believe" tantamount to suggesting either I am telling lies or Walter didn't know what he was talking about.

The overall feeling I am left with here is that people will believe what suits them what ever the singers thought and said and whatever past researchers over the lst century have discovered and written up.

If you wish to believe that ham-fisted hacks who's very title suggests bad poetry made our folk songs and that money played a major part in one of the most important and neglected body or creative culture in our history, please feel free to do so.
I've become rather tired of being waterboarded by people who only want my responses but are not prepared to give their own
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 03:36 AM

Walter had several hundred songs 'Cupid' was among the poorish broadside versions

So is it correct that he did learn it, he did sing it, and it did come from a broadside?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 04:21 AM

Who suggested sme songs didn't come from broadsides - certainly not me
The proliferation of broadsides at the end of the 19th century were part of the destruction of the oral tradition
Actually walter only ever sang for revival audiences with the exception of one song
I've described how he wrote down his songs from having heard family members sing them and put them together with tunes he remembered after the family singers were all dead
He said he never saw a broadside and as his grandfather was so poor he and his family ended up in the workhouse, he doubted if he ever owned many broadsides - just that he had learned "some" from them
Walter had an uncanny knack of being able tto date his songs by their texts and tunes
The fact that traditional songs appeared on broadsides in no way proves (or even suggests) that they originated on them
That is what the argument is about
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 04:51 AM

(last GUEST was me)
I think the argument is about whether or not Roud's book gives fair account of what 'the folk' sang and to what extent criticism of the book stands up to scrutiny.

If you think the Wikipedia page on Walter Pardon contains fatual errors why not correct them? At least two people who have made changes to it seem well read on the subject of folk song.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 04:59 AM

I'm only partway through the later interview but feel the need to mutter about some typos/misprints/spelling mistakes/call-them-what-you-will. Perhaps the worst is a reference to someone named "Peggy Singer".

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 05:00 AM

Jim,

"(more or less what Hoot has just put up)"

You have got it wrong again. In no way was I implying that Walter was a simple country man. I thought it might be his way of cutting short a one sided and probably boring conversation.

I might describe Walter as a country man but never simple.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 05:13 AM

Hoot
Your whimsical story of a collector imposing his view on Walter suggested just that - you certainly wouldn't be the first to suggest that
I apologise if I have your meaning wrong
"If you think the Wikipedia page on Walter Pardon contains fatual errors why not correct them?"
Because life it to short to correct errors on a web-page notorious for making them
If you want to find our abour Walter read him up on reliable site s- Musical Traditions carry several excellent articles on him by Mike Yates
I would have thought a good way to qualify yourself to discuss him was to listen to what he sang at length
Cupid the Ploughboy - you have to be joking !
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Observer
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 05:57 AM

"In my experience, shepherd, lad [land?] workers, labourers were not paid for playing at dances, most of them did so for the sheer pleasure of doing so - money has only recently become an issue and has, in my opinion, done as much damage as 'the Folk Boom, in killing off the democracy of the music and replacing it with a need to 'make a name'
This at the time folk song in Britain is sinking out of sight and needs all the volunteer dedicated support it can get" - Jim Carroll.

I think Jim is spot on with that. The idea that those part time local musicians had to have been paid in coin is current thinking transposed back in time. Back in the times we seem to be talking about people worked incredibly hard, the little leisure time they had was extremely precious. They lived, worked and "played" together as a community that was interdependent on the skills, talents and abilities within that community. So if there was some form of social event in the community they had to do it all themselves and those who played instruments did so because they could and it was their contribution, the only form of payment they might get, if any, would be in the form of food and drink. As Jim put it - They did it for the love of it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:06 AM

Speaking for myself I am trying to have a conversation, though it does seem difficult for it not to turn into an argument. However, I have read and absorbed what Jim has said, to please take it that from herein on none of my remarks are addressed to Jim. I can see when I'm not wanted!

Again, speaking for myself, I have expressed interest in the investigation suggested by Steve Gardam. As a point of information I also consulted the Mustrad page linked to some CDs about Walter Pardon and earlier posts on this thread.

Jag: as I understand it, Jim Carroll's main objection to the book by Steve Roud is that it adopts a 'use' definition of what folk song is, whereas Mr Carroll believes that we should use the term to apply only to songs that originate with what he sometimes calls 'the folk' and sometimes as 'traditional singers','ordinary people', 'working people', 'the people'.   

Jim also argues that the 'origin' definition has been the orthodoxy for more than one hundred years. My own view is that this is not the case, on the basis that a defition internationally agreed in 1954 gives a 'use' plus subsequent oral transmission definition, which is the one presented and discussed by Roud. Jim refers to A L Lloyd, whose view of English history was heavily influenced by a Marxist historian called A L Morton who wrote a book about England framed largely in terms of class struggle. Lloyd's book on Folk Song in England is, for me, something of a patchwork of ideas, drawing partly on Morton and also drawing heavily on the work of folklorists from behind the iron curtain as well as other sources. (NB Arthur's biography of Lloyd had some interesting information on the uses made of the old communist regimes of folklore)

On Walter Pardon, this appears to be a contentious subject as scrolling back through this thread, some discussion took place last November. Jim provided a list of songs which, he says, Walter Pardon did not regard as 'folk songs'. Jim's argument there appears to have been that even if Walter did include material in his repertoire that was not 'folk', then Walter himself did not claim it to be folk.

Naughty Jemmy Brown
Old Brown?s Daughter
Marble Arch
One Cold Morning in December
Peggy Band
Ship That Never Returned
Skipper and his Boy
Suvlah Bay
The Steam Arm
Traampwoman?s Tragedy
Two Lovely Black Eyes
The Wanderer
We?ve Both Been Here Before
When The Fields Were White With Daisies
When You Get Up in the Morning
Wreck of the Lifeboat
Write Me a Letter from Home
All Among the Barley
As I Wandered by the Brookside
Balaclava
Black Eyed Susan
Bright Golden Store
British Man of War
Cock a Doodle Doo
A Country Life
Faithful Sailor Boy
Generals All
Grace Darling
Grandfather?s Clock
Help one Another Boys
The Huntsman
I Traced Her Footprints
I?ll Come Back to you Sweetheart
I?ll Hang my Harp
I?m Yorkshire, Though In London
Irish Molly
I Wish They?d Do It
Shamrock Rose and Thistle
Lads in Navy Blue
Miner?s Return
Mistletoe Bough
More Trouble in my Native Land

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:09 AM

What is the evidence that any named folks songs or their tunes that date from from before the time of the late 19th century collectors where created by 'the people'?

Evidence. Not backwards extrapolation.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:26 AM

Jim,

In your post at 05.13 you seem to be confusing me with someone else.

Only the "whimsical story" was mine. I do not use Wikipaedia.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:32 AM

"What is the evidence that any named folks songs "
What evidence is there that they didn't?
Evidence not backward extrapolation please

Enough of this anonymous waterboarding
I have made my position quite clear
I firmly believe that the folk were capable having made their folk songs - nobody here has ever suggested that they couldn't have
I belive that to have been the opinions of researchers and anthologists since the beginnings of folk song research until a bunch of new kids on the block came along, redifined folk songs as "anything the folk sang" and claimed otherwise
It is logical to me that sailors songs fairly accurately describing life at sea and on shore might well have been made by the people the songs were about
The same with soldiers, and farmworkers and miners and rural dwellers and navvies.....
I believe that on the basis of talking to traditional singers who accepted the "truth" (authenticity) of the songs they sang
I also believe that if Irish rural dwellers in similar situations ot their English counterparts made the me=any hundreds of songs describing their lives, why not the English - a cultural deficiency maybe?
THese were not Dibdin's "jolly Jack Tar' pastiches or Marie Antoinette's Versailles tableau Shepherds and Shepherdesses - they were realistically described people in realistically described situations using genuine-sounding vernacular language and an apparent knowledge of country and trade practices and lore.
It has always been the down-to-earth universal reality that has impressed me about our folk-songs
Now - instead of these fingernail-extracting interrogations, why not tell me why these songs should be the products of desk-bound city hacks who were notorious for their bad poetry?
These discussions are not being turned into "arguments" - that would involve two sets of ideas - not one sid offering only one-sided stonewalling
Your turn now, I think - that's an offer to anybody here, by the way
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:36 AM

Jim's Wikipaedia comment was to me.

Do you people think Wikipedia's editors (or even its algorithms) would accept the 'I know one when I hear one' or 'the old singers could tell' or 'I can tell from my melodeon bellows' means of identifying the true folk songs?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:36 AM

Hootenanny

I took the wiki jibe as aimed at me.


Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:43 AM

"'I know one when I hear one' or 'the old singers could tell' "
The Wiki editors know nothing of folk songs as far as I know - the contributors should
As for the argument istself, it would be a fairly weak one of we had anything better to go on, but if you believe that the singers knew less about their songs than we do, we're not speaking about the same people
That is academic arrogance in the extreme.
We don't know who wrote the songs - wr probably never shall
All we can do is gather what we do know and add common sense - personal perception by thingers and those associating with them has to be a major part of that
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:43 AM

I crossed with Jim there, so the last post was not a response to his.

But it will do apart from adding that it sounds more like an declaration of faith rather than a reasoned argument.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:46 AM

Jag calls for "evidence" and so do I on a different atatement.
Observer states with a considerable degree of confidence:-

So if there was some form of social event in the community they had to do it all themselves and those who played instruments did so because they could and it was their contribution, the only form of payment they might get, if any, would be in the form of food and drink. As Jim put it - They did it for the love of it.

My response would be "What is your evidence for this?" I would suggest that there is plenty of evidence that, particularly in the dog days of winter that the rural poor with any talents were pleased to join the plough stots, mummers, tipteerers, morris etc. in their rounds. Of course they were doing it for the love of it, anything that would lift spirits in their drab existence was welcome - but so was the sharing of the money that they collected for performing outside the pubs and from their pre-arranged visits to the vicarage, the manor and the various landed gentry.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:46 AM

It's not academic arrogance. As Lloyd said "If one's dealing with a thing on any plane of scholarship, then it's necessary to be as precise as one can."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 07:03 AM

"It's not academic arrogance. "
I'm afraid it is if you dismiss impressions and can replace them with nothing else
You haven't responded to mey request - the same goes for you Vic - you've had your turn - mine now
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 07:04 AM

And the jibe about these not being 'arguments'. That at least, though deliberately "equivocal", has a touch of humour to it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 07:18 AM

I don't dismiss impressions. I am aware that impressions, including my own, may be wrong.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 07:33 AM

Jag: true.

On this 'insider knowledge' argument, I have a thought which might well result in a torrent of exasperation from certain quarters, but there are fairly obvious questions to be asked about the ways in which what is asserted to be such knowledge may have been obtained.

They sometimes used to use a metaphor based on the concept of 'observer interference' from physics in social sciences. Basically this usage refers to the problems involved in face to face interviews and experiments in which people know they are being observed. Another way of putting this would be 'experimenter effect' or 'observer expectancy'.

It seems possible to me that some of the contexts which have been described for the collection of the views of tradition bearers are those in which the collectors plainly had strongly held personal views, often highly policitised ones, about the nature and function of folklore though history, and that this may have affected the nature of the responses they obtained. This is without any question of bias, even if not conscious, in the selection and presentation of the data obtained in the interviews.

Awaiting tirades of indignation, but this is not intended personally. These are points that future generations of researchers are bound to bring up. I guess some of them have been brought up.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 07:41 AM

You haven't responded to mey request - the same goes for you Vic

Could I politely refer you to my post at 14 Jul 18 - 10:11 AM

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 08:05 AM

The argument has been that money has played a major part in the creation of our folk songs since the days of the minstrels
You appear to be suggesting that the songs were created for "the sharing of the money that they collected for performing outside the pubs and from their pre-arranged visits to the vicarage, the manor and the various landed gentry."
If that is your argument, of course I don't accept it - does anybody ?
Now - can I have some responses to my points please ?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 09:04 AM

The argument has been that money has played a major part in the creation of our folk songs since the days of the minstrels

No, the argument has been that someone having got money for the creation or money having been involved somewhere along the line of transmission or in performance does not bar a song from being a folk song.

You appear to be suggesting that the songs were created for "the sharing of the money ... I didn't read it that way.

You seem to be responding to things that people didn't say.

Please remind me what the points that need answering are.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 09:37 AM

You are still not responding to my point and it becomes obvious that you are not intending to, despite the fact that have assiduously responded to all of yours - no change there
I think Vic is quite capable of speaking for himself
"Please remind me what the points that need answering are."
Are you really not reading what I put up, neither has anybody else -
15 Aug 18 - 06:32 AM

I certainly don't accept Vic's " 14 Jul 18 - 10:11 AM" offhand dismissal even touches the points I made
This is really pissing against the wind
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Observer
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 09:55 AM

" I would suggest that there is plenty of evidence that, particularly in the dog days of winter that the rural poor with any talents were pleased to join the plough stots, mummers, tipteerers, morris etc. in their rounds. Of course they were doing it for the love of it, anything that would lift spirits in their drab existence was welcome - but so was the sharing of the money that they collected for performing outside the pubs and from their pre-arranged visits to the vicarage, the manor and the various landed gentry." - Vic Smith.

Well Vic that would cover from what we now know as late December to mid-January, and as we are mentioning "evidence", the evidence suggests that these were local men - not bands of wandering players - which brings us back to - So if there was some form of social event in the community they had to do it all themselves ......"

History of Morris Dancing

"'as with many folk customs, the origins are hidden in the mists of time and coloured by later perceptions, which may or may not have been correct' Alun Howkins

Over time the dances were assimilated by the established church, and by the 1500s Morris was being performed for Easter, Whitsuntide, and saint's days. In fact Morris dancing became so much an accepted institution that medieval churchwarden's accounts show that accessories were provided by parish funds. St Lawrence Church Reading, accounts show "Moreys Dawncers" perfomed on Dedication Day 1513 and were given 3d for ale.

The accessories mentioned included shoes and bells do you honestly think that parishes doled out money for passing troupes of itinerant morris dancers? I do not think so, those making up the members of the troupe were locals. Why would total strangers have to black their faces to avoid being recognised in a particular parish? Locals would. The 3d for ale brings us back to - the only form of payment they might get, if any, would be in the form of food and drink.

Besides I do not believe that there were that many Plough Stots, mummers,tipteerers or morrismen doing the rounds in Scotland, Ireland or Wales.

There is also documented evidence that traditionally the music for the above was originally provided by a flute or a whistle and a tabor or a drum, very basic. Other instruments only became common much later when people were actively reviving the art.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 09:57 AM

I was not speaking for Vic, I was saying that I hadn't read his post that way.

If you mean why not tell me why these songs should be the products of desk-bound city hacks who were notorious for their bad poetry?

Why should I answer it? I didn't suggest it. I don't recall anyone suggesting it. Does Roud? I didn't notice it in there.

I was pressing the issue of Laycock because you introduced him to the discussion and I have known for 50 years that his biographer said that he wrote poems that were sold and sung in the streets and I knew I had that description on the shelf behind me to quite from. I don't know much, but it is enough to make me suspect the accuracy of what you say.

I don't know the background of all the broadside writers, neither do you or anyone else. So we don't know if there were people similar to Laycock (and maybe the Muxton carter who is described in a quote in Roud's book) going back through the centuries.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 10:27 AM

Observer. Pace egging would extend it to Easter time. But it was instrumantalists I was thinking of.

For example the weaver Richard Ryley who's diary for 1862 is at http://www.village-music-project.org.uk/?page_id=141

See for example May 1 to May 3 Or this:

July 7th. No work. In the Afternoon went with four others on a playing excursion, to the Crook’s House first 3d. Then to Gledstone Hall, where after playing for some time we were very genteely informed that they could not give us anything. I think they must be very Poor!. Then to the Poor Gardener who very cheerfully gave us 4d. then to Marton Scar, 6d. Thomas Hunter Esq. Stainton; 3s. Stainton Hall 1s. Ingthorpe Grange 3d. Marton House, East, 6d. Then to West Marton where we got about 4s. more, On dividing we had 2s. 1d. Each.

He also gives details of his income from weaving and of his costs of living.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 10:30 AM

"Why should I answer it? I didn't suggest it. I don't recall anyone suggesting it. Does Roud?"
Stever Gardham, who has featured largely in all these arguments ahd clamed that 90% plus originated this way - you can't really have missed this
Roud only says a"a high percentage" and does not commit himself to a specific figure.
Few of Laycock's songs entered into the tradition - I put him up as somebody from a working background who was capable of making songs/poems.
My question remains - if working people were capable of making songs, why didn't they make our folk songs?
That is the question everybody is avoiding like the plague
I have been somewhat underwhelmed at the response to my offer of posting off our article on Walter Pardon - it seems people, (you included) woould rather talk about Walter without knowing what he had to say
I am going to ask Joe Offer to link to the article so at least we have the voice of a Traditional singer in this battle of academics and researchers
Pity I have to, but that seems par for the course nowadays
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 10:36 AM

Jag wrote (with reference to the Taylor/Lloyd interview) wrote:-

Interesting comment about the exclusive blokes with 'spiky titles'.

That stood out for me as well. Is there anyone who would like to hazard a guess as to who Bert Lloyd might have been referring to?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 10:41 AM

No, the argument has been that someone having got money for the creation or money having been involved somewhere along the line of transmission or in performance does not bar a song from being a folk song.

I would not argue with that sentiment.

But the 'discussion' about commerciality also touched on Bert Lloyd's view as quoted above that we now call 'folk music' originated in a particular era out of a synthesis of commercially created music by minstrels and others. This came in the middle of a rather Mortonian bit about social change in a particular century.

I am aware that Lloyd was not always consistent in 'Folk Song in England' but this is one of the things that he said.

Jim has already responded to this. His point, as I understood it was that Chapter One of Lloyd's book is a better reflection of what Lloyd thought folk music was. Jim expressed a view that minstrel songs of that century were nothing like folk music. Jim also referred to the point as 'shadow boxing' because it touches on the 'origin' question which I don't intend to debate any more. However, it serves to illustrate the point that when writing that particular chapter Lloyd did not seem overly concerned that 'folk music' had commercially produced material at the heart of its origins.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 10:51 AM

"No, the argument has been that someone having got money"
No - the argument has always been about the origins of folk songs and their uniqueness
You need to read the full thread
Nobody has ever argued that people didn't make money from the songs - we spent thirty years recording a ballad seller who sold his father's songs for money
If you are nt prepared to debate that I see nothing we have to say to each other
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 11:07 AM

"we spent thirty years recording a ballad seller who sold his father's songs for money" Exactly. I quoted you on that way back in the discussion when it seemed relevant but seemed to have been passed over.

So where do you get this idea that broadsides were all written by "desk-bound city hacks who were notorious for their bad poetry" I would have thought that those were the ones that didn't find their way into oral transmission.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 11:45 AM

"So where do you get this idea that broadsides were all written by "desk-bound city hacks who were notorious for their bad poetry"
Sorry - I don't follow you - that is what I am arguing against
Our singer to his father's songs from the oral tradition and gave them to a printer
The argument here has been exactly the opposite, that most of the songs in the oral tradition WERE COMPOSED for the broadsides and make up 90% plus of our folk songs
My argument has always been that most folk songs appearing on broadsides were taken

This is where all this began - a statement by Ewan MacColl at the end of a series of Radio prgrammes

"Well, there they are, the songs of our people. Some of them have been centuries in the making, some of them undoubtedly were born on the broadside presses. Some have the marvellous perfection of stones shaped by the sea's movement. Others are as brash as a cup-final crowd. They were made by professional bards and by unknown poets at the plough-stilts and the handloom. They are tender, harsh,, passionate, ironical, simple, profound.... as varied, indeed, as the landscape of this island.
We are indebted to the Harry Coxes and Phil Tanners, to Colm Keane and Maggie MaccDonagh, to Belle Stewart and Jessie Murray and to all the sweet and raucous unknown singers who have helped to carry our people's songs across the centuries"

This statement was received derisively bt Steve Gardham who described it as "starry eyed nonsense"
The 10 programmes in question covered the entire folk spectrum from the 16th century 'Frog and the Mouse' to an anonymous Irish song made during World War Two - the entire folk reperoire
It has since been adapted to only cover the songs that were collected when the folk tradition was at its lowest ebb, but has wobbled back and forth to our traditional ballads on occasion.
That is the argument here
I really shouldn't have to explain this - it's all old argument
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 12:18 PM

I give up Jim. You can't be clear about what you mean. If you want someone to answer for a point they made please refer back to when they made that point and if quoting it use the exact words and don't paraphrase them using you own interpretation/misinterpration of what they said.

I think it's a good book. It is not written in an academic style - I don't think it should be - but it is precise and clearly set out. There is a good separation of raw material and interpretation. Previous work is acknowleged. Is anything significant missing from the bibliography and is there anything in the bibliography that is not referred to in the text?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 12:41 PM

"I give up Jim. You can't be clear about what you mean."
Nobody else has a problem understanding it
You obviously haven't bothered to read the thread
This has been going on for some time now and not a single individual has claimed not to understand the argument - congratulations on being the first
Nice cop-out though
"I like it but I don't want to discuss why"
Jim Carroll
I've asked Joe to post up two articles about Walter Pardon - if that is possible I'll be interested in the reaction, if any

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 01:31 PM

Jim. I have been following the discussion from the start. It helped me to decide to read the book.

I understand what Roud says, I understand what Steve Gardham says about the broadsides. I don't understand your basis for disagreeing with them.

Am I right that you disagree with them?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 01:41 PM

This thread has moved on a long way since I last looked at it. I've nothing especially original to add, but can at least clarify one or two points.

Pseudonymous wrote:

It was stated above that the hand loom weaver's lament was by Bamford. I'm not sure this is right. a) can't find it in online collections of Bamford's work b) found a book dated 188ish online saying it was taken from someone else.

Bamford was a special constable during Chartist times, some of his work seems to reflect a dislike of the movement.

‘The Hand-loom Weavers’ Lament’ appears in Harland’s ‘Ballads and Songs of Lancashire’ (1875), and was collected by John Higson (a Droylsden man who supplied several pieces to Harland) "from the signing of John Grimshaw". Grimshaw was from Gorton and was also the source for ‘Handloom versus Powerloom’.

The ‘Lament’ doesn’t have a known author, but it doesn’t read like the work of Sam Bamford, who used a more poetic style. Some of his work was published on broadsides, however, such as ‘Song of the Slaughtered’, which can be found on the Bodleian site. During the Peterloo period either side of 1819, Bamford was a hardline radical, if he’s judged by his poetry rather than his own revisionist account written later, after he’d fallen out with Henry Hunt and co. By the late 1830s he seems to have been more concerned with gaining respectability by distancing himself from the direct action he’d once espoused and from the Chartists in particular, and he seems to have become a bit of a maverick. Like many of the Peterloo protestors he was a handloom weaver.

Re. Harry Boardman.

I found a Henry [sic] Boardman song on Spotify. He plays that old traditional English instrument - the banjo! And not particularly well.

Harry Boardman was no Bela Fleck, but he was an effective accompanist of his own singing on the banjo as well as the anglo concertina (both instruments were around in England from mid 19th century, FWIW). Harry was a very significant figure in the folk revival, establishing an independent genre of North West folk song (in an area generally neglected by folksong collectors) through settings of industrial broadsides and local poetry by Laycock, Bamford, Waugh and Brierley. It's thanks to him that many of us ever heard any of that material.

So before dismissing him as nothing but a poor banjo player on the basis of one song, Pseudonymous, maybe listen to a bit more?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 02:33 PM

"I don't understand your basis for disagreeing with them.
"
Then you haven't read the thread properly - I have made myself perfectly clear over and over again - afr more than I needed to
Yous claim came after I explained exactly why I disagreed with them - that is when you first said you didn't understand me
Ther is nothing in any way complicated in what you responded to
"Am I right that you disagree with them"
Do you really have to ask that ?
Sorry - I give up - that is what this whole argument is about
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 02:51 PM

I agree totally with Brian - Harry may not have been a great banjo player, but he was certainly an effective one on certain songs
You seem to be too ready to dismiss singers on very little hearing - Walter Parddon being a prime example
I htought you were being ironic when you said it was an English instrument - many would argue about that one
It probably originated in West Africa and was developed by slaves in America
The English singing tradition is largely unaccompanied
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 03:03 PM

I never met Harry Boardman but in my early days on the folk scene his name was revered. Everyone who came into contact with him spoke well of him On my record shelves I still have his sublime album Trans Pennine - Topic Records - 12TS215 (1971) where he is partnered by Yorkshireman, Dave Hillary. I also still have another Topic album which he curated Deep Lancashire - Topic Records - 12T188 (1968) which were the first recordings by the Oldham Tinkers, Mike Harding and Lea Nicholson.
When I came to Sussex in 1968 Tina and I started a folk club within a few weeks of moving to Brighton. We asked two other singers to join us as resident singers at the club - One was Lea and the other was Mick Jones. Both were Lancastrians and both were at the U. of Sussex. Both spoke highly of the time and effort that Harry had put into teaching them an approach to singing and to song accompaniment.
It would be easy now to forget the effort and enthusiasm of some of these regional pioneers after such a long time. Fortunately, in Harry's case, there is a webpage that details some of his accomplishments.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 03:53 PM

Ha, 'Deep Lancashire' is part of my only link to a (probably) unbroken oral tradition and the influence of commercial recording - that one - on it.

I come from those parts, and Cob Coalin' was something we kids did before bonfire night. The sleeve notes give an explanation. In my case it was late 1950's.

The tune we used wasn't the one Harry Boardman used, but the words were along the same lines. 'Our tune' is not very interesting but suited to the primary age kids we were; it's about the level of a playground skipping tune. Harry's is better.

I left home and in the mid nineties asked some of my fathers generation if it was still going on. They said "yes but they use the wrong tune, they use the one off that record. It's spoiled it."

Our words were always fragmented. In the early 2000's I wondered if the old folk remembered them better. I said that when we were kids our parents told us we were gettig the words wrong. The response was "that's what they told us when we were kids".

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 03:53 PM

Greetings, Jim
I'm getting the impression you are not too enamoured with the MT CDs of Walter. I have a copy of the album 'A Proper Sort' but you mention several others. Okay, could you please choose one of the other albums, put up a track list for us and then we can all check out the 'insider knowledge' or you can itemise them for us and make it easier.

Desk-jockey Steve

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 04:01 PM

While we're waiting for this, Jim, straight question: Roud 1080 'Jim, the Carter Lad' folksong or not, in your opinion? There must be plenty of versions on your shelves and in various recordings of source singers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 05:08 PM

OK I will listen to more Boardman.

I found it 'odd' to be referred to a supposedly trad-style singer who was playing an instrument I associate with the USA (via Africa, probably). In fact it came as a shock! I had understood that people saw English folk song as being unaccompanied (though I am finding myself asking 'how do we know', along the lines of how do we know the actual origins of any particular song? I was indeed being ironic when I referred to the instrument as British.

Specifically I have seen some brilliant claw hammer playing, from the USA.

I am happy to try more Pardon, and have a list of stuff not to try first thanks to Jim. But I note some of the sources I found noted that he sometimes went a little out of tune, so I am not the only one to notice this. I agree that there is a feel of humour in some of his delivery.

Happy to get advice and to learn stuff. This site is really amazing if sometimes a bit cantankerous.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:02 PM

The 1862 diary on the Village Music site is very moving and interesting.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:08 PM

Harry was very much a part of the early revival in the 50s when English folksingers were experimenting with a wide range of instrumentation. He was highly respected for researching and singing the songs of his native Lancashire, and he influenced a lot of people who came along later. At that time he was the main representative of his county taking those songs around the country to folk clubs and festivals. Whether what he sang/played was 'authentic' wasn't really much of an issue then and all he needed to be was entertaining and representative of the genre and he certainly fulfilled that.

Walter was very different in that he was a source singer who had retained the songs from his own family and became something of a celebrity in the 60s as there weren't many source singers left who had a reasonable repertoire. Consequently he was much recorded by a plethora of collectors and many of his songs were sung by revival singers. I never actually met him but the Waterson family who were my friends often referred to him affectionately as 'Uncle Walter' so they knew him well and sang some of his songs particularly some of the Music Hall ones.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 03:22 AM

"I'm getting the impression you are not too enamoured with the MT CDs of Walter."
You would be wrong
There was nothing I didn't like about Walter - he was a close friend for twenty years and Pat and I treasured the time we spent in his company
The CD was not representative of Walter's own tastes it, but it presented a side of him that was part of his history
Walter had a phenomenal memory and as a young man he took in songs of all types that were being sung around him, at home and in the army
In one interview we did he described when his cousins and other relatives (he had no siblings) "went our separate ways - they went with the moden stuff, I stuck with the old folk songs"
He was extremely articulate and describe in detail what he considered the differences between the genres
He wasn't alone in doing this but he was certainly the most articulate singer we ever met

I've told you Steve, I have no intention of entering into one of your "insider knowledge" blind alleys again - you want to re-visit it, dithem up and link to them
We have been here before and you presented a number of excuses as to how the hacks would know these things - hacks who worked on the land or went to sea to gain knowledge of sea terms and practices, or those who "might have moved in from having worked in the countryside to work on the land", or had "researched newspapers to get the knowledge contained in folk songs" (I'm paraphrasing this but I'll dig them out if you insist)
None of this came with evidence of hacks actually doing this - it was a knee-jerk response to me pointing out that our songs are full of such insights - that, for me, is what separates them from the pastiche and that is why the singers believed them.
Both Walter and Tom Lenihan compared their songs to the modern genres in these terms.
There are many dozens of examples of country lore in the ballads, before folklore became a research discipline and some of these examples occur in the songs; a killer stepping over his victim and causing it to bleed occurs in several Irish murder ballads; searching for a drowned person by floating candles is another example.

When Tom Lenihan and others said, "That's a true song", they didn't mean that it happened, but that it rang bells in their own lives.
It would take a skilled social historian or an assiduously researching writer to gain that level of conviction
You can try to take that belief away from working people as you have attempted to take away the authorship of the songs if you wish, but you'll have to provide far more than excuses

You have never explained how bad poets could possibly have made so may good songs (maybe you don't believe they aren't good songs)
You went through a whole string of excuses for that
First, "hacks" didn't really mean bad poets, then "a school of good ones among the hacks".... anything rather than the folk might have made folk songs
You have paid lip-service to the two-way street coposistion that MacColl described in the Song Carriers and which you treated with so much disdain, but there is no sign that this is any more than lip-service.

Once again you are insisting that I passively accept your continual grilling yet not one of you have had the courtesy to answer my arguments with anything resembling a reasonably articulate answer
Who do you think you are, a CIA interrogation team

One more time.
I have made my position quite clear
I firmly believe that the folk were capable having made their folk songs - nobody here has ever suggested that they couldn't have
I belive that to have been the opinions of researchers and anthologists since the beginnings of folk song research until a bunch of new kids on the block came along, redifined folk songs as "anything the folk sang" and claimed otherwise
It is logical to me that sailors songs fairly accurately describing life at sea and on shore might well have been made by the people the songs were about
The same with soldiers, and farmworkers and miners and rural dwellers and navvies.....
I believe that on the basis of talking to traditional singers who accepted the "truth" (authenticity) of the songs they sang
I also believe that if Irish rural dwellers in similar situations ot their English counterparts made the me=any hundreds of songs describing their lives, why not the English - a cultural deficiency maybe?
THese were not Dibdin's "jolly Jack Tar' pastiches or Marie Antoinette's Versailles tableau Shepherds and Shepherdesses - they were realistically described people in realistically described situations using genuine-sounding vernacular language and an apparent knowledge of country and trade practices and lore.
It has always been the down-to-earth universal reality that has impressed me about our folk-songs
Now - instead of these fingernail-extracting interrogations, why not tell me why these songs should be the products of desk-bound city hacks who were notorious for their bad poetry?

Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 03:27 AM

Jim Carroll send me two articles that I'm assuming that he wrote - or maybe he and Pat wrote them. He said they're too long to post at Mudcat. But they're very interesting, so I hope I can figure out a way to post them at Mudcat sometime. Here they are:

http://www.joe-offer.com/MudcatGraphics/Articles/A_Simple_Countryman.doc (great Walter Pardon article)

http://www.joe-offer.com/MudcatGraphics/Articles/Folksong_by_any_other_name.doc

Let me know if these links work.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 03:31 AM

" and became something of a celebrity in the 60s as there weren't many source singers left who had a reasonable repertoire."
I find this incredibly derogatory
If Walter had appeared at the beginning of the revival he would have been considered an important singer, for the size of his repertoire, for his skill at singing them and for his understand of them
Suggesting that he was important only because there were so fer of them is downright insulting
What the hell are you on Steve - are you maligning the singers as well as the scholars?
THe music hall songs sung by the Watersons were a reflection of their (poor, in my opinion) taste
When the club scene was at its most healthy nobody bothered with them because there were far better ones available
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 03:35 AM

I was going to say that for the Cob Coalin' song Harry probably was a 'source singer' but the mudcat thread on it quotes him as saying he collected it from local children.

He gave a new lease of life, amongst an adult audience, to a song that had survived by oral transmission amongst children for at least 50 years having, the consensus seems to be, originated as a mainly adult pace-egging song.

Most of his other songs had already died, some having had an initially short life as topical broadsides.

How long have people been doing that? Did music hall performers do the same?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 03:56 AM

A Folk Song ... by Any Other Name

Just trying to be helpful.

(Joe links need a password. Do I have to join?)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 04:10 AM

Thanks Joe - they both download nicely
I wrote the 'Other Name article', 'Countryman' was a joint effort
"Joe links need a password."
I didn't realise they did - you probably will have to joun but don't forget the vaccination against infection if you do!!
Thanks for putting up a usable link - I couldn't find it earlier
If you want the Countryman article you will have to let me have an e-mail address and I'll post it
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 06:11 AM

>>>>>>I firmly believe that the folk were capable having made their folk songs - nobody here has ever suggested that they couldn't have<<<<<

So why do you keep posting it?

>>>>>>>opinions of researchers and anthologists<<<<<<

More anthologists than researchers and most of these were simply regurgitating romantic notions without any foundation (in my opinion) As I said earlier Sharp was a collector and anthologist, not a folksong scholar. If you believe he was a folksong scholar present some evidence.

>>>>>>why not tell me why these songs should be the products of desk-bound city hacks who were notorious for their bad poetry?<<<<<<<

We have done so on many occasions but you choose to dismiss or ignore it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 06:28 AM

I have several times tried to post links to some of the work on Walter Pardon that is available on line, but each time the post disappears.

So I'll just suggest that people look at the MUSTRAD pages on Walter Pardon, which are very interesting. They include transcripts of interviews and lists of recordings.

They explain that according to Walter Pardon himself most of the songs he sang came from his grandfather's broadsheets. Pardon learned his songs from an uncle who learned them from Pardon's uncle. Pardon could not later find these broadsheets, only a manuscript version of one song.

The MUSTRAD pages also allow us to trace three union songs sung by Pardon to a printed collected of such songs which his uncle owned.

If we discount fragments, it appears that Walter sang 182 songs.

If we accept whatever definition of 'folk' Pardon was working with when he and Jim drew up a list of Pardon songs that were not folk, and subtract the three from the book of union songs, that would leave about 139 that might be 'folk songs'. But of course this method is flawed. So many dodgy variables.

On Roud's definition, however, even the ones from broadsides would count as folk as they appear to have reached Pardon by a process of oral transmission over two generations, grandfather to uncle, uncle to Pardon.

Pardon was taken up by the folk revivalists, and even filmed, and I agree with the comments that he must have found the process strange.

Personally I find that when people start swearing in what appears to be a bad-tempered manner, or to post in red letters, I switch off ('Pardon' the electrical metaphor) and lose interest in what they have to say. Not my sort of red letter day. It just makes me tend to sympathise with whoever woulnd them up.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 06:35 AM

The other thing I picked up from MUSTRAD and elsewhere is that there appear to have been some disagreements between the revivalists about which of Pardon's work to release on record. I'm wondering what we know about these.

The MUSTRAD site has a list of 78 records owned by Pardon. A mixture of Irish, American, Vera Lynn,. Quite eclectic influences.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 06:55 AM

"So why do you keep posting it?"
Because you - and everybody keep ignoring it in your quest to prove that they didn't
There you go with you "romanticism" again
One minute it's a matter of opinion, the next a dismissal of the work of others
You really have to produce proof of your claims other than earliest publication dates

It is rapidly becoming my opinion that a group of desk-bound academics (who haven't done enough background work to merit the title "researchers") have decided to fill in the empty hours by coming up with yet another new theory by arbitrarily redefining folk song to include the dross of the commercial music industry

Sharp not a researcher this is as much utter nonsense as was describing Water's importance as being because he was a latecomer and among only a few
Sharp, as limited as his work might have been by his times and the fact he was a pioneer, was a scholar who actually examined what he collected and came to 'some conclusions" about what he found
It is distasteful and totally contrary to the friendly and co-operative attitude I have always experienced from fellow enthusiasts and researchers, to see a group of newbies tearing down the work of the people who gave us the songs we have taken so much pleasure and interest from - unprofessional, to say the least

"We have done so on many occasions "
You are being disingenuous in claiming you have explained why you have the hacks could have made our songs - I've just listed your feeble, on-the spot and somewhat pathetic excuses
None of my business but if I was another poster I would bitterly resent your implicating me in your claims - nobody but you has dragged up ill-thought-out excuses
You appear not even to regard these hacks as historically judh=ged producers of "dunghill" doggerel

You are not going to either withdraw or explain your downgrading of one of England's finest traditional singers - apologising for doing so seems beyond all expectation.
Your team really needs a few people who actually like and understand folk song

MacColl once told us in an interview that he believed folk song would only die if it fell into the hands of people who don't like or understand it and want to replace it with something else.
In the words of one of his songs "It's all happening now"
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 07:06 AM

Eggs for Breakfast, minus another one:   Written in 1870s by Harry Linn. 138.

The Parson and the Clarke, known author: 137

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 07:32 AM

Just at the moment, I really don't care very much what Ewan MacColl said. I do not find 'MacColl' said it much of an argument.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 07:39 AM

Walter Pardon from Jim's mustrad article

Nine times out of ten I can get an old fashioned ten keyed accordion, German tuned, you can nearly tell what is an old song. Of course that doesn't matter what modern songs there is, the bellows always close when that finish, like that. And you go right back to the beginning of the nineteenth and eighteenth (century), they finish this way, pulled out, look.

How good a discriminator is that? Many of the song tunes, and a huge number of dance tunes, were written down in the early 19th and late 18th century. Are all the Music Hall tunes all 'bellows closed' tunes? The way Pardon put it not definitive because it could be a circular argument but the manuscripts might help us test it.

A box player explained to me about the bellows open thing when giving hints on how to work out the key of a tune from watching players, and it was mentioned early in this discussion.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 07:44 AM

REgarding Walter
Walter did have an eclectic record collection, most of the songs he new from them he remembered rather than learned - I aften astound Pat be singing my way though all the Buddy Holly, Connie Francis and Hank Williams songs that used to line my record racks
Mike Yates made the largest number of Waler's records and did his usual excellent job of doing so - they represented Walter's musical experiences perfectly
My 'By any other Name' article a was a response to an article by him on the Musical Traditions site - his title, 'The Other Music' sums up perfectly how Walter regarded his non-folk songs
I couldn't find it earlier but it should still be on the MT site - well worth reading.

We were given the sad job of clearing Walters house out after he died
He and his family were hoarders who seldom threw anything out - from dozens of blunt scythe blades, to the same number of old cut-throat razors going back two generations.
Nowhere did we come across old songbooks or broadsides
What we did inherit was two of his notebooks in which he systematically listed and wrote out the words of his family's "old folk" songs - fascinating and revealing
WE still have his old gramophone and some of his records on display in our home

Can I make something quite clear
Walter never worked to any "definition" - he instinctively knew what was what in the songs he knew and was outspoken in saying so - though he never argued with people about his opinions
He did occasionally tell us of visitors who came for his musicall/Victorian songs
We hae him on tape somewhere saying "I don't know what they want them old things for".
Walter and Pat and I never at any time "worked on a list" - we would never have done so had we been given the opportunity
If you asked him a question, the answer came poring out without hesitation.

For me, one of the most insightful things anybody has ever said about a song is, after he had sung 'Van Dieman's Land', he burst out, "That's a long old song, but it was a long old journey"
Walterw was a singer who wore his songs as he wore his favourite old clothes - they fitted him perfectly and were a part of his life.
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 07:44 AM

REgarding Walter
Walter did have an eclectic record collection, most of the songs he new from them he remembered rather than learned - I aften astound Pat be singing my way though all the Buddy Holly, Connie Francis and Hank Williams songs that used to line my record racks
Mike Yates made the largest number of Waler's records and did his usual excellent job of doing so - they represented Walter's musical experiences perfectly
My 'By any other Name' article a was a response to an article by him on the Musical Traditions site - his title, 'The Other Music' sums up perfectly how Walter regarded his non-folk songs
I couldn't find it earlier but it should still be on the MT site - well worth reading.

We were given the sad job of clearing Walters house out after he died
He and his family were hoarders who seldom threw anything out - from dozens of blunt scythe blades, to the same number of old cut-throat razors going back two generations.
Nowhere did we come across old songbooks or broadsides
What we did inherit was two of his notebooks in which he systematically listed and wrote out the words of his family's "old folk" songs - fascinating and revealing
WE still have his old gramophone and some of his records on display in our home

Can I make something quite clear
Walter never worked to any "definition" - he instinctively knew what was what in the songs he knew and was outspoken in saying so - though he never argued with people about his opinions
He did occasionally tell us of visitors who came for his musicall/Victorian songs
We hae him on tape somewhere saying "I don't know what they want them old things for".
Walter and Pat and I never at any time "worked on a list" - we would never have done so had we been given the opportunity
If you asked him a question, the answer came poring out without hesitation.

For me, one of the most insightful things anybody has ever said about a song is, after he had sung 'Van Dieman's Land', he burst out, "That's a long old song, but it was a long old journey"
Walterw was a singer who wore his songs as he wore his favourite old clothes - they fitted him perfectly and were a part of his life.
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 07:50 AM

The case of Walter Pardon, for me, supports entirely what Steve Roud says in his book, that ordinary people in England over the centuries sang songs from print traditions and were influenced by these, and that later recorded music and music from the USA were also influences.

I'm not sure about 'starry-eyed' or 'romantic' are complete descriptions of what has been going on here, but plainly there is a lot of romanticism and I am finding some of it patronising.

What is plain is that this thread isn't going to be allowed to discuss Roud's brilliant book because some people want to tell a different story.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 08:01 AM

For a discussion of the major and minor modes in English folk song, there is a chapter in Roud by Julia Bishop. I believe her view is that most English folk tunes were in major modes. It was said that collectors and revivalists liked the minor modes precisely because they felt less usual. Assuming that a song ends on the home note, bellows closed would be major, bellows open minor.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 08:32 AM

"that ordinary people in England over the centuries sang songs from print traditions and were"
Maybe some dod - Walter didn't
He vever sandg American songs and the songs he sang he gathered from his family and wrote them down
The rest le REMEMBERED from hearing them sung or played on records
You seem to have become an expert on Walter overnight - from 'Cupid the Ploughboy' to what he sung - or in this case, what he didn't sing
I have explained over and over again how Walter got his songs

He was an only child who spent his childhood and youth in the company of two elderly singer uncles
The family singing took place at home, at falmiy gathering for birthdays and at Christmas - there Walter, as a boy, only ever sang one song, 'The Dark-Eyed Sailor' "'Cause nobody else wanted that one"
Originally the singing had taken place at Harvest Suppers, but Walter was too young to remember them

During WW2 Walter was called up and served his time in various places in England (mainly Yorkshire) due to a foot problem
When he returned both his uncles were dead, so he systematically setout to gather his families songs, largely from memory, but also from other family members.
He memorised the tunes on his melodeon and they lay dormant until a nephew, Roger, persuaded him to put some of them on tape - do he went out, bought a tape recorder and did so (we have a lovely and somewhat hilarous description of his doing so)

Roger was tutoring Peter Bellamy at University nad passed on the tape to him who in turn passed it on to Bill Leader
Then and only then did Walter begin to sing in public
WE have Walter's original selections - they reflect his own definition of folk song perfectly

Roud and Bishop really needed to get out among traditional singers more before they made their definitive statements
In an argument once Julia once told Pat that she was wrong about Travellers because she (Julia) had "studied the subject at University"

I really am becoming a little pissed-off with this huge gap of understanding from people who really should know better before they make their definitive and (unfortunately) influential statements based on wild generalisations about a dead tradition
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 08:38 AM

People appear not to want to discuss Roud's "brilliant" book rather than to pay homage to it
It is an excellent account of the history of popular music - in my opinion it falls at the first fnce on folk music by redefining it and making it and making it both meaningless and 'ordinary'
THis thread has discussed in detail the problems that Roud's redefinition has raised
It is the first thread on the subject of definition that hasn't ended up a slanging match and has dealt with the subject in detail
I for one am grateful for that
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 08:39 AM

Guest: :D

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 08:44 AM

Jim

"Roud's redefinition"

If it makes you happy to believe that, what harm does it do?

People can always read the book.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 08:57 AM

"It is the first thread on the subject of definition that hasn't ended up a slanging match"


I laughed out loud.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 09:07 AM

Unfortunately Jim, I don't regard you as a reliable source of historical information. I have to take into account when evaluating your assertions your own ideological bias, and also your track record of misrepresentations, personal slurs, part truths, and romanticism.

Sorry, but this has been a long discussion and I have, as I said, learned a lot.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 09:22 AM

"People can always read the book."
The review that stands out for me said "Look - the folk didn't write folk songs"
That for me undermines the whole basis of folk song
The folk revival went crashing in flames when people started taking the"folk" out of folk clubs and our guarantee of hearing a folk song was removed from us.

Irish Traditional music has been guaranteed a future because a handful of dedicated people built a solid foundation for it based on what the singers and musicians actually sang, played and said
The annual Willie Clancy Summer School (last months was the 46th) was started to honour a fine traditional musician, the first classes, talks and recitals were largely presented by traditional musicians and singers and that has remained the policy for four months short of half a century
Many of the old pupils and attendees of the events are now teachers as researchers themselves and there are literary many hundreds of young people coming onto the scene, some playing better than their teachers.
They can do what they want with the music now - modernise it, experiment with it, merge it with other forms - but the fact that a basis has been built means that it will never be lost among the other genres.
We wouldn't know where to begin if some bugger kept moving the goal-posts as this lot has done.
Irish people now know wahat traditional music is, it is presented on the radio and television most nights of the week, it is recognised as an art form, even by the formal arts world and it is now treated with pride and respect
Before the bankers ***** up our economy, asking for a grant for research was pushing on an open door (we were lucky enough to get two)
The fact that our County Library opened a website to make our Clare songs available is indicative of how "the times they are a-changin' here, as is the fact that the Council appointed two singers-in-residence to take our songs around the local schools   
The Irish Traditional music Archive was opened by Ireland's first woman president, the lovely Mary Robinson and he move to spectacular new premises im Merrion Square was honoured by the Irish Arts Minister

On a personal level, at present I can go out five/six nights a week and hear traditional music well played (that will probably drop to three-four nights during the winter months
Song has some way to go to catch up, but some of us are working on that all the time

It's not the facile boom that once took place, here and in Britain - it's here to stay and many of the musicians are now parts of dynasties - grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren....
That would never have happened in w situation where those involved couldn't find their folk arse with both hands - it was fought for y people who knew what traditional music was and how unique and important it was.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 09:32 AM

"Unfortunately Jim, I don't regard you as a reliable source of historical information."
I'll lay awake worrying about that one Pseau
You know who I am, you have been given enough to know what Pat and I did, you can read up on our work and listen to our singers - you can even visit the Library at Limerick University World Music Department that (somewhat embarrassingly) is to be named after us
I don't even know your name, let alone what you are from or what you have done
In then end, it's not about us but the singers and those who opened the doors to these wonderful songs
There have been liberal doses of insulting, demeaning and marginalising all of those to one degree or another, so I can take a degree of comfort in remembering that I am in the best of company as a recipient of your insulting behaviour
You appear not to have learned very much
I think it best that we stop trading insults before we close this thread - don't you?
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 09:40 AM

"People can always read the book."
The review that stands out for me said "Look - the folk didn't write folk songs"

Unless that reviewer (which review is it ?) has been taking part in this discussion why bend people's ears over it here.

If you want some academic arrogance then I will say that Walter Pardon's view about the tunes (melodeon bellows etc) lacks rigour and displays a flaw in logic worthy of a simple country man. It makes me reluctant to accept what he says about the words at face value.

That said, I hope people regard the interview as a valuable record of the views he came to base on his experience and knowldege of the past. Not to take it into account in a scholarly study would be remiss but to base a critique of a book on it is unconvincing.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 10:13 AM

I do have a comment on the book. It may be I missed something because I was not thinking of it at the time, but I don't recall a discussion of the relevance of solo versus communal singing on the development of songs.

It occurred to me when reading the recent 'Lord Randall' thread. That strikes me as being a very 'robust' song suitable for a serious solo, or with some joining in on the repeated parts, or as something like call and response maybe with boozed-up wags sometimes throwing in jokey substitutions. I first came across it 'communally' as the vestigial (parody or creative abstraction?) 'Green and yeller' as sung by Pete Seeger but maybe created for the barrack room.

Roud does mention burlesques and parodies comming back into the oral tradition not recognized as such. How much of the shortening down to a few versus that Walter Pardon comments on for Music Hall also went on amongst the folk to allow something that most people could remember and join in with. I have heard it said that one characteristic of the style of the Music Hall was that people sang what they had heard whilst walking home and looked forward to the next time.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 10:13 AM

Sharp >>>>>>'was a scholar who actually examined what he collected and came to 'some conclusions" about what he found'<<<<<<<

So where's your evidence for how he came to those 'incorrect' conclusions? Blind faith is not enough to a realist, a romantic maybe.

>>>>>>>a group of newbies tearing down the work of the people<<<<<<

Kneejerk twaddle. We certainly are not newbies.

Jim, I have not stooped to personal abuse since we were warned off about this. I have bitten my tongue on numerous occasions since then, but you have continued in your usual abusive way, and others are noticing.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 10:25 AM

I am guessing from your quotation style Steve that the Guest who asked about the ox ploughman was you. If so that answer is 'high altitude East Africa'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 10:29 AM

Thanks for the various comments about Harry Boardman - nice to know that his name still resonates, and that others express respect for a man who was one of my great inspirations. Steve is right, though, that Harry was part of a movement still experimenting with appropriate ways of accompaniment. The banjo idea may have come from Peggy (or possibly Pete) Seeger, and I can remember several bands in the 1970s using banjos to accompany English material. My point about the concertina was that, although it’s often regarded as being an authentic folk instrument, there’s only the scantiest evidence for it having been used by English country singers to accompany themselves, so really it’s credentials are hardly stronger than the banjo – which, as I mentioned, does have a long history in England, albeit in a different style from that popular in the USA. All the evidence from every folk song collector in England is that songs were sung unaccompanied and solo, with a few instances of vocal harmony here and there. Incidentally, Harry was also an extremely good unaccompanied singer, as anyone who heard him sing ‘The Flying Cloud’ would testify.

Most of his other songs had already died, some having had an initially short life as topical broadsides.

This broadly true, although ‘With Henry Hunt We’ll Go’ was still clinging on in public conciousness by the time Frank Kidson started collecting. Harry also said that his song ‘I’ll Have a Collier’ came from his mother.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 10:33 AM

More about Walter Pardon from Musical Traditions -

Stand Up Ye Men of Labour The Socio-Political Songs of Walter Pardon
This first one one needs a bit of explanation. Keith Summers started his occasional but indispensible magazine Traditional Music magazine in 1975. - 10 great issues before he changed the name to Musical Traditions in 1983 to reflect his (and mine and many others) increasing interest in non-English language traditions to include many, particularly African, traditions. Always perilous financially, the venture was eventually taken up by Rod Stradling (initially with help from Fred McCormick) and he re-launched it as as internet only magazine - and what a treasure trove that has become.
At a later stage Rod digitised all the relevant articles and reviews from the paper editions and added them to the MT website. This one on Walter Pardon came from the first paper edition of Musical Traditions from Mid - 1983. Curiously, the website does not credit the author but checking with the paper edition confirms my suspicion that it was by Mike Yates.

Put a bit of Powder on it, Father ... the other songs of Walter Pardon - Roly Brown - Musical Traditions Website 07/06/2000

Put a Bit of Gunpowder on it, Father More controversy ... Correspondence arising from Roly's article (including some from people who have contributed to this thread - showing that very little changes in nearly 20 years)

Review of "World Without Horses" - Walter Pardon (Topic TSCD514) by Rod Stradling 14/06/2000

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 10:33 AM

Jag>>>>>> to allow something that most people could remember and join in with<<<<<< It did happen but not that often. Check out 'Johnny Sands' Laws Q3, Roud 184 which is a Music Hall rewrite of the earlier piece 'Marrow Bones', Laws Q2, Roud 183.(both found in oral tradition).

Also the broadside ballad 'William and Dinah' was parodied by Henry Mayhew to become 'Villikins & Dinah' (both found in oral tradition).

William Taylor, another example, from a 50 verse mid 18th century garland version cut down by the broadside writers more than once to about 12 verses, then that burlesqued for the Music Hall and then several of these running parallel in oral tradition, the burlesque even reverting to serious song.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 10:38 AM

"Jim, I have not stooped to personal abuse since we were warned off about this"
I have given an honest assessment of your work and deas and have been fairly diligent in saying why I have reached those conclusions
Nowhere will you find personal abuse from me - hard criticism certainly - I consider the te subject important enough to merit that
The only personal abuse here is when Pseu dismissed my arguments because of his misconceived assesmet of my politics (pretty much as you did)
You for your part have denigrated the work of fellow researchers and have belittled the contribution of one of England's most important singers
Your claims of origins is brand new - that was my reference to newbies
I have abused nobody here, not even you ("though I have most certainly bitten my tongue)
If you can't deal with strong criticism go find a fanzine forum

"Unless that reviewer (which review is it ?) has been taking part in this discussion why bend people's ears over it here. "
Because it is here I first read it when somebody put it up as a compliment to Rod's book - go read the thread
It has been the tenor of this argument from day one - that somebody else made folk songs and the folk were only customers (one of Steve G's earliest statements)
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 10:42 AM

'high altitude East Africa'.

Hi Jag, I suspected something like that. Actually that is very interesting in that one very strong proposed source of chantey singing is via East African slaves taking their customs with them to the Caribbean plantations. If you read Gibb's new book that is a very realistic possibility. I feel a thesis coming on! (Not really, I'm too long in the tooth.)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 10:55 AM

"Rod's book"
Has Rod Stradling written a book?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 10:58 AM

I thrive on strong criticism, Jim. I just thought we were trying to avoid having the thread shut down!

'denigrated the work of fellow researchers' The alternative to that is blind faith and I don't go there as you know.

'belittled the contribution of one of England's most important singers'
I have the utmost respect and admiration for Walter's contribution, and not selectively. If we had met I'm sure we would have got on famously, swapping songs and melodeon tunes. You misrepresent me once again.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 11:00 AM

Vic,
That's not very nice using a 'rod' to criticise someone's keyboard!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 11:03 AM

Believe it or not, it was a genuine question when I typed that. It is only since reading it again that I realise what was intended.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 11:10 AM

"I just thought we were trying to avoid having the thread shut down!"
I am Steve - I can't speak for you
"blind faith "
I find that extremely insulting after forty years of research - on par with your "starry-eyed " comment
I have explained my reserved support of Sharp in detail
Please point out where I have insulted anybody here

"Has Rod Stradling written a book?"
More typos - you are exceeding yourself in your contribution Vic
Certainly not helpful
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 11:37 AM

I hope that was a joke to alleviate the atmosphere Vic
If it was, I apologise
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 11:37 AM

I hope that was a joke to alleviate the atmosphere Vic
If it was, I apologise
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 12:24 PM

Jim,

Could I ask a simple question? You knew Walter very well and you keep telling us he was one of the most important singers.

You have done much research in Ireland and keep quoting this in criticising a book about English Folk Song

Which other English singers did you interview in such depth?

As by your own admission you did not get into folk music until you were converted by the Liverpool Spinners in 1966 (therefore a newbie)I struggle to remember who was still around to interview.

N.B This is not a put down of Walter. I too enjoyed visiting him.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 12:56 PM

Vic

Thanks for the links to the MUSTRAD articles, and the background. I agree that this is a fascinating site. I've read with interest a number of articles on it.

I tried twice yesterday to post links to these and also to the Mainly Norfolk site which has something on Pardon, but for some reason the posts did not take and I gave up.

Generally speaking:

I am quite happy that a suggestion that a historical source may not be reliable because of ideological bias (which is a basic GCSE History point) is quite distinct from personal abuse of that source.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 01:04 PM

"Which other English singers did you interview in such depth?"
We met friend and a relative of Sam Larner and recorded a nephew and his wife, that was it really
As far as I know, very little work was done with any of our big traditional singers or if it was, it was never made public
I know my friend Bob Thomson spent time with Harry Cox shortly before hi dies - we have the recordings, which were basically Bob going over Harry's repertoire to find if he could add to to.
EWan, Peggy and Charles Parker recorded hours of talk from Sam Larner, largely for the Radio Ballad - we have those recordings in our archive.
We have actuality from the miners, mainly from The Elliots for 'The Big Hewer'
Ewan and Lomax interviewed Harry Cox at length - we have that   
None of the interviewers asked the questions we would have asked - it was frustrating to listen to them

We did some work with Duncan Williamson, but he was so intent on singing during the couple of times we visited him that is was virtually impossible to get him to talk

For me the greatest missed opportunity was the Jeannie Robertson book
Herschel Gower did a magnificent job of presenting her background but the analysis of the songs wa done by James Porter - as far as I can remember, there was very little input from Jeannie.

I've often wondered if the collectors on the BBC project ever recorded more than the songs - that would have been the last big opportunity to fill in the gap in our knowledge

I see little if any difference between the background of the English and Irish rural people to make a huge difference, except that they and the Travellers were far closer to a living tradition, which, to my mind, gives us a clearer picture how how one worked.
THere we got accounts of singing songs, how they were learned, how they were regarded, in the communities and by the individual communitiies

We also recorded details of the 'ballad selling trade, from a singer from a singing'storytelling family/including the mechanics of a non-literate Traveller putting his family's songs into print and the skill of selling them on the streets and in the pubs.

One of the most relevant to this argument was the making of songs to suit the events, as they happened.

I have no problem with the idea that we were dealing with an almost dead tradition here as newbies
I have always been grateful for my time at The Spinners Club, but I really was on may way out of the scene when I happened to hear Ewan and Peg and 'was smitten'
THye have been a major influence to my thinking ever since
Jim
By the way, Walter told us that he remembered hearing about the time the BBC visited hi local town, North Walsham - unfortunately they didn't make it out to Knapton

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 01:13 PM

Pseudonymous
Did you mean this illustrated discography of WB or was there something else on Mainly Norfolk? If there is I cannot find it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 01:21 PM

Jag wrote:

"If you want some academic arrogance then I will say that Walter Pardon's view about the tunes (melodeon bellows etc) lacks rigour and displays a flaw in logic worthy of a simple country man. It makes me reluctant to accept what he says about the words at face value.

That said, I hope people regard the interview as a valuable record of the views he came to base on his experience and knowledge of the past. Not to take it into account in a scholarly study would be remiss but to base a critique of a book on it is unconvincing."

I agree with this, with the minor proviso that the interview, the provenance of which I am hazy about, and here I do not intend to insult or upset anybody, accurately represents what Pardon said, which it probably does. The reported comments also did show, I thought, how somebody without explicit musical knowledge might respond to the differences in "mode" to which they had a sensitivity.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 01:58 PM

"It makes me reluctant to accept what he says about the words at face value."
Ah well - you makwe a mistake and you know nothing of your own tradition
The logic of modern scholarship I suppose
Your theory is built on the corpses of the work of everybody else's Steve - now that's what I call academic arrogance big-time
Walter used the melodeon ads a guide and that's the way it worked for him
I think if Mike were here he would be able ytto confirm that in most cases Walter was right, even though he was not a particularly skilled player
Mike discussed this with him and told him he was wrong atout 'Black-Eyed Susan' which he took with good grace (far more so than is being displayed here, I might add)
I nfind my feeling towards your 'scholarship' shifting from disagreement to one of nausea
Is there no-one you respect?
In different circumstances and with a more level playing-field of open minds, I do believe you would be doing my job for me
I find the silence from others on your attacks on an important traditional singer and a century of researchers almost as depressing as the attacks themselves
Where's the bucket?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 02:38 PM

I think you're getting confused again, Jim. You seem to be aiming that last post at me, but I don't remember saying the things you've accused me of. Perhaps it's me that's confused. None of us getting any younger!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 02:45 PM

'Is there no-one you respect?' I respect you, Jim, as a folksong collector.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 03:17 PM

Tried to post earlier
I apologise Steve - I did confuse posters - I should have recognised the style
I still find your previous attacks on Walter and your refusal to apologise unacceptable, but the time it wasn't you
I also find your reducing me to a collector patronising but as you did that with Sharp, I find myself in good company - I know I'm wasting my time where I have been "confused before' - it will probably end up in the same atray as similar requests for examples of insulting people
The silence of acquiescence remains a problem - does no-one care about attacks on one of our best field singers?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 03:20 PM

Of course they care. They just know that they are not attacks. This is in your own mind and nowhere else. Read my post of 10.58 please.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 03:29 PM

Hootenanny's question -
Which other English singers did you interview in such depth?
was not directed at me, but I thought when reading it was that there must be many interview transcriptions on the Musical Traditions website with English singers.
Actually there were far fewer than I thought that there would be, though there are plenty of articles about them and many complete booklets of MT CD releases, but the singers in their own words - not so many. Nevertheless, I thought that I make a clickable list of them. I was very surprised to see that the majority of interviews had been conducted by myself. The first, clickable, name is that of the interviewee and the second name, the interviewer:-

Scan Tester by Rod & Danny Stradling
Sophie Legg by Vic Legg
Gordon Hall by Vic Smith
Johnny Doughty by Vic Smith
Bob Copper by Vic Smith
Reg Hall on Scan Tester by Vic Smith
Bob Lewis by Vic Smith
Tom Brown by Chris Holderness

Now, there ought to be at least another one because my interview with Scan Tester appeared in the paper edition of Traditional Music (No. 4 Mid-1976) . I thought that Rod had digitised all the relevant items for the MT website. However, that interview is available on the web as I made a .pdf facsimile of it for the Sussex Traditions database and you can read it by clicking here.
Looking back at all these interview transcription only serves to make me feel guilty about all the interviews that I made that are waiting for transcription, George Belton, George Spicer, his son Ron though all of these are shorter than those available on the web. This is not to mention the one with Scots traveller singers and musicians and even more with West African Manding Jalis. It's not as if I am not keeping myself busy!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 03:46 PM

Vic,
I'm pretty certain Rod would be pleased to accept the outstanding ones.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 04:14 PM

Whilst these interviews with source singers are very valuable and interesting in a number of ways they can only give us a small amount of information regarding the origins and evolution of the songs. Of course differentiating between different genre types would be quite easy as it is for all of us by and large. The vast majority of Music Hall songs are easily distinguished from the ballads both in structure, musical style, even content, but a surprising number did slip through the net set up by the early collectors. The collectors also tended to include quite a lot of pieces that were obviously products of the eighteenth century theatre, though happily very few of Dibdin's got through; too well-known I suppose. I had 2 source singers who happily sang me Tom Bowling and I know people even alive today who love the song despite it being an art song of over 2 centuries ago.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 04:21 PM

We are just about at the 12 month anniversary of the start of this thread. And of course 12 months since Steve Rouds book (remember that?) was published. Plenty of heat since then. How much light?

Derek

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 04:22 PM

Heat and light often go together, Derek.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 04:27 PM

Thanks for that reminder, Derek. I personally think this thread has been an excellent advert for the book. The content has been hotly debated and it has encouraged not a few to buy and read it. This is mainly thanks to Jim.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 04:42 PM

Vic

Yes, it was the discography on Mainly Norfolk. I liked the way you could click through to the full details of each disc, and then for many of the tracks to more information about each song.

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 02:35 AM

Two posts disappeared? Moderated?

Interesting . . . . . I'll try to be more vitriolic so that I meet the criteria of the thread.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 03:12 AM

"They just know that they are not attacks. "
That's why you responded and explained - of course is it!!
The silent acquiescence to of your behavior has convinced me that Limerick is a far better resting place for Walter than anywhere in the UK
At least here traditional singers and what they had to say are respected

Your theory is based on the denigration of everything that has gone before - from Child (who can't tell the difference between art and folk poetry, right through to our last big traditional singer.
No wonder traditional song is where it is
You really should be ashamed of yourseves
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 04:23 AM

Thanks Steve for the comments on my "something that most people could remember and join in with".

One thing I was pondering was collection bias making it difficult to test ideas about the style of the text and the tunes.

However, I am coming to realise that the 'folk song' that is the subject of this discussion, to a large extent of the Roud's book, and the interest of collectors referred to here is only a subset of what the folk sang and what was revived in the last 50 years.

The 'argument' here is about narrative verse sung mainly by (and collected from) solo singers.

It's not about things like wassailing, the singing of local carols, work songs, chorus songs sung in the pub or the bawdy songs of the working men and women.

The disagreements here are mainly about a subset of the genre which tends to attract people's romantic sensibilities.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 07:32 AM

It's interesting that Jag says 'working men and women' since our most recent discussion of occupations which might count as 'folk' and which were too far up the social scale was mostly a list of male occupations.

For me there is a lot in what Jag says in his post of 4.38, though I think that one has to add ideology to the causes of attraction. In saying this I don't seek to denegrate left-wing beliefs, as I would situate myself on some sort of left/green position, merely to point out that these beliefs may lead to selective vision on occasion. Consciously or unconsciously.

I know Roud does provide examples of pub singing in the olden days based on contemporary accounts. I'll check the reference for this.

There was a post raising the question of group as opposed to individual singing earlier in this thread, and I had hoped that the discussion would contintue but the thread got lost in the cross fire and I could not find it.

On work songs, I was looking recently at a picture of a weaver with a broadsheet pinned to his loom. It might have been in Palmer's book of history through broadsheets. But the chap seems to have been working more or less alone.

Work songs like chanties were group affairs, but there are already several threads on these.

But generally, it is precisely because Roud does give pictures of what working people through the ages did actually listen to and sing, a full picture as opposed to a limited selective one that Jim Carroll objects to it. And he does so in tones which, for me, tend to belittle the tastes of our ancestors (but not his, as he would appear to identify as Irish).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 08:19 AM

I was being inclusive of women and exclusive of the bourgoisie over the bawdy songs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 08:32 AM

Hello Jag

Thanks for your comments and clarification.

Just to clarify.

I wasn't really referring to your last post, but to a conversation a bit earlier and of course I was as much thinking about occupations of men as anybody else was, so I was including myself in the comment.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 09:14 AM

"a full picture as opposed to a limited selective one that Jim Carroll objects to it."
I don't particularly want to ener into a debate with you, given your somewhat unacceptable attitude to traditional singers (despite this somewhat contradictory accusation "tend to belittle the tastes of our ancestors ") but if you are going to quote me, please do so correctly
It is not "my limited selective" definition
Up to the publication of Roud's book, it was more or less everbody's view
THere was no question of lumping together all popular songs that were sung by the people as folk songs - that is Steve Roud's "limited view, which has apparently struck a chord with those who want to believe that the folk didn't discriminate between their genres of song
The folk song revival in Britain ran for decades on a "limited view" of what was meant by the term "folk song", magazines were filled with it, record companies like Topic and Folkways issued recordings of it and we had over a centuries worth of researched literature to back up that choice

We have always had a definition, as flawed as it may have been - that definition was arrived at by an international group working in a specific field of song and music which they termed folk music
THat definition has acted as a rule of thumb right up to this year when a single researcher decided to abandon it and make up his own, apparently without consultation - that definition has been accepted by those here, apparently without being prepared to discuss it's implications
Roud hasn't adapted a definition - he has turned it on its head and lumped all popular songs together in to one incomprehensible, unworkable mass
He has made his own selection of what is a folk song - certainly ont all the songs the folk sang are in his index - how could they be?
On the other hand, why aren't they?
This is the great contradiction of Roud's definition - who decides what is a folk song and who doesn't
I don't see 'You'll Never Walk Alone' with a Roud Number - why - it has been sung widely since Liverpool fans adapted it as their anthem?
Can we look forward to 'The Birdie Song' or 'Viva Espana' being given one - again, if not, why not.
I read Bert Lloyd's book shortly after it was published and it inspired to lift the corner and look underneath - that inspiration has lasted me most of my life
Roud's book, as impressive as it is as a history of popular song, fills me with sense of deep despair and makes me glad I am no longer part of the English scene
Llod's book finished with the statement nobody appears to be prepared to face head-on

"If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 10:04 AM

Incidently
" And he does so in tones which, for me, tend to belittle the tastes of our ancestors"
The greatest belittling of our ancestors is to suggest, as you (and far too many others) do is to suggest they are not intelligent enough to distinguish one type of song from another
Since when has defining something had anything to do with "taste" - you can't like a definition into existence - a thing is what it is
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 10:55 AM

Readers of Roud's fascinating social history of the music made and enjoyed by working people will be able to judge for themselves, by reading the opening chapters, whether the way Roud's view of folk music is sometimes represented on this thread is accurate.

There they will find not just the 1954 definition that is sometimes referred to but also an account of some of the different views of what folk music is that have been forward over the years.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 11:13 AM

Which of course doesn't answer any of the quesions the book raises or solve any of the problems - the main one being that Roud's definition has no valadity until it has become generally accepted
Roud's definition is diametrically opposite to the'54 one which set out to define the unique nature of folk song - Roud removes that uniqueness.
The book is fascinating but it is not a social history of folk music
Assigning the making of the songs to the broadside presses is equivalent to assigning British Social History to the Daily Mail or The Sun
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Red Rebel
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 11:19 AM

Red Flag uses a folk tune, so why are the lyrics not a Folk Song

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 11:24 AM

Readers of Roud's fascinating social history of the music made and enjoyed by working people will be able to judge for themselves, by reading the opening chapters, whether the way Roud's definition of folk music is sometimes represented on this thread is accurate.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 12:47 PM

"Red Flag uses a folk tune, so why are the lyrics not a Folk Song"
Known author, established and unchanged text, no indications it passed into the oral tradition, has never been accepted as a 'folk song' - no more traditional than Happy Birthday to you' or 'God Save the Queen' or 'The lord's Prayer' or 23 Psalm - all sung regularly
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 12:51 PM

"fascinating social history of the music made and enjoyed by working people "
I thought they were made by the broadside hacks - you need to tell Steve they were "made by the people"
You need to tell Arthur J. Lamb and Harry Von Tilzer that 'Bird in a Gilded Cage' was made by the people too - it's got a Roud number
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 01:20 PM

The people's flag is deepest pink,
It's not as red as you might think,
Those socialists, they keep their wealth,
New Labour contradicts itself.

Then raise the salmon standard high.
Under it they'll watch us die,
Though Lib Dems flinch and Tories sneer,
We'll keep the pink flag flying here.

Look round, the Welshman loves its blaze,
The American chants its praise,
In Scotland's hills its hymns are sung
And Cardiff swells the surging throng.

It waved above our cow'ring fright,
When all our hopes were bathed in light;
Though Tony kicks up quite a row,
He's better than that Thatcher cow.

It well recalls the triumphs past,
It dashed the hope of peace at last;
They can't see the wood for the trees,
They search for WMDs.

It suits today the weak and base,
Whose minds are fixed on pelf and place
To cringe before the rich man's frown,
And haul the sacred emblem down.

With heads all covered swear we all
To put it down now lest we fall;
Come dungeons dark or threat of death,
We'll hum this underneath our breath.
Jim, thought you might like the above

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 01:38 PM

Jim,
I'm so sorry but your statements are becoming more and more confused. You change tack mid-sentence, you give attributes to the 54 definition that are actually not there. The origins of the songs are TOTALLY irrelevant to whether they are folk songs or not. Please go back and read the 54 descriptors again.

As I've told you before on many occasions, when the 54 descriptors first were put out for discussion, one of the descriptors WAS that the songs had to be anonymous. That was immediately shot down in flames and quietly dropped when the final list was published.


You keep jumping from 'origins' to what is accepted as 'folk song' by the 54 descriptors. There are NO finite boundaries as with all other genres. The descriptors are there as guide lines. Any given song might comply with 2 of the descriptors and not meet one of the others. It really isn't cut and dried, but hey.....we've said all this before.... round and round and round and round...…..

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 01:44 PM

Regarding Steve's extremely useful indexes. Professor Child tried to be inclusive and as he himself stated 'included a whole lot of material that was there beyond his better judgment. (For instance many of the Child ballads show no or little evidence of ever having been in oral tradition.) Likewise, Steve's indexes are inclusive. They include all songs that exist in the anthologies he has included. Had they been exclusive he would have had to spend a lot more time making arbitrary decisions which everyone would be able to disagree with. As it is thankfully YOU are the only one complaining.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 02:46 PM

Hello Steve

Could we clarify for anybody who stumbles across this thread that 'Roud numbers' as mentioned in a post of 12.51 correspond to songs found and indexed by Roud, and that one use of the indexes is to trace 'appearances' of the song in question, whether this be in an anthology or elsewhere.

Roud's book includes references to many such songs, so interested readers can look at VWML.org for further information.

So for me it is interesting to know that the Gilded Cage song was 'col
lected' in Sheffield in 1972.

I quite enjoyed it when Roud cited some contemporary witness relating to the music made and enjoyed by ordinary people in the past and cited a Roud number, leading to the indexes for those interested.

Personally, I am trying to avoid going 'round and round', however much it supports the sales of Roud's book!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 02:56 PM

I think we're playing quite nicely in debating the content of Steve's book and most of what is being posted is very relevant. The only exasperating part for me is when we have to keep repeating the same things over and over ad nauseam because someone has misrepresented what we have said.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 03:16 PM

"For instance many of the Child ballads show no or little evidence of ever having been in oral tradition."
Utter nonsense
THe most important repository of ballads in Britain and Ireland was the non-literate Travelling people
Burns gathered ballads, Maidment gathered ballads Buchan Gathered ballads
The Buchan controversy cebrted around what he did with the ballads he collected, now whether he wrote them
Now you're being spiteful stupid
This now becomes a vicious attempt to ednigrate the oral tradition
Next to you "all folk tales, music and dance educated sources.
And you accuse me of having an agenda

Please don't tell me I'm confused after you,ve just claimed this outrageous rubbish
Your agenda-driven shoddy scholarship becomes tiresome
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 03:40 PM

I can't keep up with this thread any more, but many thanks to Joe for putting Jim's two pieces on Walter Pardon somewhere I could download them. Fascinating and thorough - and I don't get any hint of the interviewer 'leading' the interviewee.

I've long been aware of Walter's tendency to drift slightly sharp during the course of some songs, but that doesn't make him any less wonderful a singer. I took Steve's earlier comment about the dearth of other 'source singers' around at the time WP came to our attention to mean that no-one was really expecting to find any more significant traditional singers at all by that time - let alone one this good with such a large and high-quality repertoire.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 03:51 PM

Joe?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 04:04 PM

Joe Offer, 16 Aug, 03:27 AM.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 04:07 PM

I think he may have managed it this time. It's a pity.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 04:08 PM

Sorry, Brian
I knew what Joe had done. I was simply attracting his attention to the abuse. Thank you for your kind defence. Of course I am a great admirer of Walter's music.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 04:21 PM

many of the Child ballads show no or little evidence of ever having been in oral tradition.

I wouldn't have thought this statement controversial, looking at all 305 titles and comparing those with the significant number that Bronson failed to find any tune for, or for which Child himself cited no examples from oral tradition.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 05:06 PM

Steve
> For instance many of the Child ballads show no or little evidence of ever having been in oral tradition.

Jim
>Utter nonsense

Jim, are you really claiming that all (or nearly all) the Child ballads spent some time in oral tradition? Some of them are as unsingable as a lot of the broadsides that you complain about.

I am getting increasingly frustrated by your arguing vociferously against statements that no-one has actually made and avoiding answering some very specific questions that have been asked.

We accept that Walter Pardon distinguished different sorts of songs in his repertoire, though his words that you have quoted seem to focus mainly on whether a given song was old or not so old rather than where it originated. But you have been asked to explain where some of them (whichever of them you choose) show evidence of having been written by the people whose lives they deal with, rather than by the "hacks" or whatever we call them for whom making songs was their livelihood or a substantial part of it. Can you provide that evidence?

N.B We are not disputing that ordinary people could and did write songs. What we are asking you for is evidence of who wrote the songs that were collected and that the traditional singers sang. If it's clear to you who wrote them you should be able to explain it.

While I'm about it (having been off the Mudcat for a few days):

Steve
> Walter was very different in that he was a source singer who had retained the songs from his own family and became something of a celebrity in the 60s as there weren't many source singers left who had a reasonable repertoire.

Jim
> I find this incredibly derogatory

How on earth is it derogatory to point out how unusual and important Walter Pardon was as a singer?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Aug 18 - 09:31 PM

"Jim, are you really claiming that all (or nearly all) the Child ballads spent some time in oral tradition? "
I see no reason not to claim that a fair number of them did Richard, do you have any evidence to the contrary?
I have been putting together a file of Child ballads in Ireland and decided to look up ones that made it to America
I have in the past week found Hind Horn, Famous Flower of Serving Men, Queen Eleanor's Confession, Bailiff's Daughter of Islington, Young Hunting, THe Two Magicians and The Two Sisters, all of which were got from singers who went to Ameriica just after the Famine and who had learned them in Ireland from old people who had learned them before Child put together his collection.

Sam Larner learned Henry Martin from Henry Sutton 'OLd Larpin' as a young man at the end of the 19th century - Sutton was said to have had it from his youth - you work it out

Thomas Moran, who probably had the largest repertoire of Child Ballads in Ireland, sang his ballads for the BBC in the early 1950s - he told the collector he had learned them in his youth from an "old, old man who had never crossed a cow-track" (never left his village)

Martin Howley gave us the only version of 'Sweet William and Lady Margaret' collected in Ireland - he learned it at the turn of the century from a non-literate old travelling woman

Non-literate Travellers we have recorded all got their ballads from old people who like them, couldn't read, some of whom had learned them in the 1860s

The non literate Scots Travellers have been the greatest source of Child Ballads - all recorded around the 1950s and 60s and all said to having been passed no by parents and grandparents

It is true that some ballads were never found but when you consider that collecting was never embarked on seriously until the early 1900s when the otral traditions were in sharp decline, it is hardly surprising
Go look at the Greig collection and see how many where
I have yet to explore the Carpenter collection fully, but considering when it was made he would have been ballads learned long before Child put his collection together

Please don't put words in my mouth - I never said "nearly all" - some ballads disappeared anyway, but the majority of them survived in one form or another

THere is strong evidence of Ballads having a strong presence in a largely non-literate oral tradition as far back as you can go

I get tired of this
When Steve first made his statement it was contemptuous dismissal of the idea that the folk made folk songs "starry -eyed naivety" was the term used I think - this included the earliest referenced folk song 'The Frog and the Mouse'
When he was challenged, he hastily withdrew to 'the songs that Sharp et-al collected and said several times that he had always claimed this and that I was "misrepresenting what he said"
Now we have leapt back a couple of centuries with a claim that ballads hardly appeared in the oral tradition
It's becoming extremely difficult to follow exactly what Steve is claiming.

Lett's face it - none of us know who made the folk songs - the evidence simply doesn't exist
At no time has Seve ever been able to produce one of our standard folk songs that he can prove to have originated in print - he has admitted that
So we are faced with two alternatives
On the one hand we have a bunch of bad urban poets working under extreme pressure to satisfy an urban market - despite claims, there is little evidence of how they composed, where they got their information and why they chose the subjects they did and dealt with them in the sympathetic, knowledgeable way they did

On the other you have a section of the population, largely non-literate (recreational reading didn't kick in till the latter half of the 19th century in the towns and in the countryside, very few working people could read fluently until the 1880s (less than one third
They lived in poorly lit, cramped homes and worked extremely long hours, sso the opportunity of learning from the printed word was minimal
Ireland has proved beyond doubt that people not only could make songs by the hundreds but it became a necessity to do so in order to describe what was happening to them
Also, the oral tradition has shown that the singers were capable of taking a song and remaking it into version after version to suit their on backgrounds and circumstances
If people were able to do this, it is far moreJim, are you really claiming that all (or nearly all) the Child ballads spent some time in oral tradition? likely that they made folk songs than the hacks did.

Steve appears to object to me tne, yet I am saying far less than he and others have accused me of - a accuse him of having an agenda - he and others have accused me of just this

I have made a point of answering every one of your questions - you have responded to hardly any of mine (I don't count pointing out typos or obvious errors responses)

“I've long been aware of Walter's tendency to drift slightly sharp or lose pitch during the course of some songs”
Most unaccompanied singers rise in the course of a song, especially the long ones
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 03:56 AM

Sorry about the last night's late-night typos there - Vic can sort them out
As some of you know, I have been involved in a project gathering Irish versions of Child ballads taken from the oral tradition
So far, I have access to well over 100 ballads and versions, all taken from country singers - so many in fact that I an now serously considering tring to get them published as a collection
If that is not proof that they went into the oral tradition, my Jacks a kipper
Below are two I am hoping to find tunes for - one gathered on the Wexford Coast in the 1940s, the other taken down from the singing of a servant woman at a wake in Wexford about fifteen years after the end of The Famine - more evidence that the ballads made it into the oral tradition
Jim

Fair Eleanor. (Fair Annie Child 62)

“Come, comb your head, Fair Eleanor
And comb it on your knee,
And that you may look maiden-like
Till my return to thee.’

“‘Tis hard for me to look maiden-like,
When maiden I am none :
Seven fair sons I’ve borne to thee,
And the eighth lies in my womb.’

‘Seven long years were past and gone ;
Fair Eleanor thought it long.
She went up into her bower,
With her silver cane in hand.

"She looked far, she looked near,
She looked upon the strand ;
And it’s there she spied King William a-coming,
And his new bride by the hand.

“She then called up her seven sons,
By one, by two, by three;
“I wish that you were seven greyhounds,
This night to worry me! ’

“Oh, say not so our mother dear,
But put on your golden pall,
And go and throw open your wide, wide gates,
And welcome the nobles all”

“ So she threw off her gown of green ;
She put on her golden pall,
She went and threw open her wide, wide gates,
And welcomed the nobles all.

“‘Oh, welcome, lady fair” she said ;
‘You’re welcome to your own ;
And welcome be these nobles all
That come to wait on you home.’

“Oh, thankee, thankee, Fair Eleanor !
And many thanks to thee;
And if in this bower I do remain,
Great gifts I’ll bestow on thee.’

“She served them up, she served them down,
She served them all with wine,
But still she drank of the clear spring water,
To keep her colour fine.

“She served them up, she served them down,
She served them in the hall,
But still she wiped off the salt, salt tears,
As they from her did fall.

“Well bespoke the bride so gay,
As she sat in bar chair—
‘And tell to me, King William,’ she said,
‘Who is this maid so fair ?

“‘la she of your kith, ’ she said,
‘ Or is she of your kin,
Or is she your comely housekeeper
That walks both out and in 1 ’

“‘She is not of my kith,’ he said,
Nor is she of my kin ;
But she is my comely housekeeper
That walks both out and in.’

Who then was your father,’ she said,
Or who then was your mother ?
Had you any sister dear,
Or had you any brother“

“‘King Henry was my father,’ she said,
Queen Margaret was my mother,
Matilda was my sister dear,
Lord Thomas was my brother.’

'King Henry was your father,’ she said,
Queen Margaret, your mother,
I am your only sister dear,
And here’s Lord Thomas, our brother.

“'Seven lofty ships I have at sea,
All filled with beaten gold ;
Six of them I’ll leave with thee,
The seventh will bear me home.’ ”

This text was in included in Patrick Kennedy’s Banks of the Borough, (Dublin 1875), where he describes his hearing it sung at a Wake in Wexford.

“Mr. Redmond, having now a right to call, summoned Joanna, the servant maid,before mentioned, to show what she could do. Joanna, though very ready with her tongue at home, was at heart a modest girl, and fought hard to be let off. But one pro¬tested that she was a good singer, in right of a lark’s heel she had (this was not the case, Joanna had a neat foot) ; another, that she was learned to sing by note when Tench, the dancing-master made his last round through the country; another, that he heard herself and a young kid sing verse about one day when nobody was within hearing. So poor Joan, to get rid of the torment, asked what sort of song should she sing, and a dozen voices requested a love song about murder. So after looking down, with a blush¬ing face, for a while, she began with an unsteady voice, but she was soon under the influence of the subject-lay, and sung with a sweet voice one of these old English ballads, which we heard for the first time from a young woman of the Barony of Bargy, in the south.
There is one on the same subject in some collection which we cannot at this moment particularize; but the Wex¬ford vocalists never got their copy from a printed book. Joanna’s version is evidently a faulty one. It has suffered from transmission through generations of negligent vocal¬ists. It is not an easy matter to tag the subject on to any decided point in the reigns of the kings of England.
“There is one on the same subject in some collection which we cannot at this moment particularize, but the Wex¬ford vocalists never got their copy from a printed book. Joanna’s version is evidently a faulty one. It has suffered from transmission through generations of negligent vocalists. It is not an easy matter to tag the subject on to any decided point in the reigns of the kings of England.”

Captain Ward and the Rainbow (Saucy Ward) Child 287
Come all you valiant heroes, you heroes stout and bold:
I’ll tell you of a rover who all the seas controlled.
I’ll tell you of a rover who seldom did appear,
And no one such a rover met this many a day and year.

He wrote our queen a letter on the seventh of January,
To know if he’d go over Ould England for to see;
To know if he’d go over. Ould England to behold,
And for his pardon he would give five hundred tons of gold.

“Oh nay, Oh nay,” our queen replied, “sure that could never be;
To yield to such a rover with me would never agree.
Since he deceived the Queen o’Scots, likewide the Queen o’ Spain,
Oh, how could he prove true to me who proved so false to them.”

His daily occupation was to plunder on the sea,
And he met one of the Queen’s fine ships just at the break o’ day.
She was loaded with silk and satin, a cargo of great fame.
He robbed her of her wealth and store and sent her home again.

Our Queen prepared and built a ship, a ship of noble fame,—
The Rainbow did we call her, you all may know her name.
The Rainbow did we call her, and off to sea goes she,
With five hundred seamen stout and bold to be her company.

We sailed away till we sailed to the spot where Saucy Ward did lie.
“Where is the commander of your ship,” our captain he did cry.
“I’m here, I’m here,” cried Saucy Ward, “my name I’ll never deny;
If she be one of the Queen’s fine ships she’s welcome to pass me by.”

“Oh nay, Oh nay,” our captain cried, “it grieves my heart full sore,
To see our merchant ships can’t trade as they have done before.”
“Fight on, fight on!” cried Saucy Ward, “I value you not a pin,
For if you have got men aboard I’ve powder and ball within.”

At eight o’clock in the morning they began this bloody fray:
It held from that very moment until the same hour next day.
“Fight on, fight on!” cried Saucy Ward, “your fighting it pleases me,
For if you fight for a month or more your master I will be.”

At last the good ship Rainbow tacks; she fires and strikes in vain:
Three hundred of her seamen bold dead on her deck were lain.
“Go home, go home,” cried Saucy Ward, “and tell your oul’ queen from me
That if she rules queen of foreign lands, I rule king of the sea.”

Taken down from Tom Maddock, May 31st, 1943. This is a very old English ballad. Cf. “A famous Sea Fight between Captain Ward and the “Rainbow,” in Legendary ballads of England and Scotland. Ed., J. S. Roberts.
In one of the English versions of this ballad there is reference to two of the queen’s sea-captains, Clifford and Essex.
Clifford would be George, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, who commanded the “Bonaventure” against the Spanish Armada in 1588, and Essex would be the ill-fated Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, a kinsman of the Devereux family of Ballymagir, Co. Wexford. The queen referred to is Queen Elizabeth, but I have been unable to find out who was the impudent individual with the Irish name.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 05:01 AM

Interesting ballad versions Jim, especially Fair Annie, which is a rarity.

The Captain Ward ballad is a bit confused chronologically (as Kennedy suggests), since Ward only took up piracy after James I had revoked his privateer's licence, yet variants of the ballad repeatedly mention 'the Queen'. That Dublin text is similar to the version in Roud & Bishop's 'New Penguin' book, from East Anglia via Butterworth, 1913, with all the same stanzas present but quite a few differences in textual detail.

Intrigued to hear about your Irish - American Hind Horn, too.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 05:16 AM

I have to work on the notes Brian - the collector was far from a ballad scholar ot a historian - he was a priest

Hind Horn is a Canadian version, the singer learned it from his Northern Irish mother
It comes with a tune which won't reproduce here
Jim

Hind Horn (Child 17)
OLD BEGGAR MAN.” Taken down from the singing of Mr. Thomas Edward Nelson, Union Mills, New Brunswick, September 28, 1928, who learned it from his mother, who was born in the north of Ireland and died New Brunswick, 1918, aged 85 years. Melody recorded by Mr. George Herzog.

1 “Whence came ye, or from what counteree ?
Whence came ye, or where were you born ?”
“In Ireland I was bred and born
Until I became a hele and his horn.

2 “I gave my love a gay gold watch
That she might rule in her own counteree,
And she gave me a gay gold ring,
And the virtue of this was above all things.

3 “ ‘If this ring bees bright and true,
Be sure your love is true to you;
But if this ring bees pale and wan,
Your true love’s in love with some other man.’ ”

4 He set sail and off went he,
Until that he came to a strange counteree;
He looked at the ring, it was pale and wan,
His true love was in love with some other one.

5 He set sail and back came he,
Until that he came to his own counteree,
And as he was riding along the plain,
Who should he meet but an old beggar man.

6 “What news, what news, you old beggar man ?
What news, what news have you got for me?”
“No news, no news,” said the old beggar man,
“But tomorrow is your true love’s wedding day.”

7 “You lend me your begging rig,
And I’ll lend you my riding stage.”
“Your riding stage ain’t fit for me,
Nor my begging rig ain’t fit for you.”

8 “Whether it be right, or whether it be wrong,
The begging rig they must go on.
So come, tell to me as fast as you can
What’s to be done with the begging rig.”

9 “As you go up to yonder hill,
You may walk as fast as ’tis your will,
And when you come to yonder gate,
You may lean upon your staff with trembling step.

10 “You may beg from Pitt, you may beg from Paul,
You may beg from the highest to the lowest of them all;
But from them all you need take none
Until you come to the bride’s own hand.”

11 She came trembling down the stairs,
Rings on her fingers and gold in her hair,
A glass of wine all in her hand,
Which she gave to the old beggar man.

12 He took the glass and drank the wine,
And in the glass he slipped the ring.
“O, where got you this, by sea or by land,
Or did you get it off a drowned one’s hand?”

13 “Neither got I it by sea or land,
Neither did I get it off a drowned one’s hand;
I got it in my courting gay,
And gave it to my love on her wedding day.”

14 Rings from her fingers she did pull off,
Gold from her hair she did let fall,
Saying, “I’ll go with you forevermore
And beg my bread from door to door.”

15 Between the kitchen and the hall
The diner’s coat he did let fall,
All a-shining in gold amongst them all,
And he was the fairest in the hall.

This is the first time that “Hind Horn” has been recorded in America, and we are particularly fortunate in getting both a good text and the air from the same person. The copy above was taken down, in 1928, by Mrs. Eckstorm, from Mr. Nelson’s singing. We have also another copy, taken down in 1927, by Miss Smyth, from Mr. Nelson’s recitation. There are variations, as would be expected in copies taken by different persons in different years; but they are hardly important enough to warrant printing both texts in full when a collation of the two is simple and satisfactory.
Knowing that this must become the standard text in this country, we have deliberately adopted three variations from the second copy for the A-text, for the sake of the sense. They will be found noted below in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fifteenth stanzas. We see no good reason why the chance variants of the same singer should not be interchangeable, when either the rhythm or the sense of a text is improved by a substitu¬tion. Yet in this ballad, as in others, the texts have been kept separate, except for these three slight changes—“gay” for “day,” “he” for “they,” and a misleading word omitted.

B.
COLLATION of the two texts from Mr. T. E. Nelson, Union Mills, New Brunswick. The following is the spoken 1927 text, compared by stanza and line, with A.

1 Lacks the first line of the 1928 text. Fourth line shows an important variation, commented upon below, of “hind” instead of “hele.”
2 Fourth line reads, “And the virtue of this was above all else.” The rhyme, lost in recitation, is caught again in the ver¬sion sung.
3 Twice “looks” instead of “bees,” as        sung.        This line        was sung several times in catching the air, but always as “bees.”
4 Line two omits “that.” “Countree,” used instead of “coun¬teree,” possibly the transcriber’s variation, was more likely rhythmic, caught in singing. Fourth line reads, “His truelove was in love with some other man.” “Man” and “wan” were rhymed, a possible indica¬tion of the Gaelic origin of “wan,” with this meaning of “pale” (Irish, bán “white”).
5 Line two omits “that.”
6 Line two omits one “what news?”
7 Lines one and two have “lend” instead of “give me your beg¬ging rig.” Lines three and four are transposed.
8 Line two, “it” for “they.” Line three, “quick” for “fast.”
9 Whole stanza lacking in 1927 copy.
10 Line four, “maid’s own hand” instead of “bride’s.”
11 “And in her hand a glass of wine,” missing the rhyme of “han’ ” and “man.”
12 Line three, as printed. What he sang was, “Saying, Where got you this, by sea or by land,” which throws the question to Horn himself and ruins the sense. Ballad singers have a way of introducing a direct quotation with the word “say¬ing,” which very often is spoken, not sung. It takes the place of quotation marks in print and often is a warning of a change of speaker. A transcriber who understands this use would be justified in not recording the word at all unless it is significant and properly used.
13 Line three, as printed in A. He sang “courting day,” which with “wedding day” as a rhyme was unpleasant; but he recited “courting gay.”
14 “No change in this stanza.
15 Line two, as printed in A. He sang it, “The diner’s coat they did let fall,” clearly an error of sense. The most important difference in the texts is the change from “hind” to “hele.” In 1927 Mr. Nelson said:
“Until I became a hind and his horn,” and he pronounced “hind” with a short vowel, just as Mrs. F. W. Morse did in speaking of “Hind Horn”—possibly Irish usage. But in 1928, Mr. Nelson, in singing, repeatedly said “hele,” “hale,” “heel,” or “hael,” or perhaps “heil,” instead of “hind.” His vowel was not clear and we could not determine it; nor could we understand it. But it does not do to worry a ballad singer; what you do not understand, he often does not understand any better.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 07:53 AM

I sing a version of Hind Horn. I really love singing it and it is probably the ballad that I sing most frequently It comes from the singing of Joe Estey, of New Brunswick, Canada. The recording shows his singing to be very similar in style to that of Willie Scott with his deliberate timing, clear enunciation and marked emphasis on certain words. Joe Estey was an old woodsman and ballad singer, a veteran of the lumber camps and he was in his late seventies when Sandy Ives (Dr. Edward Ives of the University of Illinois) discovered him and recorded his singing. He also guided Lee Haggerty and Henry Felt, to his home in New Brunswick in 1962. They were on their way back from the Miramichi Folk Music Festival when they called and recorded several songs from Mr. Estey, but this splendid version of Child 17 stood out as the crown jewel of the bunch. It also has a tune that seems ideal to carry the words of this ballad:-

"Where were you bred and where were you born?"
"In dear old Scotland, where I was bred and born.
I am going for to leave you, so, love, do not mourn
Until the day when I do return."

"Here is a ring; I'll give it unto thee
As a token of true friendship given by me.
And when this ring is faded and worn,
You'll know that your true love is with another one. "

For seven long years he sailed o'er the sea;
He sailed and he sailed to a foreign country.
He looked at the ring; it was faded and worn.
He knew that his true love was with another one.

Then he turned, he sailed o 'er the sea;
He sailed and he sailed to his own country.
The first one he met when he came to the land
Was a poor old beggarman.

"Old man, good man, old man," said he,
"What news, what news have you got for me?"
"Bad news, bad news," the old man did say,
"Tomorrow is your true love's wedding day. "

"Then give to me your rags and your shield,
And I'll give to you my coat and my steel. "
"Your coat and your steel is far too good for me,
While an old beggar's clothes is not fit for thee. "

"Let it be right, or let it be wrong,
The old beggar's clothes I will put on.
I will beg from the richest to the poorest in the land;
Take nothing but the best from the young bride's hand.'

So he begged from Peter and he begged from Paul;
He begged from the richest to the poorest of them all.
He begged till he came to his own true love's home.
He stood on the bridge, he leaned against the gate.

Down came the bride, a-tripping down the stairs,
Rings on her fingers and jewelry in her hair.
The glass of wine she held in her hand,
She gave it to the old beggannan.

Out of the tumbler he drank the wine;
Hack in the tumbler he dropped the ring.
She said, "Where did you get it, on sea or on land,
Or did you steal it off some dead man's hand?"

"I did not get it on sea or on land;
Neither did I take it off a dead man's hand.
It's a token of true friendship when we used to court so gay,
And I have returned it all on your wedding day. "

Rings from her fingers she did pull off,
Trinket from her hair she did let fall.
Saying, "Willie, I'll go with you, for now and evermore,
Supposing that we beg from door to door. "

Oh, between the kitchen and the hall,
The old beggar's clothes he did let fall.
His costly garments they shone far above them all.
He was the finest looking young man that stood in the hall

It was early the next morning, just at the break of day,
This couple hastened off to church and made no delay.
It's now they are married, as you may understand.
No more will he be called the old beggarman.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 09:21 AM

As I understand it Steve Gardam has made two reasonable claims:

1 In respect of the Child Ballads, there is little or no evidence that a substantial proportion of these were in or became part of an oral tradition. As I understand it, the point is also made that the songs collected by Child were taken from written sources, including manuscript (ie hand-written) versions.

2 A large proportion of songs claimed as 'folk' by Victorian and Edwardian collectors can be traced back to broadsheet versions, where, on the basis of stylistic and other features, they appear to have originated.

I don't find these arguments confusing or contradictory. And nor do I find them refuted by what Jim Carroll has said, or by his anecdotes about the distinctions made by some of his informants.

Mr Gardam sometimes writes as 'Dungbeetle' and on the basis of some of his pieces on the MUSTRAD site (eg Dungheap No 26) I am happy that he is a serious scholar of such matters. I feel it is a shame that inappropriate adjectives such as 'stupid' have been used to describe Mr Gardam.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 09:29 AM

Of course, some of Child's sources were 'collectors'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 09:39 AM

I said
"Jim, are you really claiming that all (or nearly all) the Child ballads spent some time in oral tradition? "
Jim replied
"I see no reason not to claim that a fair number of them did Richard, do you have any evidence to the contrary?".
and
"Please don't put words in my mouth - I never said "nearly all" - some ballads disappeared anyway, but the majority of them survived in one form or another"

You said that Steve's statement "many of the Child ballads show no or little evidence of ever having been in oral tradition" was "utter nonsense". That implies that, in your opinion, only few were never in oral tradition, i.e. that nearly all were in oral tradition.

Some were widely collected. Some were found in tradition very rarely. Some may well have been sung, and passed from one singer to another, but missed getting collected. But a significant number look as if no-one would ever have sung them.

The Child canon is very diverse. Child himself has been quoted in this thread as having a very low opinion of some of the ballads that he felt he had to include.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 10:19 AM

I've just counted the ones without tunes based on their non-appearance in Bronson - not as many as even I thought
A tune implies they have probably been sung
I have yet to check the missing ones, but when you consider that a large number of ballad collections that were taken from the mouths of singers do not include tunes, that is going to be reduced even further
Child was working from print, not from the oral traditions - he included very few tunes in his collection, this didn't mean that the published versions weren't collected from country singers
Child did have a low opinion of some of the ballads he included but he had an even lower opinion of the broadsides
He was in a position to know whether these songs originated on the presses just as Sharp did - neither of them ever claimed these songs otr ballads originated on the "dinghill" presses
I assume you have carried out similar research as I have - happy to swap findings

" there is little or no evidence that a substantial proportion of these were in or became part of an oral tradition"
There is none whatever to suggest that any of them originated on the broadside presses - none
Can you point out any that you guarantee originated from the presses - ?Steve has admitted he can't and his theory is just that - a theory
THe same goes for your second point - the period you refer to is marked by a sharp decline in the singing traditions - judging them on that basis is like judging a racehorse after it has been put out to stud
I'm delighted you regard Steve as a scolar, just as I am that you regard me as untrustworthy
I would be very uncomfortable if it were any other way

The most notable thing about this discussion is how you and everybody have totally refused to respond to my comparison between the two contenders for the role of folk composer
I'm sure if it had been possible you'd have hung a bulb of garlic near it in the hope you might drive it away - a pointed stake would be my guess
You people !!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 11:02 AM

>>>>he had an even lower opinion of the broadsides<<<<

Absolutely. He was finding a few jewels amongst an enormous dungheap. And that's precisely what I have been doing.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 11:15 AM

>>>>I've just counted the ones without tunes based on their non-appearance in Bronson - not as many as even I thought<<<<<

So just out of interest, Jim, out of the 305 how many or what percentage did you think were and what percentage did you find?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 11:22 AM

I previously commented that Walter Pardon's 'Cupid the Ploughboy' did not do anything for me. I have listened to it again, and it still doesn't. In fact, bits of it are wince-inducing.

I also previously stated that Pardon believed that his grandfather had learned his songs from broadsheets.

I was not of course setting myself up as a Walter Pardon expert: I was merely quoting from the MUSTRAD web site. There is an article by Yates and Stradling.

Jim has stated that no broadsheets were found in Walter's house, perhaps using this fact against the broadsheet origins view. I do not think that what was or was not found in Walter's house is relevant.

The grandfather in question was a maternal grandfather, Thomas Cook Gee, who played clarinet, and is said to have had lots of written song material. According to the MUSTRAD articles, Walter said:

"My grandfather got the songs from broadsheets, apparently; that's how they were brought round, so they always told me. He could read music, you see; that was unusual. "

Further on in the pieces, Watler is quoted as saying this:

"My uncle Billy, he said he remembered when a man-o'-war sunk off Ireland and someone composed a song about it, and two men come along here with one of those broadsheets and sung the song over to my grandfather. I don't know if he bought it, but I was told the words and music was ruled on it, and they charged a penny. That was how they got them into the villages. I asked Uncle Billy how it was that my grandfather managed to learn a hundred, 'cause that was very seldom he went out of the village - perhaps one day in the year to Norwich, or occasionally to North Walsham, and he said that was how they got round: by broadsheets."

It was Walter's mother's brother, Billy Gee (1863 - 1942), who is supposed to have taught Walter most of his songs. Billy is said to have spent a lot of time with Walter during the hard times of the 1930s.

However, as the same website says: "Walter said that he'd learned particular songs from various family members - but accounts differ dependent upon who he was talking to and when."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 11:41 AM

None of you are answering my questions yet you keep piling up yours
Enough is enough eh - how about making this a two way street rather than target practice ?
I'm becoming more and more convinced that your main driving force here is a desire not to believe ordinary people made folk songs - I know no way around suh dedication
Put up or admit that your brand new theory is full of holes and needs to be rethought (or thought through even)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 11:46 AM

Incidentally Steve, you once told me that Child was rethinking his attitude to the broadsides
Can you link me to that please?
I asked once before but, as with many requests, I received no answer
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 12:58 PM

The point in respect of Walter Pardon giving different information at different times is that working with tradition bearers is not an unproblematic activity. It isn't intended to be a critisism of Pardon or those enthusiasts who met him and interviewed him.

I find some of his other songs are more enjoyable.

But here, once again, Roud's book is invaluable, with its (or rather Bishop's) discussion of differing aesthetic values.

Personally, at present, I feel more like parodying Jim Carroll's questions rather than responding to them.

"How do you justify your claim that an untalented dauber like da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa?"

But, as will be clear, parody has never been my strong point, so here instead is a link to a page on 'begging the question'.

http://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/Begging-the-Question.html

And an example of question begging from this thread:

"You have never explained how bad poets could possibly have made so many good songs"

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 01:20 PM

"Personally, at present, I feel more like parodying Jim Carroll's questions rather than responding to them. "
I'm sure you do - it's far easier than answering them - though your Mona Lisa analogy, if aimed at untalented hacks making our beautifully thoughtful folk songs, is a perfect one - I wish I'd thought of it
The lot of you are running around like headless chickens, which, for me, is indicative that none of you have thought this through
You are very reminiscent of Billy Connolly's old joke "If you want to confuse a policeman ask him a question"
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 01:40 PM

>>>>you once told me that Child was rethinking his attitude to the broadsides<<<<
That would be Baring Gould, Jim, who did change his mind several times.

The only reference I made to Child's attitude to broadsides is that he used an awful lot of them considering his aversion. Almost all of the Robin Hood ballads for instance.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 01:41 PM

1900?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 01:51 PM

Jim,
To be honest I think you must be referring to my statement that Child gradually changed his mind about his all-inclusive policy, especially as he became ill and wanted to spend more time with the family. This culminated in the statement at Volume 5, p182 just before he died. I'm sure I've posted it before here but I'm pretty certain everybody here would have a set. If not I can post it easily. It's not that long. Perhaps you could post it for us?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 01:51 PM

No - it was Child
I have quoted your having said it several times - this is the first you've ever denied if
D o I detect the smell of screeching tyres again?
I'll dig it out when I have time - I should be able to find it, it's not far away from your 'seagoing and deeply researching hacks"
I'll have to start keeping a file of all thee excuses
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 02:24 PM

Jim
No problem. I'd say including a very large amount of these 'dunghill' pieces was tantamount to changing his mind, wouldn't you?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 02:29 PM

Thee can keep whatever file thee larkes: I'm bored with this.

Bye

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 02:50 PM

You've got a week to dig it out, Jim. I'm off to Whitby FF for the week. I doubt I'll be near a computer. I'm relying on you to have provoked another 94 posts before I get back.

Sorry you've become bored, Tzu. I've enjoyed your contributions. Thanks anyway.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 03:01 PM

"I'm off to Whitby"
Lucky escape eh i I'll keep it warm for you
No problem. I'd say including a very large amount of these 'dunghill' pieces was tantamount to changing his mind, wouldn't you?"
Nope - I certainly wouldn't
He included everything bad and good and didn't let his own prejudices get in the way
What kind of excuse is that for a reasearcher
C'm - on
You should have left yourself the week to think of a better one
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Aug 18 - 03:19 PM

One last thing, Jim, when and if you find it don't forget to flag it up in full or produce a blue clicky. Don't want you up to your old tricks do we?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 02:30 AM

I've just been warned for my over-enthusiastic langage you people, yet you depart with this despicable comment
I hope those in charge are viewing this - I find your behaviour... well, I'm sure you are well used to how I find your behaviour
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 02:31 AM

Now - are any of you going to respond to my points are we going to continue with the one-sided grilling
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 07:17 AM

This thread remains very active yet makes minimal progress. There is much repetition in different words or even the same words. There is much criticism of others' opinions and, sadly, some personal criticism. None of that gets us any further.

Jim
> None of you are answering my questions yet you keep piling up yours

Please remind us of what specific questions you have asked and not had answered.

As for "piling up" ours; we have repeated one that we really would like you to answer, please nicely.

Fact: we know the authors of a few songs for certain.

Fact: we don't know and probably never will know for certain the authors of most of them.

However, on the basis of internal evidence of style and phraseology some of us believe that the bulk of them (N.B. most, not all) were made by broadside writers (or writers for the stage, the glee clubs and the pleasure gardens). That is not to say that bad poets made good songs. Poets of all sorts made songs of all sorts, most of which deservedly died while some (not always good according to our present-day aesthetics) survived to be collected.

Meanwhile on the basis of internal evidence of first-hand knowledge of the lives of the people that they deal with, Jim believes that a lot of songs were made by those people.

We have asked Jim to expand on that, picking some songs that he believes show such knowledge.

Apropos Child changing or not changing his mind:
Steve
> I'd say including a very large amount of these 'dunghill' pieces was tantamount to changing his mind, wouldn't you?
Jim
> Nope - I certainly wouldn't
He included everything bad and good and didn't let his own prejudices get in the way

He certainly included a much higher proportion of poor quality stuff as time went on. And he never did say much about his criteria for inclusion or exclusion. His statement cited by Steve, (Dover) Volume 5, p182, is as near as we get and does imply that he was deliberately being more inclusive towards the end than he had been earlier.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 07:45 AM

Sorry Richard, if you can't be botheerd finding out after my putting them up half a dozen times, I really can't be bothered putting them up yet again
Finished here until someone makes an effort to respond
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 08:04 AM

In that case, perhaps we can discuss Roud's book?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 08:31 AM

We have been discussing this book before you arrived and we have continued to discuss its implications since
What you appear to want is for us to pay homage to what I believe to be an excellent but basically flawed book

I shouldn't have reactad to Richard's request as shaply as I did - for which, I apologise
I heve become tired of the lack of response to this question, despite the fact that people apparently regard my opinions important enough to try to trip me up on other issues
I have also become tired of being accused of lying, distorting and insulting by people who have been less that onest and polite themselves
I believe that this whole debate boils to two basic issues
1. Who made our folk songs, what part did the 'folk' play in their making and what are the historical implications of the songs we have up to now described as "folk songs"
2. Is it acceptable to ignore over a century convention of accepting outr folk songs as unique by lumping in the products of commercial song making

The implications of this latter is, if the answer is yes, then we still have a living tradition and everything that is sung at a Karaoke session should have a Roud number.

Richard (sorry again) - this is my point again
Jim

>Let's face it - none of us know who made the folk songs - the evidence simply doesn't exist
At no time has Seve ever been able to produce one of our standard folk songs that he can prove to have originated in print - he has admitted that
So we are faced with two alternatives
On the one hand we have a bunch of bad urban poets working under extreme pressure to satisfy an urban market - despite claims, there is little evidence of how they composed, where they got their information and why they chose the subjects they did and dealt with them in the sympathetic, knowledgeable way they did

On the other you have a section of the population, largely non-literate (recreational reading didn't kick in till the latter half of the 19th century in the towns and in the countryside, very few working people could read fluently until the 1880s (less than one third
They lived in poorly lit, cramped homes and worked extremely long hours, sso the opportunity of learning from the printed word was minimal
Ireland has proved beyond doubt that people not only could make songs by the hundreds but it became a necessity to do so in order to describe what was happening to them
Also, the oral tradition has shown that the singers were capable of taking a song and remaking it into version after version to suit their on backgrounds and circumstances
If people were able to do this, it is far more likely that they made folk songs than the hacks did."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 09:06 AM

In that case, perhaps we can discuss Roud's book?
Now, that would be a really excellent idea! Let's hope that, for a while at least, we can keep the focus on the book itself.
There have been a number of reviews of it that have not been mentioned in the thread with all the other stuff that has been flying about. Now as Steve Gardham has pointed out, the number of people who are qualified to make a full critical assessment of the book are few, so this like one, like some others, reads as a synopsis of the book's contents, but Alex Gallacher's on the website at Folk Radio also makes important points.
I won't reproduce the whole review here as it can be read from the clickable link. The most important point, though Alex is not the only one to make it, is this:-

The book draws and a huge range of sources, the bibliography alone is very extensive. Most importantly, Roud succeeds at furthering our understanding by being objective rather than hindering it as others have maybe done before.

In his Afterword, he notes “As more and more historical sources are digitised and made readily available, we may even be approaching a golden age of folk-song research, if only we have the people to embrace it.”

Folk song research has been bedeviled by the lack of an unbiased clarity of though and approach. It is the fact that Roud assesses the material that arises from his vast amount of research in a way that is objective rather than hindering it as others have maybe done before. that makes the book seem so radical. The way that Roud sees such the possibility of such a positive future for folk-song research is very encouraging.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 10:31 AM

Jim
> Sorry Richard, if you can't be botheerd finding out after my putting them up half a dozen times, I really can't be bothered putting them up yet again

Please don't waste your time restating them at length, but please don't expect me to waste much of mine by ploughing through dozens of your posts, some of them very lengthy, to find the questions that you're concerned about. I have scanned the thread for about the first dozen question marks in posts from you (not counting ones where you were quoting someone else) and some of those were rhetorical.

If you have specific questions that you want answered please either restate them briefly or refer us to the relevant posts. I promise to provide answers if I can.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 10:58 AM

You appear not to be reading anything I write Richard try a couple of postings up
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 11:16 AM

Vic

One part of the book that caught my attention was towards the end of the section called Just Before and after the Battle, Mother.

This is because one of my grandfathers was a military bandsman, and it would appear from the insignia he is wearing in the sole photo I have of him that he was a band leader. I know he played clarinet and other woodwind. He was in the Boer War and also WWI, as was a son who was killed at Ypres. The family was musical generally, with some playing in dance bands as well as public concerts of military band music.

This was by no means a middle-class family: it seems that the army provided musical training to suitable candidates and that this sometimes served people well after they left the service.

I should make it clear that Roud is not, of course, claiming that military band music was 'folk', but drawing on contemporary sources to give some account of what was sung in those contexts at the time.

Also, I will say that I by no means wish to justify the activities of the British in Africa! But my ancestor was there, and it interested me to read about what his musical experiences there were like.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 11:55 AM

Pseudonymous wrote:-
"One part of the book that caught my attention was towards the end of the section called Just Before and after the Battle, Mother."

One thing struck me about the forty pages of that chapter that made it different from the rest of the book was the number of quotations that Roud makes in this chapter. There are 22 quotations of song lyrics and 34 of prose comments either from written or transcribed interview sources; all of these are dove-tailed carefully to illustrate or enhance the points that he is making or the activity that he is describing. Perhaps there is more in the literature and in the songs about the lives of soldiers and sailors, but I'd like to know if he was making this chapter different consciously or whether it is just a coincidence. I must try to remember to ask him the next time that I see him.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 12:51 PM

Hello, Vic

You make an interesting point.

I hadn't noticed that as a difference between that chapter and the rest of the book. In terms of the 'interview' sources you mention, maybe there simply aren't so many interview sources in the earlier centuries covered by the book.

I agree with you about tbe bibliography, and the index is useful though annoyingly mine has a lot of pages missing starting at about the ltter K. They don't seem to have been ripped out: they seem never to have been there. But I got a refund from the seller (2nd hand) so I can't complain though it is a bit of a nuisance if you are interested in a topic beginning L to Z

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 19 Aug 18 - 04:41 PM

Jim
> You appear not to be reading anything I write Richard try a couple of postings up

Oops. Mea culpa. I evidently failed to refresh the page before posting.

HOWEVER:
1. Who made our folk songs, what part did the 'folk' play in their making and what are the historical implications of the songs we have up to now described as "folk songs"

That is three questions, and you answered the first one yourself in that same post: "Let's face it - none of us know who made the folk songs - the evidence simply doesn't exist". In fact there is evidence in some cases, but hard evidence not for very many.

What part the 'folk' played varies from: wholly responsible, making the song in the first place, preserving and transmitting it, and possibly changing it (for better or worse); to passively taking up a commercial product and changing it little or not at all. For some songs we can compare the version(s) collected with the first known version and draw some conclusions as to what the folk did with it, but in very few cases can we tell for certain whether the first known version was the original: back to the first question.

Historical implications: again very varied, from eye-witness accounts of battles, through "as I walked out" scenarios that refer to no particular time and place but may illustrate an aspect of social conditions, to ballads set long ago and far away.

2. Is it acceptable to ignore over a century convention of accepting our folk songs as unique by lumping in the products of commercial song making

The distinction is not at all as clear cut as you (and indeed many of us) would like it to be. A few examples have been cited above of songs that were accepted by the old collectors as folk songs but that were definitely the products of commercial song making. You have cited Walter Pardon's distinctions, but as I commented above those seem to have been according to old and not-so-old rather than folk and not-folk.

Anyway I have had a go at answering, and I hope one or two others can also contribute.

Now, please give us some examples of songs where you see internal evidence of familiarity with the lives of the subjects of the songs, familiarity that an urban person writing for the broadside press would be unlikely to possess. That has been a major plank of your argument, so it deserves to be elaborated, even if we can seldom be certain.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Harry
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 02:54 AM

All histories are revised by succeeding generations when people ask different questions of the sources. For me, Roud's book is a magnificent (revisionist) first step in making folk song studies relevant to the 21st century.

This doesn't negate what has gone before (shoulders of giants, anyone?).

Personally, again, it's the tunes and songs that I find most interesting, for their own sake, and the final sentence in Kathryn Hughes' review in the Guardian (here) sums up my views perfectly:

"These catchy tunes with their satisfyingly repeating choruses . . . . . are part of a landscape that is recognisably communal without being nationalistic. And as for the fact that many of them turn out to be as arriviste as Sharp himself, it’s not clear why it should really matter.".

Harry

P.S. I really enjoyed the book and I'm looking forward to a more leisurely read over the winter.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 04:00 AM

"Now, please give us some examples of songs where you see internal evidence of familiarity with the lives of the subjects of the songs, familiarity that an urban person writing for the broadside press would be unlikely to possess."
I'll try though I have done this before and you have totally ignored the main bit of my question
Where to begin?

How many of them worked the land to become familiar with the working terms that appear in the songs, the problems of seasonal changes, the pressure of having to pay rent....?
The same with going to sea or to war
How many of them experienced the family life where it is necesary to preserve your good-looking daughter for suitable marriage in order to try and take a tiny step up the social ladder - how many of them experienced the family conflicts that causes?

One of the popular bodies of folk song are the Broken Token songs - I sing a few myself
It always bugged me - how do you break a gold ring or a coin in hald - I've tried it myself - you can't - yet this piece of apparently nonsensical information appears in dozens of songs
When we wre preparing the notes for our Traveller CDs Pat stumbled across 'the gimmel ring tradition'
It was common country practice of a man wishing to get his leg over to prove his fidelity by giving the girl part of a specially manufactured ring on the promise to marry her - it acted as a sealed agreement
The practice existed in Elizabethan times among the wealthy where a ring wa made to be divided in three parts - part for the man, part for the woman and a third part for a witness
It died out sometime in the 18th century among the wealthy, but was continued in the countryside, where you could purchase a cheply made, riveted together double ring which could be scratched in such a way as to identify the two pices as coming from the same source
Even Hardy refers to this obliquely in Far From the Madding Crowd
There's a full description of this in Chambers Book of Days, yet this has never been tied up with the songs - not even by song scholars - it was taken as read by the singers

AS early of the ballad, Tifties Annie, you got oblique references to the effects of a changing society where the power was beginning to pass from the land gentry into the hands of the rising tradesmen - with a few suggestions of the current witchcraft trials thrown in for good measure - a truely remarkable piece of social history
Mnay of the ballads use country commonplaces, vernacular and Popular folklore and superstitions as if it was an everyday part of the maker's life - which it possibly was

All these things were dealt with sympathetically from the point of view of the hard-working and often oppressed ordinary people - lawbreakers included -
Why - were the hacks all early social reformers?
   
Our songs are full of this sort of thing - the camp followers who traisaipsed after the armies during the war - women on board ships - vivid and realistic descriptions of the feelings of farm workers tricked into the army or the navy, the personal effects of the enclosures of country people who relied on common land to feed themselves - even sharp descriptions of transportation, or whaling, or other occupations or occurences that forced them from home

I've argued things like this in detail in the past and been met with nonsensical excuses - the hacks studied the subjects before they wrote them up - they went to sea or worked the land... a whole string of excuses to bend the facts to fit the theory

How did broadside hacks working under pressure become so familiar with vernacular and lore and practices that they could convince the singers from the backgrounds of the songs that ther were "real" or "true" - it takes a skilled novelist to even approach that level of reality and very few of them manage that - John Steinbeck just about managed it inthe US - Robert Tressell did in England - the former spent time with his subjects, the latter was a house painter.

You have not attempted to explain the obvious skill that went into the songs
If the hacks were that good we'd know who they were because the would have had the pride to put their name to their compositions - as it is we know hardly any by name, nor how they went about their work

There is no major plank of ny argument - none of it makes sense, especially how those scholars, from Child onward, many of whom were working at the time the braodside presses were operating managed to be totally ignorant that while they were doing their researching the authors of the songs they were working on were on their doorstep
It is utter and complete nonsense to suggest that a couple of twenty-first century desk-bound researchers researching more than a century later know more than all these people

Once again I have allowed myself to be grilled and once again my main questions have been passed over and ignored
Your turn now
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 06:54 AM

"All histories are revised by succeeding generations when people ask different questions of the sources"

This is an interesting point. Earlier on I quoted singer and writer Vic Gammon on how pure objectivity is an impossibility and how we always reflect our own context. So I agree broadly with the comment, while also having found Roud's book useful and interesting because of his focus on contemporary sources of information relating to the centuries he discusses. It certainly feels more 'objective' than some work on folklore.

His 'century by century' approach is useful partly because in each chapter you will find evidence of songs which we still know about and can identify being sung in that century. He starts with the 16th century, and provides evidence of people knowing 'Chevy Chase'. He then gives some background of that song. He points out that there is a version written from the Scottish point of view and one written from the English point of view. He says we don't know for certain which version came first.

The sixteenth century chapter has many 'gems', as does the rest of the book. For example, there were attempt to deal with the problem of vagrants roaming the country: you were supposed to stay in your own area, and the laws to deal with this focussed on musicians and singers as well as vagrants generally. (This system lasted a long time: if you were distitute you would get sent back to your 'parish of settlement' so that the ratepayers there carried the expense.) I think people were busking and seen as linked to pickpocketing and so on. And no doubt some were. Musicians (aristocracy apart) had to take care not to fall foul of the laws.

There were several cases of a man who ended up in trouble because he took a job playing the fiddle at a wedding a few miles away from his home.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 08:57 AM

Tifty's Annie is Scottish, not English.

Having been published several times, it is a case where, as Lloyd comments, broadsides and the oral tradition are as mixed as 'Psyche's seeds.' Robert Jameson (1806) has a version of it taken down from a stall copy. It is sometimes said to be about a real woman who died in the 17th century, but nobody can know this for certain. What seems certain is that the ballad was taken up by Scottish 'romantics' as evidenced in the placing of a statute of one of the characters on the top of a castle nearby.

I cannot let Jim Carroll's analysis of this song pass.

1 If it is intended to support a view that this song is an apt example to answer Richard's request for an example of a song showing expert inside knowledge of life at the bottom, it fails. Witchcraft trials were common knowledge. The comment on 'changing' social structure in the Scotland of the 17th century is for me too vague. Most people have some social knowledge of their country.

2 The most striking thing about this song as 'social history', which Mr Carroll appears to be quite blind to, is that it is about extreme domestic violence.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 10:04 AM

"Tifty's Annie is Scottish, not English."
So ?
Is it your (or anybody's) argument that it was only the English working people who had to go out and buy their songs rather than make them themselves?
It is not my sole evidence, nor was i=witchcraft my only point - it is part of the reality of the lenghths aa family would go to to prevent his (money in the bank) daughter from marrying out of her class
Taken as a whole, in its way it is a protest at the inhuman effects that such a social system had on many of the families
That fact that the relates relates to real historical figures who are commemorated by a plaque on Fyvie Church wall for the father, a neglected and almost hidden grave for the daughter and a statue of the trumpeting herald on the top of alt least one castle adds to its reality, though, as far as I am aware, there are no written-up accounts of the killing for a hack to draw upon as far as I am aware - it's all in the ballad

There are many dozens of similar songs
Harry Cox once sang 'Betsy the Serving Maid' for Alan Lomax and Ewan MacColl and spat out at the end of it, "And that's what the buggers thought of us"
You can't beat that for an artist's commitment to his art.
Why should a money-making hack care about an insignificant and commonplace event such as this ?
As this seems to be the only point you seem to wish to comment on, I suggest you go back and see if you can come up with some more

"which Mr Carroll"
I choose to be addressed as Jim Carroll (Jim even) - it's supposed to be me who is the unfriendly troublemaker here
Please don't try to unseat me from my position Mr (or Mrs) whatever your name is
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 11:36 AM

Mr Carroll is of course free to complain to the moderators about excessive politeness on my part, but he cannot complain that I was addressing him excessively politely, as my post deliberately refrained from addressing him, partly as a result of suppositions to the effect of his unfriendliness.

The idea that the ballad refers to a specific woman appears to have become entrenched in people's minds, but there is nothing to prove that this is the case. The placing of a statute on a nearby castle says a lot more about Scottish romanticism than it does about history.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 11:44 AM

Statue not statute, obviously.
:)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 11:57 AM

"Mr Carroll "
Again
My unfriendliness was based on being called Agenda driven and untrustworthy
Up to then I had o problem with you
Joe appears not to have notice behaviour like ths from you and others
let it pass

" but there is nothing to prove that this is the case."
THere is everything to suggest it is based on actual facts - the ruins of 'Tifties Mill is a mile or so outside Fyvie, there is a huge stone in the exterior wall of the church mentioning the miller (been there-done that) and locals have uncover a
n cleared a marked grave for the daughter
For a newcomer who refuses to tell us who he/she is or what you've done, your dismissal of other peoples' opinions and knowledge is.... what's the word I'm looking for?
I've researched this ballad as have many others before me
I think we're finished here
JIM CARROLL

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 12:43 PM

For me, the various comments and suppositions about this song demonstrate just how valuable Roud's approach, with its emphasis on evidence, is.

It is all to easy to jump from 'is believed to be', or 'might be' to 'is'.

Let us take the idea that a statue on one of the finials on Fyvie Castle represents Lammie, a character from the song. I wondered whether this would come up. The idea that it represents Andrew Lammie is complete speculation. Yet on one website, a claim that it represents Andrew Lammie is said to be 'irrefutable evidence' that the story is true.

There are six such statues, and their significance is discussed on page 136/137 of an archaeological report on the castle.

https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/arch.2015.0071

Let us take the gravestone of Agnes/Annie Smith: it is hard to find an account of what it says, but no account of it I have found states that she was murdered, the fate provided for her in several versions of the song.

My garden exists, but this does not mean that there are fairies at the bottom of it.

Otherwise, toys, pram etc.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 12:55 PM

Stop being boorish - I have not been so to you
For someone who's knowledge of alter Prdon appears to be your dislike of upid the Ploughboy, i find your arguments extremely unreliable (to quote yourself)
We relly do have nothing to say to each other
And you have yet to make a single comment on the rest of my argument
I hope my protestations of being the sole culprit of my implied rudeness isn't falling on deaf eyes - so to speak
Finished with you
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 01:12 PM

How do we know that these multiple 'broken token' songs are evidence of new songs about a common practice rather than borrowings of a theme that makes for a good story.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 01:12 PM

Incidentally
Got this from ana article in the EFDSS journal indicating that, while some of the facts may be slightly wrong, (poetic licence) the ballads was based on actual characters
Jim Carroll

The enduring popular appeal of the old Scots ballad 'Mill of Tiffs Annie* is due in part to the traditional belief that it tells a true story. Although scant, evidence from previously known sources supports the historical existence of five of the song’s six key characters. The sixth character, the trumpeter Andrew Lammie, has until now been known only from the ballad and its accompanying traditions. Archive documents, however, demonstrate that a man by the name of Andrew Lambie, or Lamb, lived in Scotland throughout the last quarter of the seventeenth century and on into the eighteenth, and that he had the right name, age, profession, and marital status to be the Andrew Lammie of the ballad. Furthermore, he was living in the right place, Edinburgh. But while the historical evidence supports the ballad story in one way, it contradicts it in another, for in most versions the trumpeter dies of grief soon after the death of his sweetheart in 1673. Rather than relating the bare historical facts, this ending can be understood to satisfy an emotional need for both singer and audience.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Aug 18 - 05:51 PM

Interesting reference: nice to credit the researcher, Amanda Maclean. Folk Music Journal, Vol 11, No 1.

However, Andrew Lambie, or Lamb, of Edinburgh, was 'one of Her Majesty's trumpeters'. He also appears in the records of the Royal Life Guards. In 1684 he was described as trumpeter to a first cousin once removed to the Laird of Fyvie. Apparently he played trumpet at the funeral of the Duchess of Wemys.

It may be that this person was in the mind of whoever wrote the ballad. But there is no evidence that he was actually at Fyvie or that he was accused of witchcraft.

Whether the events described in the ballad ever happened is another thing, something that will never be proved.

But for me, none of this proves that the ballad demonstrates insider knowledge such that it must have been written by a member of the lower orders rather than somebody from another social sphere or, indeed, a ballad writer with some local knowledge. And this what the example was intended to prove.

The castle has reasonable reviews on TripAdvisor.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 03:15 AM

It doesn't matter how accurate this ballad is in detail - none of in any way contradicts the reason I used it
It is a piece of social history which reflected both the changing society and the effects that those changes were having on individuals and families from the poit of view of those affected - not from the point of view of a sensationalist hack writer
If the events will never be proved - why make an issue of it?

Our songs and ballads are full of details such as this which makes them far more likely to be the products of the people they are about rather than historical versions of our tabloid press.
We have never been trying to "prove" anything; the evidence for doing so is long gone
We are taking all the evidence we have and trying to arrive at a logical conclusion because a few people have chosen to turn past scholarship on its head - as far as I can see, with no grounds whatever for doing so
In order to do that, they have suddenly abandoned any detailed definition of the songs and included all songs - if the folk sang operatic arias, they become folk songs
That is unworkable nonsense

You - nor anybody else, have not attempted to challenge the points of my argument in any way
There is enough insider information in our folk songs to suggest that they came from the people they described - they are three dimensional rather than the flat caricatures and pastiches of the broadsides
They deal with their subject matter with reality and sympathy and their characters smell of tar and cordite and cowshit and have dirt under their fingernails
That is the stuff of our finest researching writers even better - not of provably poor poets wiking to a tight deadline.

It is precisely because of this diversive nit-picking that I see no point in taking this argument song-by-song
For someone who has examined these songs, as a singer or as an interested researcher, the unique reality (not factual detail) is self evident - you really do recognise the genuine article when you see it, even if you have never heard it before
That point has been made to us by every single singer we have interviewed

If you are not going to challenge, or even discuss the main points I have made, they remain as part of the argument to be put against any other that may arise
I don't see too many of them so far

"How do we know"
We don't "know" anything, but it is logical to assume that a body of songs on a theme that has persisted throughout our warlike history and including differing carrying a single piece of information that simply wouldn't make sense otherwise are related to a custom that has persisted for centuries
THe 'broken token' has always been treated as a 'folk motif' in both song and folk tale - there is no reason to challenge that view now, unless someone comes up with new evidence
I see no signs of that - do you?

"demonstrate just how valuable Roud's approach,"
The 'New age' "approach" does away with the need for evidence and reduces it to number-crunched statistics
The people in the songs become one-dimensional creations produced in a hurry - for profit rather than reflections of peoples' lives
That is contrary to every conclusion I have reached over the time I have been involved in folk song
Doesn't work for me, I'm afraid
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 06:39 AM

It's odd because the whole song strikes me as daft. The idea of this psycopathic blacksmith refusing to let his daughter marry one of the gentry (because the Royal Life Guards were drawn from the gentry) because he aspired to marry her to an scion of the nobility.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 06:52 AM

Are we talking about the same ballad ?
THe father was a miller at the time when tradespeople were replacing the Gentry as leaders of the community
The lover was a herald in the employment of the local lord - a servant (he is referred to as such in the ballad) - he most certainly was not a soldier
If he had been a soldier, the fold tradition proliferated with songs about daughters who run off with soldiers and are pursued by irate parents
You appear not even to have read the text of the ballad
Nice to know that you consider one of the most important and respected ballads in the British canon "daft"
No wonder the broadsides are more to your taste
We appear not even to be excussing the same genre of song
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 07:47 AM

I'm left with the impression that you don't actually like folk songs
You have little good to say about them
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 08:03 AM

They deal with their subject matter with reality and sympathy and their characters smell of tar and cordite and cowshit and have dirt under their fingernails

Proves nothing other than that writers did some research.

The "Shoals of Herring" deals with its subject matter with reality and sympathy.

Characters in the 'The Archers' have got cowshit and dirt under their finger nails.

Radio listeners may be a better modern analogy for the target of the broadside writers than the tabloids readers.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 08:26 AM

Slip of the finger while distracted by consideration of yet more pejorative question begging-remarks about the composers of broadside ballads. Miller of course: same point applies.

As Jim Carroll is fully aware, (or should be if he has actually read Amanda Maclean's article, the one he referred us to) the actual Andrew Lammie was in fact a soldier. By the simple process of googling I ascertained that these particular troops were made up of members of the gentry.

The word 'daft' was chosen for its mildness. I learned while googling about this song that some folk singers will not sing it because of the violence it portrays.

'at a time when tradespeople were replacing the gentry as leaders of the community'. Hmm. My knowledge of Scottish history is limited, a book by Neil Oliver, background to James Hogg, Walter Scott.

The late 17th century is often referred to as 'the killing time' in relation to the violent religious arguments of the time. So I'm not sure that it is quite accurate to refer to 'the community'.

Interestingly, the/a real Miller of seems to have been Presbyterian while those who held Fyvie Castle appear to have secretly been Catholic.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 08:33 AM

I also found a bit about the church, which mentioned a number of stones on it, but not one of these is about a miller. Happy to read info on this supposed stone to the miller on the church if the claim can be substantiated.

It really is interestesting how much 'lore' gets created about songs, much of which turns out to be fiction.

Incidentally, I have a book by Roy Palmer on British history through the broadsides and it is quite interesting.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 08:46 AM

Sorry the last post was me. As this song is, apparently, so revered and 'respected' (for reasons that escape me), perhaps Jim could share the results of his research into it. That might explain the attraction better.

I love the sort of folk supported by Bert Lloyd toward the end of his life: the folk-rocky stuff. I think Aly Bain is marvellous. I enjoy lots of 'folk'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 08:46 AM

"the one he referred us to) the actual Andrew Lammie was in fact a soldier"
It was poetic licence to make him a soldier - the ballad has hi as a servant
We are not discussing this as a factual representation but as a piece of creative invention based on living characters
That is what our folk songs have always done and that is what I have claimed
The main characters are a millers daughter and a servant - end of story
I am (or was - this is my last word n the subject) discussing this as a folk-made ballad not a piece of historical documentation

I don't know how you got the idea that upper class parents didn't object to their daughters running off with soldiers - ourtt literature is full of such plots - it even has a title "social misalliance"
A good looking daughter you could marry off well was money in the bank for a family wishing to climb the social ladder - it brought them power, influence and land
This is exactly what this ballad is about

"The "Shoals of Herring" deals with its subject matter with reality and sympathy"
Excellent example
"Shoals" is based entirely on interviews with two Norfolk deep sea herring fishermen, Sam Larner and Ronnie Balls - he words used are largely theirs and not MacColl's
His best songs were made using exactly the same method

THe Archers is about middle-class farming where working people are depicted, at best, in a patronising manner, but quite often as insulting caricatures - they out-Dibdin Dibdin

Radio writers get time to research their subjects - it's been pretty well established by all sides that broadside hacks didn't
Sorry - fell at the first fence, I'm afraid

I do hope Richard is watching this - making this a diversion from the main argument is exactly why I refuse to enter diversive blind alleys like this

Unless you intend to address my main points I'm finished here
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Nemisis
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 09:45 AM

Jim Carroll thank goodness a good thread spoiled by your arguments over irrelevant moot points

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 09:54 AM

I am afraid that I have to join the ranks of those who in the past have asked Jim Carroll not to misrepresent what they have said.

It is disappointing that this interesting discussion is to be cut short because Jim had said he had researched this song, and I would have been interested in what he had found out about it.

The song has a Roud number: 98, and a ballad version of it may be seen on the VWML website, easily accessible by googling.

I have learned that it appears in Child because he took it from a collection by Jameson. The latter is online, and is the earliest example I know of assertions that the song is about real people. Jameson took the song down from a stall ballad.

I have learned that people in or on the edge of the folksong world have come up with all sorts of stories about the song, and about the 'true story' which it is sometimes asserted to tell. One example was that Lammie played his trumpet from the towers of Fyvie Castle; another is that there is a statue of him on the castle.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 10:48 AM

Pseudonymous, did you know that there's a recently installed statue in Dublin of the fictitious Molly Malone - heroine of a song written in Scotland in 1884?

She's now regarded by folkies as a historical figure, an amiable Irish prostitute of the seventeenth or eighteenth century, with a heart of gold.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 11:10 AM

But surely, logically, only a shellfish salesperson, steeped in the practise of fishmongery, would have known that cockles and mussels were sold "alive, alive-o" from wheelbarrows? Equally surely, a busty young maid, and not one for covering up her ample busoms, would have been susceptible to a "fever"? So it MUST have its origins in the oral tradition predating the bad-poet hacks of Edinburgh and was, logically, written by a working-class hero?

Too much insider knowledge to be fictitious ;0)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 11:28 AM

Guest and Lighter

:)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 11:35 AM

:)

There is a statue of a large man wearing a cowboy hat in the centre of Dundee which demonstrates that the famed tales of this desperado originate somewhere in the U S of A, and not in the mind of the sensationalist ands commercially motivated hacks. How could an outsider have known that he loved cow pie? How could a mere desk-jockey have known that hipster beards are not a modern phenomenon but date back at least until the age of the scabbards in the Hermitage Museum in Russia?

Now until you answer my points we are done here :)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 11:42 AM

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dan_and_the_Minx_-_geograph.org.uk_-_331803.jpg

Respect to DC Thomson and Co

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 12:10 PM

"She's now regarded by folkies as a historical figure, "
No she isn't - she's regarded as that by (usually American) tourists
It underlines the reliability of their veracity of their own knowledge

Molly is so "recently installed as to be now celebrating her thirtieth year on the streets of Dublin - she was installed in 1988 - she was moved to Suffolk Street in 2014
For your information, Dubliners refer to her as 'The Tart With the Cart'
Similarly, the statue of Anna Livia Plurabelle, a character in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is referred to as 'The Floozie in the Jacuzzi'
Dubliners, folkies or otherwise, are sensible enough to not take these fictional characters too seriously
THere is no evidence whatever that the statue is based on a real woman
I don't think you scored many points there Lighter, do you
Why do you people insist on making this insulting garbage up - is it an "Irish" thing ?
"Jim Carroll thank goodness a good thread spoiled by your arguments over irrelevant moot points"
Whatever the merits of my 'moot points' - this rather hit-and-run anonymous posting is the only one of yours in a thread running over a year
Can we estimate your interest and knowledge of this subject by that fact or are you a stalker just here to stir it?
Very brave of you, I'm sure

"I am afraid that I have to join the ranks of those who in the past have asked Jim Carroll not to misrepresent what they have said."
Where have I?

I have answered every question put up - every single one - none of you have answered mine, nor do you intend to

I think my point is made, don't you ?
(The Archers, for crying out loud!!)

This has become little more than a mob slanging match - I trust our worthy adjudicator will note this and issue warnings
Let's see, shall we
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 12:12 PM

By the way Lighter - I'll give Molly your love when I see her in Dublin on Wednesday, shall I?
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Nemesis
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 12:27 PM

Jim
Some come here to read and write some come here to ponder.....

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 12:31 PM

The post at 21 Aug 18 - 11:35 AM reminds me that in the 1940s when I was a boy in Edinburgh, the character that is depicted in that statue in Dundee was in his relative youth. He first appeared in the Dandy in 1937.
I had bought a copy on this comic with my very small amount of pocket money and had it with me when I went to some sort of family gathering at at my Granny's flat in Leith. I tried to show it to a number of my heavily unionised uncles who were there; they were not impressed and didn't want to look at it. Eventually, one of them took me aside and told me that before I bought any comic, I was to turn to the back page and look at the very bottom line. If it said, "Published by D.C. Thompson of Dundee" that I was never to buy it because no-one in that firm was allowed to join a trade union. I was devastated! No only would this cut me off from from the Dandy and the Beano but also from the Broons and Oor Willie who were in the Sunday Post which was also a Thompson publication.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 12:31 PM

"Some come here to read and write some come here to ponder....."
And some just come to stand and stir
Not particularly brave or intelligent
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 12:36 PM

The above post sent in error before I had finished what the point was!

My reasons for writing the above was to bring to the attention that fact that these comics were not the product of the people but were devised by desk bound hacks.
Worse than that; they were the work of non-unionised desk bound hacks.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 01:00 PM

There is a statue of character from a song (maybe) on a castle in Scotland and a statue of a character from a song on a street in Dublin.

Where does that get us?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 01:08 PM

Vic

Yes, your point about non-unionised rings a bell, I think.

And lots of what they produced seems inappropriate through modern eyes.

But then, that's 'folk' for you.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 01:17 PM

I thought Lighter was being light-hearted, myself.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 01:48 PM

"I thought Lighter was being light-hearted, myself."
I thought he was representative of much that has gone on here "all wind and pee like the barber's cat",
as my mother used to say
He certainly wasn't being helpful
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 02:00 PM

Whatever the purpose I took from it that a statue doesn't mean someone is not fictional. That some people think the one in Dublin is not fictional, as contributed by Jim, further points to the unreliablity of accounts relating to statues.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 02:49 PM

Please do, Jim.

Molly and I go way back - to elementary school, I think.

In fact, I was being light-hearted *and* informative, which isn't easy to do.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 03:04 PM

"I took from it that a statue doesn't mean someone is not fictional"
A bit to convoluted for me I'm afraid so I'll state my position agai
THere is no evidence connecting the statute of Molly Malone to a single historical figure including the 18th century prostitute some people once claimed it was
The matter has been discussed in length in The Irish Times and the suggestion was that the claim was first made to a visiting Yank by a piss-taking Dub in an effort to sell it to him
Though I firmly believe that the feller with the wings in Piccadilly Circus was England's first Prime Minister!!
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 03:16 PM

Turning back to Roud; he says something that might possibly be relevant to the song about Annie from the Mill of Tifty. He says that in the 17th century there was a phenomenon called 'ballading' whereby if people disliked somebody they would concoct a ballad about them. Some law cases relating to this are recorded because they ended up in the Star Chamber. Now this is where the use of a Scottish example in a discussion about Folk Song in England becomes problematic, because, of course, Roud does not mention whether something similar happened in Scotland. I don't see why not.

It appears (and I think this was in the Folk Song Journal that we were referred to earlier) that contemporary documentary evidence shows that Smith, the miller of Tifty, was in effect himself accused of witchcraft in respect of a neighbour's cows, a complaint which was referred back to the local kirk to deal with. So he seems to have been unpopular in some circles. We know this because Amanda MacLean refers to the case as mentioned in Presbytery records. And we have a song which accuses the miller, his wife, and two of his children of brutality and ultimately, murder. These are serious accusations, and ones for which there appears to be no justification. So just maybe the song was written out of spite?

According to MacLean, the 'ferm toun' of Tift was on the Fyvie estate: the Smiths appear therefore to have been tenants of the estate.

I am not arguing against Mr Carroll's interpretation of the song in terms of character being suffiently high-ranking to aspire to marry his daughter to the heir in waiting of the local castle, though I think one could reasonably do this. I think people are entitled to interpret songs however they like.

Just in case there is any misunderstanding, I have never said that people of that time might not have objected to their daughter marrying a person simply because he was a soldier: what I think I may have said is that in respect of the actual people believed by MacLean to be in some sense the 'sources' of the characters, the tenant of a mill would probably be glad to marry his daughter to somebody like Lammie, who was a member of the gentility as evidenced by his job in the Royal Guard. MacLead explains that because it did the job of guarding royalty they didn't let riff raff in (or words to that effect). The man had two wives and a fair few children and lived to a ripe age in Edinburgh.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Aug 18 - 04:15 PM

An old ballad writer once had a day out
Looking for something to ballad about

He say Fyvie Castle with its turrets so tall
And the sad old gravestone beside the kirk wall.

He talked to the locals and the minister, Will
They told him that Agnes was born at the mill.

He went back to Auld Reekie, had a dram with pal Lammie
And together they made a sad ballad about Annie.


That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 02:55 AM

" Mr Carroll's"
Mr Carroll again - surely a sign of insecurity - certainly one of bad manners
I'd return the favour if you didn't insist on remaining anonymous - it just seems bad-mannered to me

It seems obvious that a group of people who want 'the folk' not to have made folk songs are not prepared to talk it through and argue all the points and it seems equally obvious that those who came up the the idea in the first place haven't thought through the destructive implications of what they are claiming
Not only have they relegated English working people to non-creative customers for their culture and passed the honour over to tabloid-type writers of the past, but by undermining all past scholarship around who created our folk songs they have spancilled future scholarship - who is going to want to bother about the scribblings of past William McGonnigals other than to make fun of them

That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it

There was never was a chance of changing the opinions of those who wanted something to be true, but at least I've managed to confirm n my own mind that I'm not imagining that both the 'broadside origins theory and the re-definition has not been approached with the seriousness such a profound ideas should have been - if it had, those who supporting it would have been prepared to argue for it
A sort of 'moral victory', if nothing else, if a victory were being sought
Off to Dublin for a few days to talk to people who know what their folk songs are and respect them for what they are - and certainly don't lump them in with history's commercial output
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 03:46 AM

I am grateful to Jim Carroll for his lecture on good manners, a topic on which I am happy to accept he is eminently well qualified to speak.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 03:46 AM

:D

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 03:48 AM

"I am grateful to Jim Carroll for his lecture on good manners,"
Somebody had to do it
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 04:04 AM

:D

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 05:25 AM

Can I just say that you and others have complained of my being insulting - I have not, or certainly no more than others in this discussion
You have just gone off to another thread (the 'Folk Club' one) and insulted one on England's best and most important traditional performers by suggesting that his singing is the worst thing you can give new people to listen to - it would put them off folk song
I find that totally intolerable
Walter was a fine singer who managed to make all the songs he sang pleasantly listenable and important - even 'Cupid the Ploughboy', that you don't like his singing is something you need to keep to yourself
It has long been a convention in the revival (up to now anyway) that you don't attack our source singers - our benefactors - they are not part of our chosen folk scene -
They came out of generosity to give us our songs; Walter was, in my opinion, among the best and most generous of them
I say in my opinion - I'm no longer sure what some people think about the old crowd and their songs nowadays especially as one of our New Age crowd described one of Ireland's best loved songs as being "bloody awful"
If this scurrilous behavior becomes common the whole folk movement will disintegrate into a back-biting slanging match
I've always lived to see the day when the older crowd moved on with their hatred of Lloyd and MacColl and the newcomers could judge these people on their contribution and abilities
I hope this isn't a sign of their rebirth
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 09:18 AM

Mr Carroll, sorry,'Jim', you can hardly expect people to come onto this forum using their real names when it is plain to them before they join that they risk being subjected to rejoinders that they might experience as vitriolic and personalised, not to mention heavily sarcastic, that their views will be twisted, misrepresented, and disrespected by posters who appear to have anger management issues.

---

Let's get back to the topic of discussion, please. Personal squabbling is not of interest to anyone but the squabblers.
Please note that the use of a consistent pseudonym has always been accepted at Mudcat. Indeed, it is a good protection for many people to use a pseudonym instead of their real name. Now, back to our discussion.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 11:22 AM

For the first time, Pseudonymous, you have allowed yourself to be drawn in, to let it get under your skin. Look again at your post of 22 Aug 18 - 09:18 AM and try and find a reference to anything musical, anything constructive that moves things along and I don't think this has happened before. You have made some very valuable well thought out contributions here - but this was not one of them. I have stated in this thread that I will no longer respond to these provocations and I think that you would do well to do the same and concentrate on your positive thoughtful posts.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 11:58 AM

Yes Vic.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 12:48 PM

Sorry, I've been otherwise occupied for the much of the time lately including all day Tuesday, hence a delay in responding to a post from Jim.

On Monday he said (in response to me)
"you have totally ignored the main bit of my question".

I did not deliberately ignore anything. If I overlooked the main bit please point me to it.

In the same post Jim posed some apparently rhetorical questions
"How many of them worked the land to become familiar with the working terms that appear in the songs, the problems of seasonal changes, the pressure of having to pay rent....?
The same with going to sea or to war
How many of them experienced the family life where it is necesary to preserve your good-looking daughter for suitable marriage in order to try and take a tiny step up the social ladder - how many of them experienced the family conflicts that causes?"

All those things happened to people and all those things got written about, but what we're asking Jim for is evidence from within the songs that the people who made them were the people who had experienced the events, or else people close to them in the same social class.

GUEST,jag cited Shoals of Herring and Jim commented that MacColl based it on the words of Sam Larner. Indeed: a skilled song writer who had not worked on a fishing vessel talked to someone who had and thus acquired the material for a song. Sam himself did not (as far as we know) make a song about it. So we have one person with the experience and a different person who was the song writer. Clearly that is not the only possible scenario but it is a very plausible one for a lot of songs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 03:22 PM

Richard wrote:-
So we have one person with the experience and a different person who was the song writer.
Another good example would be Generations of Change by the late Matt Armour. He was neither ploughman nor fisherman nor did he work on an oil rig but in that song he wrote knowledgably about each of them incorporating the results of his research skilfully into his composition.
A mark of his success with this song is that it has been taken up by one of the last generation of bothy workers, Joe Aitken. You can hear Joe's very fine rendition by clicking here.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 03:32 PM

I remember Richard Grainger telling us of his visit to a museum where they were playing his "Whitby Whaler" and someone telling him it was a traditional song. As far as I know Richard has never Whaled!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 22 Aug 18 - 06:04 PM

Songwriters write songs. Ploughmen plough the land etc ad infinitum. Not rocket science.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 02:32 AM

Steve,

Your statement is most certainly not rocket science.

I'm sure there would have been a few ploughmen who wrote songs. And I'm sure some of them would sing their own songs on high days and holidays. I'm equally sure that one or two of these songs have entered the tradition and maybe have been 'borrowed' by professional ballad writers.

But, I have no evidence of it happening.

However, I do know that non-professional songwriters do write and perform their own songs.

I'm an archaeologist - I write songs. As yet, as far as I'm aware, none have entered the tradition but they may yet.

Rattling cages won't get us anywhere.

Harry

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,CJ
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 03:09 AM

Mudcat - A Short Play

Bill - Oh I like folk music and here's a handy looking website
Fred - Hello Bill, welcome on board
Bill - Thanks Fred. Where do you think the old ballad 'Jumping Bananas' originated?
Fred - I think you're an absolute idiot
Bill - Well, I think you smell
Fred - No, YOU smell
Bill - No, YOU smell
Fred - No, YOU smell
Bill - No, YOU smell
Fred - No, YOU smell
Bill - No, YOU smell
Dick - NO YOU SMELL CANT YOU UNDERSTAND TAH,,T

Joe Offer - That's enough smelling now, boys

Curtain Closes: The End.

Look out for the follow-up: Ewan MacColl, where we discover our hero had a smell that wasn't his.

---

That's enough smelling, boys. We're bored. Stay on topic.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 03:10 AM

If a ploughman wrote a number of songs that became known beyond his village then his name might pass into the historical record as a songwriter rather than as a ploughman.

Often we have to happen across a journalistic piece about a modern day singer or songwriter to find out what they do/did as a day job.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 03:15 AM

Though on the other hand we had the ‘Muxton carter’.

and the ‘singing postman’

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 04:09 AM

And the singing nun and Rabbie Burns. Of course there are exceptions but by and large the statement stands. Harry, until others start singing your songs what you have done doesn't apply here. Like it, CJ!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 07:01 AM

Turning to 'Cupid the Pretty Ploughboy', as sung by Pardon,

First off it has a change from first to third person, which makes it unusual, some people say ballads are traditionally third person narratives.

Secondly it has literacy built into it as both the female character and the ploughboy are literate. The ploughboy sent a 'neat' reply to the letter sent by the woman. I thought that was interesting though I'm not sure what to make of it.

There is a web site seeming to be written by John Howson which says that Sabine Baring-Gold thought it came from a black-letter broadside of about 1670. It also says it was on a number of other broadsides.

But whatever the ultimate origin of the song, for me the references to classical mythology in that song seem to demonstrate links between songs sung by 'traditional' singers and literate traditions, quite apart from the references to literacy of both characters in the Pardon version.

Roud refers to a book by Adam Fox about oral and literate culture 1500 to 1700 and which seems to have a section on ballads. What can people tell us about this book?

Re-reading Roud I was interested to see how much evidence there was for people pasting ballads onto walls. Perhaps the written documents were seen as desirable artifacts even by those who had to wait for somebody literate to come by and decipher them. I believe that the modern 'stigma' attaching to non-literacy is just that, 'stigma', so likely there would have been no 'shame' in asking whoever was literate to decipher something.

They only plough once a year: the ploughboy would have had to find other tasks for the rest of a year. However often there is labelling of people 'ploughboys' in songs seems odd, it could not have been a full time job.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 07:34 AM

Something that came up while researching the covenanters/wars of the three kingdoms in the 17th century (background to the mill at Fyvie, there having been a battle at Fyvie Castle itself and a massacre at Aberdeen) was how many Scottish people were mercenaries in Europe. I wondered how far this might explain Child's finding of ballads in Sweden that were similar to English/Scottish ones. Might this result from the 17th century or are the sources he gives too early in relevant cases?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 08:09 AM

Even more interesting, in the light of Roud's discussion of the way oral and literate aspects of our culture interacted is the information I just found out about the make up of the Scottish Regiments in Northern Europe, gleaned from European records of paying the bills. The officer posts included a 'scrivener'.

This ties in with what I have read in the past that where few people in a village could write, the person who could would write and read for those who could not, including, for example, letters to family members working far away.

Mention has been made of it being unlikely that poor country dwellers would have light to read ballads by after a long day's work. This implies that all work was done away from the home, which is patently not the case. And that there was full employment: not necessarily. And in summer the days are long, and then there are Sundays.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Harry
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 08:44 AM

Steve,

I was in the Navy for 9 years and several of my songs were performed by others as well as myself. One in a show onboard ship with Frankie Howard topping the bill.

I was an electrician back then - never a songwriter.

You are correct, of course, what I have done is of no interest to anyone here. I never thought it was.

However, my point still stands: you were making an absurd statement to be provacative.

Now I'll go back to reading and not commenting. Some of you really don't make this place very welcoming at all.

Harry

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 09:16 AM

"They only plough once a year" I think you will find that that preparation for sowing involves ploughing more that once. Weed control is one reason - plough, wait for the weeds to germinate and then plough again. That's what the ox-ploughman I watched did.

Where ploughboy and milkmaid jobs that younger people did, so making them more likely characters for a romanic tale?

Has anyone ever totted up the relative frequency of the jobs that characters in songs did?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 09:30 AM

Jag

Some interesting points, but the general point that ploughing in readiness for sowing seeds England is generally an April/May activity as opposed to something done all round stands.

'Milkmaids' may be another misleading term. I'm sure old women also milked cows. But because of the cowpox thing dairy workers may have been less pockmarked than the general population.

But are there nouns to describe other tasks; eg 'seed scatterer'? I think 'harvester' is a pub chain but was it used to describe the workers?

Totting up the relative frequency would be interesting but there would be controversy about which songs to use. Gammon discusses how various workmans' tools incuding some musical instruments are used as the basis forbawdy metaphors; I'm thinking the plough is one of these. But he doesn't I don't hink attempt a relative frequency.

Roud does give examples of ordinary people making up songs, based upon historical documents. I think one instance of this is in the 17th century chapter.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 09:36 AM

Has anyone ever totted up the relative frequency of the jobs that characters in songs did?

I don't think so, but there is a pi-chart showing causes of death in traditional English folk songs

.... and by 'traditional' we mean songs that have been created by .... AAAAARRRGGGHHHH!!!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 09:58 AM

Hi Tzeu
https://www.historyonthenet.com/medieval-farming-the-farming-year/   February, March, July and 'Autumn' (the last in the text)

I think you will find that, as with modern farm contracting, there were were some fairly complicated and varied arrangements. Not everyone may have had a plough but unlike the oxen that did not need feeding so maybe even less people had there own oxen.

Similary I don't think it is clear to us as listeners to a song where, say, a weaver fitted into the local economy and society. I think some were itinerent, coming to use a housholds loom when required, others may have had their own but maybe wove other people's thread. I think those are the sort of details of social history that might show if a song was written by and for 'the folk' - but also may lead to us missing subleties of the story.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 09:59 AM

And yes, I know, going back to medieval times may be too far.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 12:54 PM

Jag

I guess one problem here is that practices will have changed through time.

So how do you get a match between song and historical context?

Also, if weavers were moving around, this fact cannot have been lost on the rest of society.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 03:40 PM

I think we are in danger of taking these job titles too literally. "Ploughboys", however they were known in different areas, were men skilled in handling heavy horses. In addition to ploughing and harrowing, they would also be involved in all the other jobs around the farm which involved horses, which was pretty much everything. In East Anglia they were usually known as "horsemen", which says it all.

Turning back to the broadsides, it is too simple to dismiss them all as hack writers. No doubt many were, but a normal bell distribution curve would suggest the profession contained a range of talents and abilities, as you would expect in any occupation and just as you find in modern journalism. Somewhere Roud makes the point that these writers were only a few degrees up the social scale than those they were writing for, so it is quite possible that some may have had experience of farming, the sea or other occupations, which they were able to write about from a position of knowledge. Besides, I suspect the folk might be quite tolerant of errors provided they did not spoil the overall effect of the song, and if necessary these could in any event be edited out by the singers themselves.

We are only concerned with those songs which found their way into the oral tradition, which probably rules out the worst examples of broadside writing, and certainly those Jim dismisses, with some justification, as unsingable.

Furthermore, the broadsides also published the popular songs of the day, written by professional songwriters and performed on the stage and in the pleasure gardens. Roud describes how the ordinary people could be exposed to these songs, not only through broadsides but from travelling players and performers. It goes against common sense to think that people would not take up these popular songs, and whilst most would be short-lived a few would have sufficient staying-power to remain in the tradition.

Finally, it is probable that the broadsides published existing folk songs, which probably included not only anonymous songs from the tradition but songs composed by ordinary people and offered for publication (which is something Roud describes).

No one has disagreed that the people made their own songs, the question is how much of what is regarded as traditional song originated this way. We are told that as much as 90% of the songs found in the tradition were published as broadsides. That leaves only around 10% where we can say with some confidence that they originated among the people. As for the rest, we can't be certain but they probably comprise a range of origins as described above. If only those songs composed by the people themselves can be regarded as folk song, that excludes a large part of the song tradition and which up until now has been thought of as "folk".

It is not a question of wishing to disprove that the folk made their own songs. It is about following the facts, even if they lead us to a conclusion that we find unwelcome. Roud points out that folk song did not exist in a cultural vacuum, and he has provided an explanation of how composed songs could find their way into the tradition, and I for one find it persuasive.

Roud's concluding words are "once we have jettisoned the idea that it is the origin of a song which makes it folk, we are forced to concentrate on the people, and process, rather than the items themselves, to find our difference...put a pleasure garden song into the tradition and if it is not spat out as unsuitable it emerges at the other end as a clearly different type of song... it is now sung in a different way, by different people, in different places, and will never be the same again". This seems to me to be entirely consistent with the 1954 idea of what is folk song.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 23 Aug 18 - 08:48 PM

Hello Howard,

I suppose we got sidetracked into the occupational definitions via claims that some songs show insider knowledge available only to those in the job in question, and that this is strong evidence against a 'hack' origin for that song.   

Your last paragraph seems reasonable to me. I have read the 1954 definition, which even Lloyd quotes. Claims that I have read that the 'use' definition of folk overturns a century of scholarship demonstrating or arguing or assuming an 'origin' definition seem to me to misrepresent what people were actually saying.

But I am not quite so sure that there are 'facts' to follow. What Roud makes clear is that we have very little evidence about what practives of 'the folk' - defined loosely as the lower status strata of society - were in respect of singing and repertoire.

For me, as I said before, a judgement that a song is 'unsingable' is in any case a subjective statement. So, I suppose, are judgments that a particular song must have, or could not have been, written by a mediocre professional writer. And judgements will vary.

So maybe it is better to think of different theories, while taking into account what factual information we have. And as Roud says, a lot of the people who wrote about vernacular music and street singers and ballad sellers were unsympathetic witnesses.

I was looking at Roud again and he said in one chapter that a lot of tunes served both as dance tunes and as song tunes. Now dance presupposes rhythm. Yet I could not tap my feet to much of what Walter Pardon sang, and I found myself thinking that the strong sense of rhythm in USA folk versions of British originals must have come from African influences. Am I incorrect in noticing a lack of rhythm, and how typical in your view is that relatively rhythmless delivery of 'traditional' English singing? I think there is some discussion of the need not to apply the values of 'art'music to folk in Julia Bishop's chapters in Roud, but surely people liked to tap their feet. Traditionally, rhythm and metre were supposed to be part of the ways within the oral tradition that supported memory?

Any thoughts?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 02:03 AM

Yet I could not tap my feet to much of what Walter Pardon sang,'
As i jnderstand it Walter was trying to stop the songs from being forgotten and had not sung the songs out very much, perhaps he is not the best example to use, how about listening to willie scott, or bob roberts, plenty of rhythm there, or some of the songs plough boys/farm workers used during work different songs and ryhthms for different jobs, eg hand milking ,ploughing etc how about shanties?tradtional songs were used for work, windy old weather was a net hauling song

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Howard Jones
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 02:42 AM

The facts are that we have a corpus of songs collected from the tradition and which generally regarded as "folk songs", and that the overwhelming majority of them were at some point published on broadsides. There is also evidence from traditional singers themselves that they sourced songs from broadsides. This is not new to Roud, Lloyd made the same point. Are we to suppose that the songs the 'folk' took from broadsides were only those which had been taken from the tradition in the first place, and that they rejected everything else, including the most popular songs of their day? That seems unlikely to me.

The measure of whether a song is singable or not is whether it is sung. We are concerned only with those which were found in the singing tradition, so clearly these were singable. We can ignore that part of the output of the broadside presses which may have been unsingable.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 07:11 AM

Pseudonymous writes:-
I was looking at Roud again and he said in one chapter that a lot of tunes served both as dance tunes and as song tunes. Now dance presupposes rhythm. Yet I could not tap my feet to much of what Walter Pardon sang, and I found myself thinking that the strong sense of rhythm in USA folk versions of British originals must have come from African influences. Am I incorrect in noticing a lack of rhythm, and how typical in your view is that relatively rhythmless delivery of 'traditional' English singing?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 07:40 AM

I'll try again and try to press the right key this time....

Pseudonymous writes:-
I was looking at Roud again and he said in one chapter that a lot of tunes served both as dance tunes and as song tunes. Now dance presupposes rhythm. Yet I could not tap my feet to much of what Walter Pardon sang, and I found myself thinking that the strong sense of rhythm in USA folk versions of British originals must have come from African influences. Am I incorrect in noticing a lack of rhythm, and how typical in your view is that relatively rhythmless delivery of 'traditional' English singing?

This is a very interesting question which calls for a thoughtful answer, particularly the part that says Am I incorrect in noticing a lack of rhythm? because this question implies that the answer should be 'yes' or 'no'.

One of the greatest influeneces on my thinking on anything - not just the area around folk music has been the writings of the great American novelist, philosopher and thinker, Robert Pirsig. I read his Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a young man and I have re-read it more times than any other book I have read. It led me on to read all the other things he has read. I must admit that I sometimes find his ideas difficult and I struggle with the concepts, but usually I find the truth in what he is saying. On this point, particularly if you haven't read his greatest book, you might like to have a look at the extracts that deal with this aspect on the Awakin website. Basically what Pirsig is saying that the answer to a question of this nature should be 'yes', 'no' or 'mu'

Mu means "no thing." Like "quality" it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, "no class: not one, not zero, not yes, not no." It states that the context of the question is such that a yes and a no answer is in error and should not be given. "Unask the question" is what it says.

Elsewhere Pirsig suggests that an answer of 'mu' implies that you are asking the wrong question and I believe that you are in this case. I really have to go out now, but I want to try to answer this point more fully when I come back home.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 07:46 AM

Thanks for the responses and suggestions for further listening. Thanks too for not being angry at my responses to Walter Pardon's interpretations, or accusing me of 'attacking him'.


There is a sense of humour in some of his delivery, I know, which is a good point (to me at any rate).

Something about the delivery reminds me of other early 20th century singing I have heard, perhaps some of the stuff my parents' generation might have heard in theatres and on the radio. The emphasis is so much on words, not music. If I remember aright, it has even been asserted that the music is not relevant, that only the words matter, and here again Roud is useful, though maybe there is room for a focus on singing styles, types of ornament (and Pardon does use some) and I don't recall much of this from Roud. I might come back with examples from specific Pardon songs? Or would that be too tedious?

What I am realising is that any 'topic' seems to come with different ideas and approaches and/or with something that almost looks like its own folklore. Two recent examples would be a) Annie of Finty's mill, with people making claims about statues of the character on the roof of Fyvie castle and stones in the church wall which turn out to be untrue in one case and 'Pictish' in another and b) the question of whether Pardon's songs came from broadsheets, with Pardon apparently on record as saying he believed they did to one collector, yet another collector hotly denying that Pardon said this.

I'm guessing shanties would have been rhythmical, the ones (or imitations) we were taught as kids were) but my understanding is that African American sources are now being claimed for many of these with arguments about them as well ..... :) As one prone to sea-sickness I tend to feel a bit quesy at the thought of shanties.

I'm not much of a singer, more of a musician, and I was quite shocked to read on a Mudcat thread that the music wasn't important. Roud points out that some tunes got associated with particular topics, this is obvious when you consider the death march, but I did not know about Lilibullero (can't spell it, sang it often at school, didn't understand a word of it).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 08:02 AM

I wrote "The emphasis is so much on words, not music." I was referring to the emphasis in discussions especially on Mudcat, rather than to Pardon.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 08:12 AM

Vic
Thanks for thoughtful and interesting response.
Awaiting developments with interest.
You are probably going to blow our minds with a very clever analysis of rhythm other than the regular foot-tapping variety, but I should not try to guess.
Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 08:22 AM

By the way, the post of 21 Aug 18 - 03:16 PM above was from me. I forgot to give it a name, but hopefully the context makes it obvious.
Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 08:59 AM

"I found myself thinking that the strong sense of rhythm in USA folk versions of British originals must have come from African influences"

I knew, of course, even as I thought it that it was an odd thought.

Just saying - as this topic is another hornet's nest I would not want to be disturbing.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 09:20 AM

If we're talking about "tradition" per se, singability is obviously a requirement but it isn't the whole story.

"Napoleon's Farewell to Paris," for example, is "singable" in the sense that some few singers actually memorized and sang it. But its place in tradition, in contrast with that of "Barbara Allen" and the other usual suspects, was - so far as we can tell - minimal.

One feels that for most singers, "N's F to P" and its like were quite unsingable, and thus only peripheral to "tradition" in general, no matter how those who did sing them learned and (perhaps) passed them on.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 09:22 AM

Ah, what a relief! A succession recently of thoughtful and constructive posts instead of people misquoting each other

Rhythmic or not varies a lot, depending on the particular song and the particular singer. Instrumental accompaniment, which is very common in the revival and was pretty rare in the tradition, tends to impose a fairly regular rhythm, though there are accompanists who can avoid that.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 09:44 AM

Absolutely know what you mean about relief. Apologies for having been provoked into a toys out of the pram moment as this is how it seems to have come across.

I often follow the bass player, though once had an odd experience playing spoons when a drummer said he had been following me (down the garden path probably I though). But follow the singer, yes.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Walter and his rhythm sticks
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 11:29 AM

Walter was footloose and fancyfree with his vocals, what would Jim say

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 06:49 PM

Right, home again. Can I take you back to my post at 24 Aug 18 - 07:40 AM where we were getting in the way that dance tunes and song tunes were interchangeable and in many cases changed their function from rhythmic dance tune played for their function and freer way they were used by singers and the question was asked Am I incorrect in noticing a lack of rhythm? because this question implies that the answer should be 'yes' or 'no'.
There are a number of points I want to make about this and other things that Pseudonymous mentioned in that post:-
* Tunes interchanged between folk song and dance but that was only two aspects of their interchangeability. Other tunes that were taken for for song and dance came from a variety of sources - the more obvious would be those the tradition obtained from the stage hornpipes that travelling companies took to towns and villages throughout the country, mainly for an ' entr'acte' function. This was a two-way process as folk tunes were adopted by those who wrote for stage shows with John Gay's Beggers' Opera being a prime example.
* Songs that first appeared in the Pleasure Gardens also made this two way adaptation.
* In the early days of that most amazing resource of English dance tunes The Village Music Project, I was interviewing the originator and director, John Adams. Towards the end of the interview after we had covered a great deal of the methodology, I asked John if there were any initial conclusions that he could draw from his work so far. He must have anticipated that question because his immediate reply was:-

Napoleon called England 'a nation of shopkeepers' but if we are talking about the music of English dance - and many songs for that matter - we are a nation of soldiers. So many of our dance tunes came from those that were made for the militia bands that each town and county had to raise to encourage young men to 'take the shilling'.

This struck a bell with me straight away as in a much earlier interview with the great concertina player Scan Tester, he told me that as a boy, probably in the 1880's and '90's he had played the keyed bugle in a militia band. Many of the unnamed polkas that Scan played for dancing seemed to me to have been adapted from marches as John Adams was suggesting to me.
So when Pseu suggests I found myself thinking that the strong sense of rhythm in USA folk versions of British originals must have come from African influences. he can only be talking about the era of recorded sound and any strong rhythmic influence was, in my opinion, more likely to have come from military bands who had playing for marching as their functionality.
We are very fortunate that some of the earliest recordings of English singers, those made by Percy Grainger at Brigg were of singers who almost certainly never heard a recording of music so only had ever heard other singers and musicians. Listen to Joseph Taylor, George Wray et al. and then try and reproduce their sense of rhythm in your own singing afterwards. If you are like me, you will find the way they wander between a strict rhythm and some freer passages very difficult to reproduce.
Hamish Henderson (another interviewee) said to me, "Listen to Jeannie (Robertson), to Jane (Turriff) and you will find that the words that they need to tell their story are what comes first.... the tune just has to fit in with what the words demand."
Think of the carol, Whilst Shepherds Watched... At school we were told that this carol was sung to either melodies called 'Cranbrook' or 'Winchester Old' but the common metre of the carol means that it fits to very many tunes and many village carol singers have used different tunes for it, There used to be a time in folk clubs when every Christmas folk club meeting had it sung to the tune of Ilkley Moor Bar 'tat though a personal favourite of mine is the devastatingly funny way that Vic Legg sings this carol to the tune of The Laughing Policeman!

A lot of what I am trying to say here has been well stated by Richard in his response to Pseu where he wrote (more succinctly than I do):-
Rhythmic or not varies a lot, depending on the particular song and the particular singer. Instrumental accompaniment, which is very common in the revival and was pretty rare in the tradition, tends to impose a fairly regular rhythm, though there are accompanists who can avoid that.

Finally in this overlong post could I link you to the Introduction to Music on the 'Sussex Traditions' website. I was asked to write the draft introduction and then to circulate it to other committee members. They all seemed to think that it was OK apart from one.... the person who really mattered and that was Steve Roud. He said that would have to be totally rewritten, I felt rather miffed at this. A couple of days later I received another email from him apologising and saying that actually at 75% of it was fine but he did not want to have the quotation from John Kirkpatrick at the start and that what I had said about church music was largely wrong.
In the end we had a meeting and thrashed out the final wording between us. The John K. introduction. Steve accepted when I gave my reasons for it but there were areas where his knowledge was far superior to mine. In the end we thrashed out the wording and both our names were put to it. Working closely with him in this way was both stimulating and very demanding and I learned never to make any suggestion in what I wrote that could not back up with evidence. Coming to understand his methodology in this way increased the impact of his book when I read it later in the year,

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 07:28 PM

Hey Jim Carroll, job jobbed keeping this thread alive and as for yourself : the poet said, if they're not trying to kill you you're not doing your job.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 07:32 PM

Oh wait, that wasn't the poet - that was me! anyway, may the road rise to meet you...

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 07:57 PM

Hello Vic

I really appreciate your going into so much detail. Much food for thought, and many suggestions for more listening and reading.

As I may have said one of my grandfathers was a military band leader. He died in 1940 aged 86. We never met! His newspaper obituary stated that he could play every instrument in a military band, and he made a career out of it, but I had not thought of the peacetime performances in public parks as being recruitment oriented, though this makes sense I suppose. But this was late 19th early 20th century.

I think the Roud chapter that started me on this was 17th century as Playford was mentioned. But I have had 'folkie' friends who hate 'Playford', though I know people 'do' it.

Thanks again.

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 04:05 AM

Vic Legg singing while shepherds to the laughing policeman, I would love to hear that

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 08:42 AM

The Sussex Traditions site is interesting. I note the bit about the Tester family. My grandfather is not known to have played in dance bands, but two of his sons who were also military bandsmen in their turn used their skills on civvy street: one played music at a theatre, and the other played with dance bands at the seaside. A third died at Ypres.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 09:31 AM

I have a minor quibble with something Roud says at the bottom of page
288 in the 18th century chapter. He says that dildo was a new invention. I suspect not. Certainly the Earl of Rochester wrote a poem called Signior Dildo in the 17th century and according to his biographer Rochester owned some of these.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 09:31 AM

Sorry the above quibble was me.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Tootler
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 10:05 AM

Your quibble about the dildo reminded me. I have Lucie Skeaping's book of 17th century Broadsides and one of the songs is called "For Want of Dildo" so I did a quick check using that fount of dodgy knowledge, Wikipedia. Actually very useful as long as you bear in mind the necessary health warning.

It mentions "Signior Dildo" which was written by John Wilmot and also a poem by Thomas Nash from the 1590s called "The Choice of Valentines, Nashe's Dildo or The Merrie Ballad of Nashe his Dildo". This was not printed at the time, due to its obscenity but it was still widely circulated and made Nashe's name notorious.

The entry suggests that Dildos have been around since forever and that the when and where the term originated is unknown.

Now back to the serious stuff.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 11:21 AM

Hello and thanks Tootler.

John Wilmott was, of course, the Duke of Rochester, as you will know; just clarifying for other readers. I'm sure I've seen 'dildos' or something like them on classical artifacts etc.

On the topic of rhythm, in Roud chapter 9 (19th century) page 324 there is an account by Waugh of pub singing with two references to people beating time to the singing. On that basis I can maybe conjecture that not all English 'folk' singing lacked a foot-tappable rhythm.

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 11:31 AM

Just escaped form Dublin before the Pope arrived
Whew!!!

"Turning to 'Cupid the Pretty Ploughboy', as sung by Pardon,
First off it has a change from first to third person, which makes it unusual,"
WWho on earth told you that ?
It's one of the common devices in folk song making
I have not been vitioloc not have I been insulting (unless you regard contradicting wht I elieve t be wrong - I know at least one of you who does
Wlater's 'Cupid' is pretty obviouly a broadsing but despite that, he is skill made it into a half-decent song
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 01:25 PM

Vic said
> Think of the carol, Whilst Shepherds Watched...There used to be a time in folk clubs when every Christmas folk club meeting had it sung to the tune of Ilkley Moor Bar 'tat

I believe that tune was originally one of the umpteen tunes written for While Shepherds, and the Ilkley Moor words were written as a spoof, which however became far better known than the original.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 02:25 PM

Several websites suggest that you are quite right, Richard. I didn't know that! I rather like the rather sniffy comment on Wiki which states that it is no longer widely recognised as a hymn or carol tune in the United Kingdom.

Ah well! I will just have to go back to singing Whilst Shepherds Watched... to the tune of Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 03:52 PM

On Ilkley Moor is probably a folk song as my mother taught it to me and when the family and I drove near Ilkley I taught it to them. Three generations, and we never wrote it down. :)

In my hymnal (1889) While Shepherds Watched has the tune 'Gabriel'

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,John Bowden (not a typo!)
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 05:49 PM

About While Shepherds/Ilkley Moor...

Ian Russell's note on the tune "Cranbrook" (While Shepherds..) in the programme for the 2016 Festival of Village carols in Grenoside says:

"Cranbrook - Formerly widespread in South Yorkshire but now rarely heard except in Grenoside. Words by Nahum Tate (!700). Earliest carol text permitted to be sing in church - a paraphrase of Luke's Gospel. Tune by Thomas Clark, the Canterbury shoemaker (1775 - 1859: 1805" [i.e. the tune was composed/published in 1805].
"The tune is used for the well-known parody of Yorkshire dialect, 'On Ilkla Moor Baht'at': earliest reference 1916, but thought to date from late 1870s".

So "While Shepherds..." was being sung to Cranbrook a good 70 years before Ilkla Moor was composed. We still sing it at the Top Red Lion, Grenoside, during the season, and often have to explain that we are NOT singing it to Ilkla Moor, but that it's the other way round!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 06:22 PM

Pseudonymous wrote:
"I could not tap my feet to much of what Walter Pardon sang, and I found myself thinking that the strong sense of rhythm in USA folk versions of British originals must have come from African influences. Am I incorrect in noticing a lack of rhythm, and how typical in your view is that relatively rhythmless delivery of 'traditional' English singing?"

Good question. Walter Pardon was probably the least toe-tapping singer you could find in recorded English traditional folk song. He consistently broke up his rhythms, to the extent that a dogma, based on his singing, became established to the effect that British folk singers characteristically used broken rhythms. Like most dogmas, this one fell apart as soon as you listened to a few other singers. I repeat, there is no single traditional singing style!

Willie Scott's 'Banks of Newfoundland' on Topic's 'Voice of the People', for instance, is set in a driving, bang-on-the-beat 3:4 time. Other singers like Joseph Taylor and Phil Tanner, as Vic Smith has already pointed out, could be very rhythmic most of the time but still break the rhythm in places. We know that collectors of the Sharp era often struggled to render the rhythms they were hearing in conventional music notation, hence the startling changes in time signature observed in their renditions of a single verse.

My opinion on this rhythmic irregularity is that it wasn't a matter of consistent 'broken rhythm', but more a case of single phrases sung in consistent rhythm, but with extended gaps at the ends of the phrases. These people weren't accompanying themselves with guitars or other rhythmic instruments, so they paused at the end of the phrase only for as long as it took to inhale. Though you do also find instances where the pause at the end of the phrase is shorter than modern ears expect because, again, there is no guitar to fill in a couple of empty beats in the 'regularized' rhythm, and the singer moves on halfway through the bar.

Going back to Pseu's original comment, American singers began using rhythmic accompaniment on banjo or guitar a lot earlier than English ones, for reasons at least partly connected with the recording industry. The rhythm they used was largely 4:4 (which is the characteristic time signature of a frailed banjo) or 3:4. This sort of thing didn't start to happen in England until skiffle and the second folk revival.

I think there is some discussion of the need not to apply the values of 'art'music to folk in Julia Bishop's chapters in Roud, but surely people liked to tap their feet. Traditionally, rhythm and metre were supposed to be part of the ways within the oral tradition that supported memory?

Again Vic has beaten me to it on this one. I would say that rhythm and metre were largely subservient to storytelling in British Isles folk song, although songs used in a social setting like a pub sing might acquire some regularity owing to the need to sing the chorus in time. Vic's quote from Hamish Henderson ["Listen to Jeannie (Robertson), to Jane (Turriff) and you will find that the words that they need to tell their story are what comes first.... the tune just has to fit in with what the words demand."] is very telling, although I would add the caveat that, to singers like Walter Pardon and Joseph Taylor, melody was clearly very important as well as the words.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 04:49 AM

Every single singer we ever asked described themselves (in so many words) as storytellers whose stories came with tunes - Walter was the most articulate in doing so
That, in my opinion, made him one of our most important traditional singers

Where the singing tradition is still living in Ireland, [particularly in the Gaeltachts, they talk about "telling" a song rather than "singing" it
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 05:11 AM

Rather than 'rhythm', it is 'pulse' that seems to be the distinguishing feature of traditional song interpretation
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 05:16 AM

Thanks for these interesting responses. I listened to a couple of Joseph Taylor and there does seem to be more of a sense of rhythm here. I note Brian's point about their being no single style.

Not being a singer, I would maybe use 'listenable' rather than 'singable', and Taylor's two pieces are quite listenable.

Pondering this, suppose you have in front of you a ballad sheet with no tune on it. It might not be written in a regular metre. I turned up one at random on the Bodleian, and in fact it isn't in a regular metre. Roud V9800 about St George and his Knights. It doesn't even have a regular number of stresses syllables per line, leave alone syllables. You try to fit it to a tune you know, and end up with something lacking rhythm, or where the emphasis of the tune falls on words that aren't naturally stressed in spoken English. You also end up having to change the tune when there are more words than your original tune has notes for.

This is without any ornamentation you decide to add to the tune, though it is of course possible to add ornamentation without losing the rhythm of the piece)

On 'melody', I am wondering whether you can have a song - as opposed to a recitation, say, without it?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 07:30 AM

Pseudonymous asked:-
On 'melody', I am wondering whether you can have a song - as opposed to a recitation, say, without it?
September 1970.
2 Yeaman Street, Rattray, Blairgowrie
The home of Belle & Alex Stewart, the parents in the famed family, The Stewarts of Blair.
It was a house ceilidh with virtually everyone there high status Scots traveller performers. Belle, Alex their daughters Sheila and Cathie, Davie Stewart, Big Willie McPhee, Shug & Bella Higgins and others who sang and played really well but were not so well known - well I didn't know who they were anyway. We were only invited because we has already organised a couple of tours for them in England and were in Blairgowrie for the festival which had finished the day before. Tina and I sat on the floor and kept very quiet; we didn't want to sem like intruders.
There was a very old lady sitting by the fire. Cathie seemed to be looking after her and later I heard that she had married into this woman's family.
Belle approached this woman and said, "Whit aboot you, ma dear? Ye've got some fine sang. Will ye no gie us ane o' thon?
"Ach, Belle. Ah'm that auld Ah canna sing ony mair.... bit Ah'll say yin... jist as a poetry."
She then recited in a slow stately voice a beautiful and dramatic rendition of a very full version of Lord Lovell - the sort of performanance that you would never forget. When we came back a few days later to see Belle and Alex, we found out that her name was Charlotte Higgins. Subsequently, we found that she had been recorded by Isabel Sutherland in 1954 in some of the first made for the School of Scottish Studies at the U. of Edinburgh. I learned some of Charlotte's songs from Isabel and her Lord Bateman and Susan Pirate, I think of as the finest version of that ballad and it is the one that I sing.
I often think of that night and the wonderful music we heard. Actually, I had my little cassette tape recorder with me but I had enough sense to realise that it would have been inappropriate to get it out.
I also remember how we were teased and tested by them. We had never met Micky McGregor, Sheila's husband before that and he came to sit with us on the floor and told us that he knew the sort of songs that we liked and were after and he sang "South of the border, down Mexico way.... " keeping a close eye on us for our reaction, but I never flinched. When he finished, I told him it was great, that Frank Sinatra was one of my mother's favourite singers and that she was always playing that record.
Micky said.l " Well, I canna' fool you" and then sung a stunning version of The False Knight on the Road which I remember as being similar to the one collected from Bella Higgins.
At another point in the evening, Big Willie came and sat by us and he had picked up Davie Stewart's melodeon. He prentended to try and play it and said to Tina, "Ah canna' get a note out of this thing." Somewhat embarrassed Tina pointed out that he was holding it upside down. "Och! It's the ither way up." He turned it round and tried pressing the buttons again. "It still doesna' work!" Tina pointed out the clasp that held the bellows closed. "Oh! There's a wee strappie at the top!" He undid that. "It srill...." Tina leaned over and undid the strap at the bottom. "Anither yin..."
He then drew out the bellows and played a stunning version of Lady Elspeth Campbell Halfway through playing, he turned to Tina with a huge smile on his face and said, "Ah can play it fine now!"

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 07:45 AM

Nice story, Vic

I'm looking back at Chapter 20 of Roud. It starts with a quotation from Sharp to the effect that singers might not comment on tunes, but this does not mean that they were not aware of them or did not appreciate them, albeit that this might be at a subconscious level.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 10:25 AM

Some great discussion here now, too much to respond to in one go. And most of it well-informed anyway.

Tzu, if you turned up a broadside ballad without a strong rhythm then you were extremely unlucky. The vast majority at least have a reasonable rhythm and form, and those that don't soon acquire it if the song content is usable. I am guessing here and basing this on my own songwriting but a useful ploy in writing this material is to have a tune in mind while you're writing, regardless of whether that tune is eventually used.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 10:35 AM

Harry 23rd 8.44. Apologies if I was dismissive. No-one has said that ordinary (non song writers) were not capable of writing songs. It's very likely that almost anyone is. It's having the motivation and the time that are the first obstacles. Then in order to become a folk song the song has to pass through oral tradition and that can be a big stumbling block for the song. Your songs if sung by others in the mess or concert room, by my definition, will have become folksongs for a short period of time, but if they didn't get beyond that mess or fo'c'sle into other fo'c'sles they would not have survived long enough.

Cyril Tawney's RN songs have survived largely because he was a professional performer and that they were put into print and spread in this way nationally. They are folksongs in the wider sense of the word as they are a massive part of the Folk Scene, but I doubt if they are still sung in mess rooms other than by Revivalists.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 10:37 AM

Howard,
I really liked the way you expressed your thoughts on the 23rd 0340. Thankyou for that.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 11:38 AM

Pseudonymous:
"...suppose you have in front of you a ballad sheet with no tune on it. It might not be written in a regular metre... You try to fit it to a tune you know, and end up with something lacking rhythm, or where the emphasis of the tune falls on words that aren't naturally stressed in spoken English. You also end up having to change the tune when there are more words than your original tune has notes for."

Firstly, the ballad you mentioned (Roud V2800) is a blackletter broadside from the mid-17th century, although it does seem to have been printed up until at least 1800 in unaltered from (interesting to see some illustrative woodcuts that actually reflect the content of the ballad, by the way!). Steve Gardham knows far more about this than me, but my experience is that texts from this early period were invariably long and wordy, and actually quite hard to sing - the evidence that anyone actually sang them in that form is scanty. The broadside texts that correspond most closely with collected folksongs (Henry Martin, or Sweet Primroses, to use two examples already discussed) were much later - probably the first half of the 19th century - and far shorter and less verbose.

The second thing to say is that traditional singers were pretty good at fitting lyrics to tunes, amending texts if necessary. My old friend Gordon Tyrrall wrote a dissertation many years ago which compared the texts of songs in the Copper Family's repertoire with the corresponding broadsides, and found that the songs as sung by the Coppers had had a lot of awkward edges knocked off to make them more singable. The other thing that can be done is to lengthen certain words if the text is too short to fit the melody line, or insert extra syllables into words if there are too many notes in the melody. Joseph Taylor did the latter: "Poacher bold as I uddenfold", and so on. But, if push came to shove, and the text had too many words to fit into the tune, singers would sometimes simply lengthen the line as much as necessaryto accommodate all the words. There's no problem doing that if you don't have a rhythmic accompaniment.

I've set more than a few broadsides (including some 'unsingable' ones!) to existing or new tunes in the past. For what it's worth, if I was forced to perform your St George ballad, I could make it fit a tune I wrote very recently in 4:4 for a 19th century Chartist song, by lingering on certain words, or inserting an extra one where there are too few to fit the line, or by squeezing in a word before the first beat.

The opening lines:
"Why should we boast of Arthur and his knights
Knowing how many men have performed fights"

...are particularly clunky, but you might get around the problem of the stresses in line 2 by squeezing in the 'knowing' ahead of the beat - so the first-beat stress falls on how, then singing per-form-ed as three syllables to fill the gap. If it were me I'd be more radical and edit it to something like "When so many other heroes / have fought for what is right..." [stresses underlined]. There's always a way.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 11:50 AM

Hello Steve

Re ballads and rhythm.

I really did select one more or less at random but forget how. It is a Bodleian one starting Why should We boast of Arthur and his Knights, called St George and the Dragon, and the version was printed in Coventry. It would be just my luck to come up with an atypical example, but you could check it out as it comes up if you go to the site and search for St George. Happy to be corrected if wrong on this.


I accept your points, they make sense to me.

In Roud, Bishop comments that it is interesting how 'ballads' printed without named tunes do turn up sung to different tunes, but that surprisingly many have rather similar tunes, or similar phrases within them.

A fascinating detail from Roud was that some of Sharp's 'tradition bearers' apparently could not recognise their songs when he had 'harmonised' them ie, put simply, had fitted chords for piano to the tunes.

I'm not sure that having motivation and time are two important factors, and also, importantly, the question of whether this is a practice one has contact with.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 04:33 PM

Evening all.

Brian: My opinion on this rhythmic irregularity is that it wasn't a matter of consistent 'broken rhythm', but more a case of single phrases sung in consistent rhythm, but with extended gaps at the ends of the phrases.

I think that's a big part of it. I also think - just from my own experience singing songs unaccompanied - that it gets to be quite natural to add a beat, or (perhaps more frequently) drop a beat, if a particular line doesn't have the right number of syllables. If you're accompanied there's a lot more pressure to keep a steady rhythm, if necessary by compressing two syllables or stretching out one.

Being a latecomer to this whole thing, I learned The Holland Handkerchief from the Waterson:Carthy recording. Initially I sang it exactly as Norma did, but without guitar accompaniment to hold the shape it sounded forced and artificial. It only came alive for me when I let the words drive the tune, dropping or adding beats where necessary. (The tune's still there, it just doesn't sound exactly the same each time round.) A friend asked if I'd got it from Packie Byrne, which I took as a compliment!

The other pitfall for unaccompanied singers - and one which may account for the impression that folk songs aren't foot-tappers - is the equal and opposite danger of learning a song note for note, and stress for stress, from somebody who's already buggered about with it (technical term). Peter Bellamy, God rest him, is a terrible source for song tunes - wonderful to listen to, but you try singing them and very often what you learn won't actually be the original tune at all. Several times now I've got a song off pat from a Bellamy version, only to realise some time later that there's a simpler - and more metrically regular - tune lurking in there somewhere.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 05:10 PM

Brian and I seem to have 'cross posted'. So I had not read his thoughts on St George before my post.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 05:23 PM

Evening Brian

First, your post set me interested in knowing more about how ballads/broadsheets changed: I've read a few but not thought much about historical order/changes apart from what is in Roud/Bishop's book.

I get what you mean about changing things; I actually do this from time to time and one thing I/we did it with accidentally got 'collected'. But enough said there. It wasn't folk, not really, probably....

Funnily enough, I can 'imagine' a 'singable' version of the St George if the audience could be relied on to pick up on the references. My instinct would be to make it an ironic take on jingoism.

But are we agreed that 'as written' the thing needs work?

It's strange: I did some theory of music as a kid and very young you were expected to write a tune to fit set lyrics (key and time signature supplied) ensuring that significant words fell on a stressed beat as opposed to something like 'and' (and I know in some contexts even 'and' can be significant.

And has my idea that in *some* cases singers may not have made the tweaks successfully sunk without trace?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 18 - 05:28 AM

Phil: Yes, I agree that an unaccompanied singer would be wise to try and reproduce someone's performance that was originally dependent on a guitar accompaniment. But then I'd always prefer to back to an original source (Walter Pardon recording, book, VWML online archive etc) anyway.

"But are we agreed that 'as written' the thing needs work?"

In the case of the St George ballad, and also the Peterloo material I'm working on right now, I'd say a definite 'yes'.

"And has my idea that in *some* cases singers may not have made the tweaks successfully sunk without trace?"

I fear it has, since I can't find it. But, yes, I'm sure it's possible to find recordings of singers who are having some difficulty bedding the words into a tune. Though this may be partly a matter of memory: as I've said before, some 'source singers' visited by collectors may not have actively sung a song for many years. And many of them were not 'performers' in the sense we understand it now, so achieving a polished rendition may not have been a priority.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 18 - 05:48 AM

Aargh, should have said UNwise in line 1 above!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 27 Aug 18 - 05:56 AM

Brian, you really need to call a press conference and explain how you MISSPOKE! That's what our friend in the White House does.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 18 - 09:45 AM

"That's what our friend in the White House does."

Obviously he's my main role model these days, Vic.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 27 Aug 18 - 10:04 AM

some of Sharp's 'tradition bearers' apparently could not recognise their songs when he had 'harmonised' them ie, put simply, had fitted chords for piano to the tunes.

I am no sort of tradition bearer but I often can't get any idea of the tune from the MIDI harmonizations on the contemplator.com site. The melody note could be any pitch in that overcomplicated texture of homogeneous organ sound.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 27 Aug 18 - 10:18 AM

I found myself thinking that the strong sense of rhythm in USA folk versions of British originals must have come from African influences

I doubt the US and UK evolved all that differently. Military culture has always been a huge presence in the US (and still is, to an extent unimaginable here - who has ever heard of a kid being sent to a "military academy" in the UK?). The early jazz musicians were military trained and used military instruments, and fife bands survived into the middle of the 20th century when Bayard researched them in western Pennsylvania - their idiom was not that different from the Irish or Scottish sectarian flute band style. African-American musicians can't have been immune to influence from military music of European origin.

Quite possibly Irish music was more similar in this respect than is generally recognized. My great-grandfather was a peasant from Mayo who joined the British Army at 14 and learned to play the flute in Afghanistan; there wasn't anything extraordinary about this. The British Army was where almost all flutes used in Irish music came from. Military rhythms must have influenced Irish dance music rhythms.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 09:07 AM

Steve, while on the topic of books, do you know 'Folk Song and Music Hall' by Edward Lee? Is it worth reading, if so? (NB it can be got relatively cheap 2nd hand, but if it isn't any good why waste money?)

Hoping you'll have time to reply. Thanks

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 10:18 AM

Since it is back I will ask what I was going to ask just as it paused.

Is there a term for the subset of 'what the folk sang' (and of what falls within the 1954 definition and what as revived in the post 1950 folk clubs) that has been the centre of discussion in this thread?

Almost all the songs mentioned here were sung (and revived) by solo singers. No-one seems inclined to discuss wassail songs, work songs, local carols, drinking songs etc.

They tend not to have the catchy tunes and easy-to-join-in-with rhythms of the music hall, pleasure garden or stage tunes that are known to be such. As discussed above scanning the words into the tune can be tricky.

There melodies often feature modes other than the major and minor of 'art music' and often use gapped scales.

From the descriptions of and by many collectors there seems to have been a collection bias towards these features and a tendency of source singers to offer them.

If, in a parallel with Lloyd's eastern European truck driver, a carter had heard the lads of the town singing something from the pleasure garden then gone home and wrote a little song to a similar tune would we identify it as a 'folk song'? Or would it be regarded as just another example of popular song?

Is there a name for this 'sub-genre'. It is almost as if the collectors and revivalists had selected for 'unpopular song'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 10:50 AM

An example of the sort of thing "jag" was talking about: Hamish Henderson collected a lullaby "Wee Davie Daylicht" in southwest Scotland and published it in "Tocher" with no information about its origins beyond the singer he got it from. In fact it was written in the 1920s (or maybe a bit earlier) and published in a book of songs of the "national" or "community" song genre.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 01:58 PM

Aha, Jack, this "Wee Davie Daylicht" seems to have a Roud number, and if it is the same song, it was printed as early as 1890 and credited to Robert Tennant.

Roud Broadside Index (B116744)

Tzu

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 03:17 PM

Maybe drifting off topic (or back to dialect poets...), but what is the relationship to Auld Daddy Darkness in the last line of which Wee Davie makes his appearance. Is one referring to the other or are they both older Scottish 'characters'?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 05:52 PM

I thought I had Lee's book but on searching apparently not so I'd better not comment. The relationship between the two genres is quite complex and songs and influences move both ways. Like most genres Music Hall was influenced by a wide spectrum of other mostly smaller genres such as glee singing, London tavern singing, the coal cellars, burlesque in the theatre, American Minstrels and much more. Burlesquing folk songs and ballads predates the Music Hall but continued into the Music Hall era. Many Music Hall songs imitated folk songs and some were eventually taken up in oral tradition, classic example, Jim the Carter Lad by Harry Linn. Another example, a tavern song 'Little Pigs' was widely printed on broadsides and eventually oral versions were used in the Music Hall culminating in the 1920s recordings on 78s as 'The Old Sow'. 2 of the most prolific writers of the Music Hall era, Harry Clifton and Joe Geoghegan, had many of their songs continue in oral tradition. I don't know where you're based but I'm giving a presentation on the relationship between the 2 genres at Cecil Sharp House in London on the 10th November. There is also an earlier paper I wrote, with examples, on the TSF website.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 06:05 PM

>>>>>>Is there a term for the subset of 'what the folk sang' (and of what falls within the 1954 definition and what as revived in the post 1950 folk clubs) that has been the centre of discussion in this thread?<<<<<<

jag,

You have identified in this question one of the much-discussed bones of contention. Terminology for our genre is rife with difficulties. Part of the problem is that some people don't want to accept that most words in the English language have multiple meanings/definitions and 'folk song' is no exception. In fact like the language itself the meaning of 'folk song' is continuing to evolve. All 3 of your subgenres can and do use the words 'folk song' to describe them. Most of us are happy to use the words to describe all 3 and use extra adjectives to narrow things down, such as 'contemporary song' 'traditional song'. This has been discussed and argued on many threads and again will continue to be so.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 06:21 PM

Hello and thank you Steve.

Oop North is where I am. I'll look for your paper online.

Extremely unlikely to be in London on 10th November, but hope it goes well.

Jag

Interesting point about the focus on sole singers: in Roud it says most 'trad' singing seems to have been like this, though it also discusses glees and rounds, and the Copper family are mentioned, with question about how typical they may have been. I found some of their work on youtube.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 06:33 PM

Most of the songs we discuss are indeed ballads which in Britain usually means a solo singer with perhaps the opportunity to join in with a chorus if there is one, but there are specialist areas where group singing is the norm. Carol singing is perhaps the most obvious of these and sometimes similar ritual pieces. Some songs either are or were intended as duets as with some dialogues where the obvious singers are a male and a female. In communities which were still alive and singing in living memory (e.g., hunt suppers) solos, duets and group singing were common enough. A good example, listen to Will Noble and John Cocking of the Holme Valley Beagles singing Gossip Joan as a duet, very effective and entertaining. Obvious duets are pieces such as 'madam I am come a courting' and 'The Keys of Heaven'. Many of these country pieces were staple repertoire of village productions where the singers dressed up for the performances.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Sep 18 - 09:39 AM

Hi Tzu
The excellent Copper Family are probably unique in Britain. Their style seems to have evolved in some way from the glee clubs of the early nineteenth century although I strongly suspect developed further by the family. I say this because some of their songs are indeed from this glee club repertoire but most are certainly not. There are plenty of families who have been recorded right up to the present day, but all the ones I have heard of have been solo singers with the occasional solo singer being accompanied on instrument by another member, but even this is rare. Hundreds of singers have been recorded either in writing or by sound recording since the 1880s and to the best of my knowledge there are no others.

However, arguably there have been performing families of musicians in Ireland who have sung together, such as the McPeakes. Whether they sang together in this way before they became performers I couldn't say.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Will Fly
Date: 02 Sep 18 - 10:36 AM

"A Song For Every Season" by Bob Copper is, to my mind, essential reading for anyone who wants to get some idea of how traditional songs could be embedded and sung within a community.

Bob describes various seasons of the year and the songs that were sung at the time, with references to lambing, shearing, harvesting, and descriptions of the people within the village and within the Copper family who sung them. Songs are included in the book. It's a wonderful book and one I read and re-read. Like many in my area of Sussex, I knew Bob and occasionally attended the Copper's evenings in the Central Club in Peacehaven on the Sussex coast. His son (and some family members who came along) were recent guests at the Brighton Acoustic Session.

Another book of his, describing his song collecting in Sussex and Hampshire, is "Songs and Southern Breezes" - also a good read. Both books contain Bob's excellent b&w line drawings. Bob was also a devotee of jazz and blues, and he once told me that his Dad's favourite song was "Brother Can You Spare A Dime"!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 06:22 AM

This is Vic Smith speaking cookie-less and briefly from Corsica -
The excellent Copper Family are probably unique in Britain.
Not quite, Steve. I know of three other examples of their glee harmony folk singing in Sussex. Isabel Sutherland told me of some that she had heard in the Rotherfield area. They were a family of pig farmers. The Lewes singer George Townsend reported singing in this sort of harmony with his father and others when his father kept the 'Jolly Sportsman' four miles outside Lewes at Eaat Chiltington in the late c19. Luther Hills collected by Bob Copper in the 1950s was blacksmith in East Dean and said that he sang in harmony with his father and others and fially there is the family (Millin or something similar?) that George Fraanpton recorded in Kent

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 01:16 PM

Thanks, Vic
It's useful to know of these other examples. Of course there may have been other examples in other parts of Britain that weren't so heavily visited by collectors. I remember George mentioning this family at a TSF meeting but we didn't get to hear much about them after that which is a pity. To be honest it would be really odd if the Copper Family were the only ones to do this.

In comparing the source singer traditions with those of the Revival (and perhaps even the First Revival) harmony singing in the latter is much more prevalent (thankfully). What would make an excellent study is the history of influences on the harmony singing that has blossomed in the current revival since the 50s. It would probably include glee singing, carols, American influence (Carters), popular music, hymns, choirs etc....Watersons, Young Tradition, Cropper Lads and others from the 60s.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 02:08 PM

"Almost all the songs mentioned here were sung (and revived) by solo singers. No-one seems inclined to discuss wassail songs, work songs, local carols, drinking songs etc."

I'm not sure whether your 'no-one' refers to this thread or to the collectors, Guest jag, but Cecil Sharp for one collected dozens of carols, wassails, shanties and a good few songs about ale, and also lectured on the first two. Lloyd talked a lot about them as well, and I think most people regard them as an essential part of the 'folk' canon. Baring-Gould collected a lot more in pubs than the others, and heard more communal singing, also a few specific instances of two-part harmony.

None of that changes my view that English traditional singing is primarily unaccompanied, but pub singing does need to be taken into account - for example, Cyril Poacher appears to have added a refrain to 'The Broomfield Wager' only when he sang it in the pub.

"From the descriptions of and by many collectors there seems to have been a collection bias towards these features [modal and gapped scales] and a tendency of source singers to offer them."

I'd say more a publication bias than a collection bias, though of course we'll never know for certain.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 02:29 PM

>>>>>wassail songs, work songs, local carols, drinking songs<<<<<

Apart from local carols which are well-documented, which of the other 3 have examples of being sung in any other way other than by a lead singer singing the verses? Other than the examples already given here I might add. Even chanteys were always as far as we know a solo lead singer. Where we have recordings of strong traditional pub sings (East Anglia in particular) the rule was 'one singer, one song' with the others joining in the chorus. Bob Roberts was sometimes present at these as a young man, with his melodeon, but he only used it to accompany step-dancing and his own songs.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 02:56 PM

Indeed, Steve.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 08:23 PM

I wonder whether the 'family' set up has something to do with it. When we were kids we would sing with mam, whether it was nursery rhymes, or songs she knew from 'community song' books, or the radio, etc, 'folk songs' learned in schools thanks to Sharp. Maybe if people sang in families and with kids then group singing was more common, but those from whom collectors collected songs were often past child-rearing stages of life (with a few exceptions of families being found).

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 08:49 PM

This adds nothing of substance, but I feel the need to mention that when I heard the Watersons' debut album, "Frost and Fire," here in the States in 1967, I thought the a cappella harmonies nothing less than electrifying.

I'm guessing that the Coppers' neighbors reacted similarly, when they first heard the Coppers' harmonies.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Sep 18 - 02:05 AM

i uderstood that bob and ron copper and ther father an uncle all sang in the church choir, so tir neighbours were possibly used to harmonies in church services

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 04 Sep 18 - 05:59 AM

It's a pity there isn't a Scottish equivalent of Roud, I was thinking the other day.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Sep 18 - 10:58 AM

I presume you mean 'Folk Song in Scotland'. An interesting thought. Certain sub-genres and periods are well covered but an overall insight would be very welcome. The Roud Indexes of course cover most of the English-speaking world where these songs are found. Is there anyone left still in Scotland who has that sort of knowledge and commitment? Hamish Henderson springs to mind but he's no longer with us.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Sep 18 - 11:33 AM

Chris Wright and Steve Byrne have the expertise but they probably don't have the time.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 04 Sep 18 - 11:36 AM

Thanks for your comments Brian and Steve regarding the communal singing.

I was meaning 'no-one' saying much about communal singing (to that point) in this thread about a book covering 'what the folk sang'.

I am unclear about the extent to which the informal communal singing I have experienced while the second revival has been going on is a creation of the revivals (BBC singing for schools, Clancy Brothers records etc) and how much just a continuation of what had gone on before. If it had been going on before did it qualify as part of 'English Folk Song'?

The same might apply to harmony singing as it came to be heard in performance. As 'The Sandman' has pointed out some people sang in church choirs. When church attendance was almost universal in rural areas how often was the local 'song carrier' also a chorister and how many of the congregation could accomodate a hymn in the wrong key for them by singing an octave, or a fifth, or somehting that harmonised, for awkward notes.

I bought Roud's book because I was interested in the social history of song and I wasn't dissapointed.

I understand that collectors might be seeking out the remnants of a dying 'folk art' but the line between art and craft (including the craft of the broadside and stage-show writers) can be a fine one and very much in the eye of the observer.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Sep 18 - 01:05 PM

Thanks for coming back in, jag. The evidence in the book and other evidence we have would seem to suggest that communal singing of full songs was rare in oral tradition. Regardless of what category you would put coach parties and the practice of community singing in, this is not normally regarded as part of our folk song tradition, though it could be argued that it is. The over-riding feature of this type of singing is it relies on singing medleys of choruses. It certainly was/is a practice of the 'folk' but it has its own features. The vast majority of what has been recorded as folksong in this country is narrative, the ballad, and generally, but with a few exceptions as we have seen, this is one singer, one song. Even the iterative catalogue songs more often than not need a lead singer with others coming in on the bits of refrain and repeats.


The short answer to your question is that communal singing would seem to be much more a feature of the revival than anything earlier in oral tradition.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 04 Sep 18 - 04:56 PM

Steve. On that basis the singing described in Roud's quotes from Fred Kitchen (b. 1891) and William Woodruff (b. 1916) in chapter 11 (Folk Song in the First Half of the Twentieth Century) does seem to be more akin to 'popular music' than 'folk song' and not much different to singing 'Caledonia' on the back of a late night bus.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Sep 18 - 05:39 PM

Perhaps so, jag, but going back as far as we can the folk have always borrowed from popular music (just as popular music occasionally borrows from folk), and we also have to remember that musical genres overlap so it's best to picture this in the form of Venn diagrams rather than something with hard and fast boundaries. There are those who want to say 'this song is a folksong because of blah blah' and 'this song isn't a folksong because of blah blah' but it's not as simple as that with every song in the canon. Some songs fulfil all of the criteria and some only fulfil some of them.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 06:17 AM

The idea that singers might have been members of church choirs is certainly true of Joseph Taylor, and it might have helped to contribute to the quality of his voice. Could he harmonize spontaneously? I don't think we know.

The 'communal harmony singing' question has come up on Mudcat before; I did a bit of listening to the recordings I had here of singing pubs, and wasn't able to make out much harmony. OTH, my 'Wild Rover' researches turned up a version from the songbook of Thomas Hardy's father, which was scored for two parts.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 06:40 AM

Worldwide, harmony singing and solo ballad singing often seem to be exclusive. Among the Kartvelians and the Svan of Georgia, and the Tosk of southern Albania, you get three-part harmony singing but no solo ballads. Among the English, the Laz of southwest Georgia and the Gegs of northern Albania, you get long epic solo ballads but no harmonized folksongs. There are other examples. I'm not suggesting a grand theory but there does seem to be a correlation. And it doesn't seem to be a regional or ethnic one, as the proximity of these divergent cultures suggests. (Instruments may affect it; the Laz and the Gegs both use droney fiddle accompaniment so maybe they don't need voices doing the job).

Did the Welsh ever have a solo narrative ballad tradition, or are they another of the harmonized-only cultures?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 07:55 AM

it may help to understand social historyin relation to fok song is to investigate in depth the collector alfred williams.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 08:15 AM

So, a folk song in Scotland would perhaps include sections on the history of collectors in Scotland, and a century-by-century account drawing on contemporary accounts of practices, and, perhaps, some discussion of the 'Scottish snap' controversy?

There's a web site about Alfred Williams, which mentions Bellowhead, and the first song I found on it, Betsy Baker, seems to have come from a broadside. But this isn't 'in depth' research!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 08:22 AM

http://www.alfredwilliams.org.uk/folkhero.html

He was educated at Ruskin (albeit it seems at a distance). Fascinating.
Thanks for the idea, Sandman.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 09:28 AM

Roud, when discussing glees comments that they "were on their way down the social scale , and the were eventually found in the villages and town acverns and even on the streets of London" and quotes Alfred Williams' Folk Songs of the Upper Thames:

Glees were usually sung my those having slightly superior taste in music; that is, by those of above average intelligence among the villagers, or by such as had been trained at some time or other to play and instrument, it may have been a fiddle or cornet in the local bands, or in the choir on Sundays in church.

(If one of the collectors born into the middle classes had said that would they have been criticised for being condescending?)

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 09:30 AM

"... they were eventually found in the villages and town taverns..."

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 05:13 PM

I get the impression that most of these contributions to the folk canon started off in London as one might expect, the song cellars, glee clubs, Music Halls, pleasure gardens. Of course it wouldn't take long for them to be imitated in other large urban centres. Also London was the centre for printing with many more printers per sq mile than anywhere else in Britain and it follows that that's where most of the ballad writers were.

One genre that definitely started elsewhere was the minstrel troupe genre which came from America but soon hopped over to London c1840.

Yes, I believe the glee clubs were originally a middle-class thing, as you needed to be able to sight read. Books of glees, catches and rounds were very popular. Many of the glees were published singly in sheet music form, e.g., 'Dame Durden'. The earliest version of 'The Derby Ram' I have seen is on a glee sheet. I couldn't state that's where it originated, but it's possible.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Vic Smith
Date: 10 Sep 18 - 10:21 AM

PEDANTS' CORNER
Dick wrote:-
i uderstood that bob and ron copper and ther father an uncle....
Actually Bob & Ron were cousins, not brothers. Jim was Bob's dad and John was Ron's dad. This is a very easy mistake to make as you will find a number of places where Bob & Ron are referred to as "The Copper Brothers" - including the sleeve notes of a Tony Rose album.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 04:01 PM

>>>>Some songs either are or were intended as duets as with some dialogues where the obvious singers are a male and a female.<<<<

In researching my next book just came across another good example in Kidson's 'Traditional Tunes' in reference to 'Colin and Phoebe' which occurs in several collections from oral tradition. Kidson was of course a collector AND a music historian, unlike many of the other collectors of the time. p73. (writing in 1891 by the way)


'With the few remaining old-fashioned singers in country places, songs of the type of 'Colin & Phoebe' are still favourites. They are a survival of the school of fashionable music and song when Mr. Lampe and Dr. Arne composed, and when Mr. Beard and other singers delighted Vauxhall audiences with these composed productions. 'C&P' used to be sung in Yorkshire, and on the Lancashire and Cheshire borders, in the correct old-fashioned style. It being 'A Dialogue' a male and female singer took their respective parts, one as Colin and the other as Phoebe, and put as much archness and tenderness into their performance as the part warranted.'

He then gives 2 oral versions and the original from 1755.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Sep 18 - 05:38 AM

I hesitate to chip in again when this thread had finally gone quiet for a whole two weeks, but I think it's worth mentioning one aspect of the upcoming Lewes workshop with Bob Lewis: "we'll discuss ... where the songs come from ...".

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Jon Dudley
Date: 27 Sep 18 - 09:26 AM

Vic's correction re. Bob and Ron Copper, has a good tale attached...
The two were booked incorrectly to appear as the Copper brothers, unfortunately Ron was indisposed and son John stood in for him which led Dominic Behan, the compere to introduce them thus -
"And now we have the Copper brothers...and if you're thinking that one Copper brother is a lot older than the other Copper brother, that's because the older Copper brother is the younger Copper brother's father..." Priceless!

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Hootenannny
Date: 27 Sep 18 - 11:57 AM

Seeing this thread re-awaken today I expected it to be in reference to Ian Hislop's BBC 4 TV programme last night regarding the "idealised vision of the countryside celebrated by writers, painters and musicians"
There was discussion with and a tune or two by Vic Gammon and some film of C Sharp himself the expert on country dance poncing(sorry)prancing around and not getting it quite right. There was also some interesting information on Morris Dancing and WW1 which I was completely unaware of.

The programme will probably be available on I-Player.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,JHW
Date: 05 Feb 19 - 03:06 PM

I've finished reading it. I may remember a few more names. I may remember a few more scenarios.
I was rather assuming he would come to 'some conclusions'.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Feb 19 - 04:44 PM

Which conclusions would you have envisaged? I think basically he presents evidence and allows you to come to your own conclusions. Perhaps he was put off actually documenting conclusions after some of his predecessors were being far too 'conclusive' whilst presenting very little evidence.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Feb 19 - 03:32 AM

"I get the impression that most of these contributions to the folk canon started off in London as one might expect, the song cellars, glee clubs, Music Halls, pleasure gardens...."
Nobody can say with any certainty who made our folk songs - nobody knows who did and probably never will so we can only rely on what little we do know and common sense to even approach the question   
The suggestion that our folk songs, dealing with the real lives of real people, as they do, originated from the pens of city dwelling entertainers whose lives were as far from those depicted in the songs flies in the face of over a century's scholarship and research and in the face of logic.
The published collections of unsingable songs by bad poets - (HACKS) - who churned out their wares at a rate of knots indiucate that they are the least likely to have made them - they had neither the experience to handle the subject matter nor the creative ability to pen the deathless pieces of social history that make up our folk song repertoire - Ashton, Hindley, Bagford Holloway and Black, Euing.... all fairly convincing proof, as far as I'm concerned, that they could not have made our folk songs.

The 19th century popular songmakers, represented by the mammoth 'Universal Songster' and the pastiche outpourings of Dibden, stand out as examples of poor and often extremely patonising (sometimes denigrating) representations of working peoples' lives, next to the insightful and sympathetic realities of the poaching and transportation songs, or the broken-token pieces describing the popular practice of exchanging 'gimmel rings', or the songs depicting the 'camp-following' women who accompanied men into battle.

Over a century of scholarship unswervingly attributed the making of these songs to the people whose lives and experiences they described
Child named them "popular" (belonging to the people) while at the same time writing off the commercial products that occasionally included the occasional folksong as "veritable dunghills"
Motherwell sharply warned against tampering with the people creations by "improving" and rewriting them   
Sharp went to great lengths to analyse their structure.
Up to comparatively recently, there has been no doubt as to who made our folk songs...
Topic Records, which dedicated its existence to making available folk songs, chose as the title of its monumental and ongoing set'The Voice of the People', just as Lloyd, four decades earlier, entitle his 13 programme presentation for schools, 'The Songs of the People'
How could so many clever and experienced people have got it so wrong for so wrong?   

Pat Mackenzie and I dedicated thirty years of our lives to finding out what the remaining bearers of our 'folk songs' considered the songs they sang and how they compared them to 'The Other Songs" (Mike Yates's phrase) they also sang - apparently they got it wrong too.
Walter Pardon went to great lengths to describe the difference between his "old folk songs" and "them other old things" - his opinions were swept aside by giving everything hie sang Roud numbers

I looked forward to Steve Roud's book with some anticipation, hoping it might correct some of the previous flaws in our understanding - in removing the uniqueness of our folk songs by lumping hem in with the long rejected popular songs, the parlour ballads and the rest, Steve Roud's book has blurred the lines between many genres of song
Despite the fact that Roud's work is larger and far more widespread in its approach and gos into far greater detail, in my opinion it measures small next to Lloyd's book of the same name written all those years ago.
In my opinion, despite Bert's flaws and idiosyncrasies his 'Folk Song in England has a far greater understanding of the uniqueness of the genre than does the latest condenser for the title .

What we learned by our field work, especially among the non-literate Travellers and the Irish singers who were still singing their songs socially up to the middle of the twentieth century was that the communities they came from produced instinctive songmakers who constantly reflected their experiences and emotions in verse whenever the occasion arose
A discussion going on at present on this forum concerning the Peterloo massacre clearly indicates that English workers were probably as prolific in songmaking.
We owe the survival of many of our greatest ballads to a cultural group who have yet to accept literacy as part of their lives      
      
Over the last decade or so there have been many claims that we no longer know what folk song is - little wonder, considering what has happened to the clubs.
Now, it seems, that confusion has spread to the world of research.
For me, and many like me, what "folk" means has never been in dispute
Folk song is as researched and analysed as any other cultural form - there may have been disputes following the singer-songwriter phase inspired by the protest song-maker that once was, Bob Dylan,   as to what wasn't a folk song, in my experience, there has been little doubt as to what a folk song was
For me, the answer lies in the two terms "tradition and folk", often treated as separate entities but in fact two sides of the same coin
the "Folk" were the people who almost certainly made and remade the songs to suit their lives and record their personal experiences, "tradition" is the process they used to do so - I don't believe it ever gets more complicated than that.

Perhaps we might discuss this without the aggressiveness (on all sides), as people with a mutual love and objective rather than opponents this time?
That is my intention anyway
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Feb 19 - 04:28 AM

Incidentally
Steve Gardham cites "Song Cellars and Glees" as a possible contender for the title of of folk song maker
Laurence Senelick's extensive lists of the songs sung in the easrly Victorian Taverns tends to rule them out
See
'Tavern Singing in Early Victorian London' (the diaries of Charles Rice for 1840 aande 1850 (Society for Theatre Research 1997), tend to rule them out, in my opinion
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 07 Feb 19 - 05:12 AM

I haven't really been keeping up with this thread, but I do agree with Jim when he writes 'In my opinion, despite Bert's flaws and idiosyncrasies his 'Folk Song in England has a far greater understanding of the uniqueness of the genre than does the latest condenser for the title .' I am saddened to see that Bert Lloyd's reputation is slowly being pulled apart by people who often did not actually know him and who were not around when Bert was writing his book. I spent quite a lot of time with him and came to admire him greatly. His knowledge, especially of Eastern European music/song traditions was quite outstanding. Without him, and MacColl, the revival would not have been able to take off in the manner that it did. I just wish that some people would remember that.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Feb 19 - 05:32 AM

Mike, what you say is true,however there were others who ran folk clubs week in and week out some for over 50 years,whose importance wshould be acknowledged.
The direction of the uk folk revival was propelled by MacColl and Lloyd[ [at last this is being acknowleged,in the past Jim has tried to give the impression that MacColls influence went no further than the singers club    well considering they were both communists , i find it interesting, that the revival was to SOME EXTENT propelled towards traditional music,and to some extent away from political social comment, of course Ewan contiued to sing social comment songs as well as tradtional material
PARADOXICALLY a rule was encouraged at the singers club which in effect meant that unless you were american you could not sing Woody Guthrie songs.
There are two possible conclusions here the first one was that at some point Ewan and Berts influence lessened and the uk folk revival was steered in a more esoteric direction BY OTHERS., and more latterly in a commercial direction with much of the hype that is reminscent of the pop world

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Feb 19 - 07:02 AM

"Jim has tried to give the impression that MacColls influence went no further than the singers club "
I have done no such thing Dick, on the contrary
Ewan's influence gave rise to workshops throughout Britain, including the one I ran in Manchester back in the mid- sixties
I have spent years trying to publicise the fact that Ewan's and the Critics groups' work on analysing songs in order to understand and sing them is probably the most all-encompassing and detailed ever carried out on folksong and could change that facce of the revival is it could get beyiong the imbecility of 'war records' and 'name changing' (the latter often coming from debutees of a rock star once protest singer who swiped his name from a Welsh poet)

The practice (not rule) of Singers Club (only) residents, including Bert, to sing songs from your national backgrounds in your own accents was designed to promote our own indigenous music - and it worked a treat
Anybody can sing it whatever accent they choose if that's what turned them on, but they would been discouraged from doing so at the Singers Club - I'm glad to say
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Feb 19 - 09:05 AM

yes, it promoted our own indigenous music, that was a positive but the negative was that it discouraged singers from singing for example Guthries songs.
I also knew a couple who were discouraged from singing Bessie Smith because it was not their indigenous music.
you can say what you like, but i was around and my experience of events is different from yours, Jim.
that does not mean that I do not value Ewan and Berts contributions to the uk folk revival

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Feb 19 - 09:21 AM

"t discouraged singers from singing for example Guthrie's songs."
Why should a club specializing in indigenous music be a problem Dick
If you wanted ot hear Guthrie songs there was nothing wrong with finding a club that catered for them - god knows, there were, and still are plenty of them
Your statement is like suggesting jazz clubs discourage other forms of music because they only cater for jazz enthusiasts - or any other type of establishment which spacialises in a specific type of music
Sorry Dick - this is a subject drift which I have learned not to follow
It finishes here as far as I'm concerned
Jim

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,JHW
Date: 08 Feb 19 - 06:08 AM

'I think basically he presents evidence and allows you to come to your own conclusions.'
Yes I reckon that's what he does. Perhaps I was hoping for a revelation.

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Feb 19 - 06:30 AM

"Perhaps I was hoping for a revelation."
There are several of those if you look for them - the folk only repeated their songs rather than having made them and folk song is no different than history's pop songs made for money
Not claims I'm ready to swallow without proof - that latter was actually put into those words by one of Roud's folloers
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: GUEST,Cj
Date: 09 Feb 19 - 04:09 PM

Jim, is there somewhere on line one can explore your recordings?

Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Feb 19 - 03:49 AM

Sorry Cj - didn't see this
You can here the Clare singers we recorded on the Clare County Library website - Google 'Carroll, Mackenzie Collection at Clare County Library'
There is some in the 'Irish Traditional Music Archive' site - Clare singers and some Travellers
Mary Delaney, the Irish Traveller can be googled singing 'What Will We Do' and 'Buried in Kilkenny' - both well worth seeking out
There's another site on 'The Carroll Mackenzie recordings I stumbled across last month - no idea who put it up but I'm delighted they did
Musical Traditions carries two double CD of our work ' Around the Hills of Clare' (Clare singers) and 'From Puck to Appleby (Travellers)
We are depositing our collectio in Limerick Uni's 'World Music Department' - there is talk of setting up a Travellers website - all in the air so far
Unfortunately Walter Pardon and some other Norfolk singers reside in a locked vault in the National Library on Euston Road - and have done for several decades - no money and not enough interest to put them up

Can I say that if anybody is interested I'm more than happy to send people any of our recordings via Dropbox or PCloud - there are a number of radio programmes on our work, particularly with Travellers, and also a rather good (he boasted) double-programme on the work of Ewan MacColl that we participated in for the centenary of his birth
Feel free to ask and, if you're not a member of Mudcat, I know an
e-mail to Joe Offer will get you our contact number
Jim