If you don't like ballads......

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Reinhard
Date: 14 May 19 - 06:28 PM

Das Irdische Leben (Mutter, ach Mutter! es hungert mich)

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 May 19 - 05:50 PM

Have you got details and a translation of the fullest German version and is it a children's game in the German?

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 May 19 - 05:41 PM

200

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 May 19 - 05:41 PM

Jenny Jones has been recorded all over England and Scotland even in America, but I wasn't aware of the German connection or that it has been dated back to the 17th century. What are your sources for these two facts, Jack?

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 May 19 - 05:22 PM

The dance aspect of balladry was thought to be part of the evolution of the ballad FORM but it has not anywhere been related to any British ballad, mainly because the dance connection died out long before our modern ballads were written. They also relate only to ring dances, nothing to do with any solo or stepping.

One song which isn't quite a ballad but getting there is the Scottish "Janet jo"/"Jeny jo", in a slightly fuller version as "Irdisches Leben" in the south German "Das
Knaben Wunderhorn". The story is homiletic rather than a real narrative, but it could be part of a real story. As a children's game it seems to go back to the 17th century.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 May 19 - 04:18 PM

>>>>>'the significance of calling them 'popular' would be that, after having been produced by an elite, they had then been taken up by the people'<<<<<<. Richard, I don't know anyone, even on here, who would argue with that statement. Whilst there may be one or two exceptions every ballad that is oral-traditional in the Child Collection has been taken up by the people. Those that either have no evidence of oral tradition, or dubious evidence, have been included 'because of a remote possibility that it might contain relics, or be a debased representative of something genuine and better' Child 5, p182.

For me one of the sad things about Child's opinions is that for about the first 150 ballads he was quite scathing about dubious ballads and versions, but then he fell silent on the matter until 5 p182, just before he died. We know from his correspondence that many of the later numbered ballads he only included because of pressure from others or the stated reason above, but he did so without comment.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 14 May 19 - 04:04 PM

If Child indeed believed that the 'popular ballads' that he was concerned with were produced by an elite, then the significance of calling them 'popular' would be that, after having been produced by an elite, they had then been taken up by the people. If that was his thinking then it's very close to that of modern scholars such as the two Steves.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 May 19 - 03:45 PM

Ps,
There is no evidence anywhere that he used this as a criterion. It was simply an observation that many of those big ballads had the elite as their subject. However, the more likely scenario, as presented by many scholars I have read, is that the earlier ballads were most likely written initially by members of the elite households (I hesitate to use the word minstrel because of what it conjures up). Some were undoubtedly written by the early broadside writers. In fact we even know some of their names.

Whilst it is possible, even likely, that a few of the ballads were written by the elite to amuse themselves (they certainly had the time), why bother when you pay someone to do it for you? A couple of the Child Ballads have been attributed to James VI but I don't think it's proven.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 May 19 - 02:53 PM

The point of discussing Child's attitudes was that I thought somebody said it was a pity he had not been more explicit about his selection criteria, and I thought his attitudes might throw light on this.

Given that Child states in his encycolpaideia entry that it is plain that 'popular ballads' were produced by an elite it seems to me likely that his opinion on whether some thing might have been produced by the elite he had in mind might have been a criterion?

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 May 19 - 02:29 PM

"but it has not anywhere been related to any British ballad, "
Once again Steve - a detailed knowledge of oral traditions goes back no further than the latter part of the 19th century
It was a passing comment, no more
Jim

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 May 19 - 02:24 PM

The dance aspect of balladry was thought to be part of the evolution of the ballad FORM but it has not anywhere been related to any British ballad, mainly because the dance connection died out long before our modern ballads were written. They also relate only to ring dances, nothing to do with any solo or stepping. They do survive in the Faeroes which is what much of the conjecture is based upon, and there are a few contemporary accounts which are thought to refer to dancing in a ring whilst one person sings the ballad and the rest join in the chorus. It is conjectured that these ring dances were quite simple, circling round and moving towards and out of the centre. This makes good sense as the dance could be performed without recourse to any instrumental accompaniment. These ballads were similar to the earliest Child Ballads, i.e., those in couplets interspersed with simple refrain, think 'Cruel Mother'. It is also conjectured that in those embryonic ballad days post Conquest, these ballads might have been subject to communal composition, unlike any British ballads known to us today.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Iains
Date: 14 May 19 - 12:52 PM

A modern analysis?

https://www.oapen.org/download?type=document&docid=646652

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 14 May 19 - 12:30 PM

Do the Police sell off lost property and impounded items...???

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 14 May 19 - 11:49 AM

Guest, 14 May 19 - 04:42 AM. Do you mean Al Stewart had supernatural powers or Nostradamus bought his first guitar from the Police? :-)

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 May 19 - 11:06 AM

Not particularly convinced by any of this, but none of it challenges Child's work on the ballads, as far as I can see.
I occurs to me that one of the main problems with folk-song scholarship often works the same way as 'THE ONE TRUE GOD religion'
Instead of taking all the work carried out holistically, one school of thought is is discarded to make room for another - sort of like putting on clean socks
Sharp's crowd tended towards 'group composition' but that was thrown out for the next fashion
When were were recording, both from Travellers and in rural West Clale, we were given a number of instances where songs had been made by groups of people
Dance was once considered an origin for ballads - gone now
Ben Henneberry and other Newfoundland singers showed that people were
still dancing to ballads in 19th century Ireland.
David Buchan's 'improvised rather than set text' theory was challenged by many, though when we recorded numerous versions of songs from some of the larger repertoire singers we noted significant changes each time.
It seems to me that rather than going for definitive answers, any understanding of the folk arts has to be based on a critical examination of everything researched.
It seems that the present crowd have adopted Harkerism big-time and in throwing the baby out with the bathwater have robbed folk song of much of its uniqueness and social significance.

The Irish repertoire tends to by lyrically rather than narratively dominated, yet it has its own big narrative songs/ballads - this is, in my opinion, one of the best
It was made sometime after The Famine when tenants were being evicted in their many thousands and left to either starve on the roadsides or emigrate
The subject, Michael Hayes was a notely harsh Land Agent who, due to his actions, became a folk hero - sort of Gamekeeper turned Poacher

FARMER MICHAEL HAYES
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 May 19 - 07:53 AM

And a very brief comment on Child in one of my books on Chaucer basically says he is now mainly seen as an example of 19th century dogmatism based on artificial reconstructions of what Chaucer wrote. So I think that the Library of Congress account of him quoted further up this thread which triggered this line of thought (I had read the stuff Child wrote on Chaucer some time before) 'bigs Chaucer up' and lacks scholarly objectivity in claiming more for him than he achieved. Obviously not everybody will agree but this is my view.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 May 19 - 07:39 AM

In other words, Child seems to be of the view expressed to me by a young person some decades ago, that 'You shunna say dunna, it inna polite'.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST
Date: 14 May 19 - 07:37 AM

As it happens, for me, and others may have different opinions, Child's 'snobbery' for lack of a better word, comes over in the piece on Chaucer. He thinks that certain characteristics which he identifies as grammatical flaws in the texts available result from lazy scribes replacing the 'noble' English of Chaucer with inferior constructions from their own 'vulgar' dialects. Obviously, in terms of his view of history, by Chaucer's time the days of the undifferentiated 'people' who wrote the ballads as an expression of their unified culture had long gone.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 May 19 - 07:16 AM

I guess Chaucer does link to some ballads as he took stuff from Boccaccio as, I believe, do some ballads. Some of Boccaccio's tales, by the way, have been given a modern treatment and can be found on Radio 4 within the BBC Media Player ap. Terry Jones of Monty Python fame is associated with the project.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST
Date: 14 May 19 - 07:09 AM

@ Iains

I read the Observations on the Language of Chaucer. That is why I can say with some confidence that he did not take a 'lit crit' view. I believe he called himself a 'philologist', nomenclature which is itself no longer used for academic fiends, as understandings have moved on.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Iains
Date: 14 May 19 - 06:16 AM

Wiki
Child planned a critical edition of the works of Chaucer, as well. He soon realized that this could not be done, however, since only one early (and faulty) text was available. He therefore wrote a treatise, blandly titled "Observations on the Language of Chaucer", published in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1863), intended to make such an edition possible.

Child's linguistic researches are largely responsible for how Chaucerian grammar, pronunciation, and scansion are now generally understood.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 May 19 - 06:16 AM

"Can you imagine today a don teaching such disparate topics"
Child in fact worked his way up through various disciplines to arrive at Literature as his main subject - there is no suggestion anywhere that he ever taught them all at the same time
his general editorial supervision of the publication of a 130-volume collection of the works of the British poets along with his fifve volume work on Spenser suggests that he found his mojo pretty conclusively in literature
He intended to carry out a critical survey of Chaucer but, deciding this was not possible due to the sparseness of Chaucerian writings available so instead, published a commentary on Chaucer's use of language in order to make future work feasible - he certainly was no 'dabbler' in his subjects
He, like Sharp, was subject to the ignorances and pressures of his time - who isn't ?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST
Date: 14 May 19 - 05:51 AM

Incidentally, and this is thread drift, I keep finding articles that state that Child was a great and important student of the work of Chaucer, but he doesn't seem to have published much on the subject. I ended up doubting that he was all that important in the history of Chaucerian studies. He seems to have taught a variety of subjects, including maths, at his university, which suggests to me relatively low levels. Can you imagine today a don teaching such disparate topics? As a 'philologist' Child did write a piece, which I found, in which he drew inferences about the grammar of the "English" used by Chaucer, but I think it is perhaps worth saying that his approach was not a 'lit crit' one. I am sure he was as sensitive a reader of art poetry as anybody else, but this was not an area where he claimed expertise. So on the topic of Child's contribution to Chaucerian studies, happy to have more information.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 14 May 19 - 05:38 AM

“The word ‘ballad’ in English signifies a narrative song, a short tale in lyric verse, which sense it has come to have, probably through the English, in some other languages. It means, by derivation, a dance-song, but though dancing was formerly, and in some places still is, performed to song instead of instrumental music, the application of the word in English is quite accidental. The popular ballad, for which our language has no unequivocal name, is a distinct and very important kind of poetry. Its historical and natural place is anterior to the appearance of the poetry of art, to which is has formed a step and by which it has been regularly displaced, and, in some cases, all but distinguished.”


I interpret this bit of Child as showing he was influenced by the social Darwinism that was influential at the time in folkloric circles, as well as more generally. This view that society and indeed 'races' evolved was one of the ideological beliefs underpinning the denial of equal rights to African-Americans.

So he is viewing the ballad as a step on the social evolutionary chain towards the poetry of art. Child claims, with no evidence, and entirely unconvincingly as far as I am concerned, that at a certain point in the development of societies verse and not prose is the natural means of expression.

He claims that at this point the society is unified with no social divisions and that therefore the verse expresses the whole of the society. The whole society forms an individual he says. Again, there is a distinct lack of evidence. However, this fantasy view of the primitive society allows Child to explain what he calls an absence of subjectivity and self-consciousness. (this idea links to the 3rd person form of many traditional ballads).

Child goes on to say that as the society develops the traditional verse is abandoned to the less educated.   I could summarise more but I have already quoted some of what he says on this thread. The article is relatively easy to find. I think I learned about it somewhere on this forum.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST
Date: 14 May 19 - 04:42 AM

D the G
Had not thought about that Al Stewart for ages. Sorry to say, I never really liked that particular song because we used to end up arguing about whether he had supernatural powers, some I knew at the time thought he did, I did not. But I liked his music. Wiki says he bought his first guitar from a member of the band 'The Police'. Small world, wasn't it?

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 May 19 - 03:49 AM

"though Jim would probably exclude Faithful Sailor Boy"
I'm not particularly interested in 'discounting' any individual pallads Richard - it's the ballad form as a specific genre, and its social and historical importance that interests me
I wish Child had written more on what he meant by the term, but we have what we have and need to work it out for ourselves rather than speculating - most of the time, his choices seem pretty clear
I've been working my way through some American collections containing ballads from Famine Refugees from Ireland and am astounded at some of the Ballads that were taken to the East Coast of America and to Canada in the latter half of the 19th century - Cork and Waterford seems to feature largely - long ballads from people who could hardly read, or, if they could, to whom English would have been their second language
Ben Henneberry had a number of Robin Hood Ballads, for instance
New England singers, Mrs Sullivan and Mrs Welch sang or identified some rarities - 'Braes of Balquidder', Famous Flower', 'Young Hunting', 'The Demon Lover'......
Henneberry sang a superb 'False Knight on the Road' and describes his father (from Kerry, I think) 'stepping out' (dancing) to the refrain - an interesting echo of the dance origins of ballad making theory
The ballads are not only extremely enjoyable to sing and listen to, but they come with loads of important information
   
I stumbled across Helen Harness Flanders's collection on line - poor quality, as you would expect from the technology of the time, but a revelation - well worth searching out
Jim

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 14 May 19 - 03:10 AM

Al Stewart - Nostradamus

:D

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Iains
Date: 14 May 19 - 02:57 AM

Perhaps not the Archers but how about the prophecies of Nostrodamus and his cryptic quatrains?(which, according to some points of view, form the core structure of a ballad)

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 13 May 19 - 06:52 PM

Sorry, last post was me and intended to be a joke.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST
Date: 13 May 19 - 06:51 PM

Re long stories in 'spoken word': does The Archers count?

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 13 May 19 - 06:50 PM

Steve: thanks for the additional information. Responses like that that help make this forum so interesting to be part of.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 13 May 19 - 06:12 PM

A couple of days ago Jim said
> 'Amphitrite', as far as I know, has nver been regarded as one

Certainly not a "big ballad" or "Child ballad", but surely a song that tells a story, and presumably (though I haven't checked) printed on broadsides and so a "broadside ballad".

As so often, and as mentioned above, there are no hard and fast lines. Taking the first few songs in the New Penguin Book:
The Bold Princess Royal: broadside ballad
Bonny Bunch of Roses, O: broadside ballad
Captain Ward and the Rainbow: Child ballad
The Dolphin: broadside ballad
Faithful Sailor Boy: broadside (late): ballad? If one characteristic of ballads is that the stories are pared down to the minimum, this could qualify, but to my mind there is too little story.

Not finding much variety in the first section of the book, so on to the next.

Bold Fisherman: broadside yes. ballad? More concerned with the details of the romantic encounter than with action.
Cupid the Pretty Ploughboy. broadside yes. ballad? Same comment as Faithful Sailor Boy
Cupid's Garden. ditto

I could go on, but I think that's enough examples for now. Most of us would count all of them as folk songs, though Jim would probably exclude Faithful Sailor Boy and possibly some of the others. Some are indisputably ballads, but opinions will differ as to how many of them.

One characteristic that they all certainly share is that "the folk" liked them: a prime criterion for inclusion in the book is that they were widely collected.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 May 19 - 05:54 PM

Al, Don't know the other song but 'Night Before' is definitely a ballad, strong metre, abab rhyme, strong narrative, includes dialogue.
Fits perfectly into the broadside ballad genre.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 May 19 - 05:48 PM

Al. 1904, highly likely, but not 904!

Iain, not Mr Spring by any chance? Bruford's piece very interesting particularly relevant towards the end, but necessarily an awful lot of conjecture and guesswork. To the best of my knowledge Irish language poetry has no bearing whatsoever on the 'ballad' form and Bruford bears this out. The word 'ballad' is not used once.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 May 19 - 05:21 PM

The only ballad I can remember referred to in Ulysses was The Night Before Larry Was Stretched. A song called Joking Jesus is also mentioned. I bet there are others. I don't know if either of those qualified as a ballad.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Iains
Date: 13 May 19 - 05:18 PM

@ GUEST,Pseudonymous - PM
Date: 13 May 19 - 03:35 PM

A partial answer buried within.

https://www.dias.ie/wp-content/uploads/webstore/celt/pubs/celtica/c21/c21-61.pdf

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 May 19 - 05:16 PM

I should have said 'the spoken word'. Anything aided by shitloads of technology bears very little comparison; both story telling of course but in very different ways.

Having said that, my grandson would love his bedtime story to go on for days, and it sometimes does carry over from one night to another. He dictates half-a-dozen ingredients and the main characters, and I have to weave them all into one story. Great fun!

The most rapt attention I ever had from pupils was when telling them off-the-cuff stories. They got extra fun from guessing which ones were true, which ones false and which ones a mixture. Oops, thread drift!

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 May 19 - 05:16 PM

Well they claim you could reconstruct Dublin - the Dublin of 1904, from a close study of Joyce's masterpiece - such was his attention to factual detail.
But that's the Irish for you - I make no comment.

JJ wrote the book while he was living abroad - apparently he sent his family who were still living in Dublin scurrying round the city checking up that his memory was completely precise.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 May 19 - 05:06 PM

Not quite, Dave. There's a big gap of several centuries with the chansons. Trad folk and contemporary sit happily alongside each other in most places.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 May 19 - 04:56 PM

Since attention spans have deteriorated much in the technological era it's difficult to conceive of being entertained with stories that lasted over several days

Aren't they showing Game of Thrones where you are?

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 13 May 19 - 04:49 PM

Thanks, Steve

Chalk and cheese comes to mind

Surely that is just the same as trad folk and contemporary folk is it not?

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 May 19 - 04:00 PM

Ps,
Since attention spans have deteriorated much in the technological era it's difficult to conceive of being entertained with stories that lasted over several days, and 50-verse narratives, but yes these must have been common in earlier centuries. Tunes were by no means essential but they obviously had advantages. A survival is probably the monologue most often of a comic nature in recent times. The early Scottish collectors like Scott, Kinloch and Motherwell often referred to ballads being recited. I'm sure there will be references to this practice in Child and in Bronson. A good story teller would want to put across plenty of dramatics and variation in metre and a tune might get in the way of this. Bell Robertson's repertoire is given in the 8 vol set of the Greig-Duncan collection, but also her big ballads are in Keith's 'Last lays' which might well be online somewhere. If you can get access to Greig-Duncan you will see many of those versions without tunes were likely recited. Some of course may just have been sent to Greig by post without the tunes. Best to look at the notes to the songs and indeed the notes to the singers in the last volume.

Thread drift?? We've done nothing but write about ballads. Where's the thread drift?

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 13 May 19 - 03:35 PM

Steve G's post on different senses of the term 'ballads' was interesting. For me, since the word can refer to a poem written in ballad form and metre, I don't think that it has to refer to something sung.

On people reciting ballads, mentioned by Steve, I had learned that this was the case from the online OED, which has the compound 'ballad reciter' as one of its entries. But sadly that source doesn't help us to know which were recited, and which were sung.

I wouldn't have any problem with the idea that sometimes people would 'recite' words intended to be sung, or conversely that they might produce sung versions of pieces written to be read or recited.

This thread really has drifted, but I would be interested to know more about the 'reciting' and what sources there are on it if nobody objected to yet further drift. Often it is when things drift that interesting snippets like this come up.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 May 19 - 03:29 PM

Okay, Al, you have succeeded in exposing my lack of literary knowledge. Joyce's Ullyses of course. Never read it. Does it contain any actual history as opposed to fiction?

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 May 19 - 03:20 PM

Is this a guesting game?

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 May 19 - 03:17 PM

Those minstrels very likely did improvise some sort of song, but very unlikely it was a ballad. It's also quite likely that the ballad form spread from France to Scandinavia in about the 13th century. Were there any 'Vikings' in the 13th century? We tend to think about 10th century and earlier for Vikings. Is the Gilbert book a historical fiction? Certainly looks that way. You use the phrase 'big ballads'. Very few of OUR big ballads can be traced back beyond 1500. There is also very little evidence for the Danish ballads before that date, though some refer to events in the 13th century. Methinks you're pulling our legs, Al.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: keberoxu
Date: 13 May 19 - 03:08 PM

did you mean Guest 5.12??

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 May 19 - 03:07 PM

Theres a book about Ulysses by Stuart Gilbert.
He traces the origins of the big ballads to in the history of Dublin to the Vikings. Apparently the Vikings,when they had a knees up, had scary minstrels called Bareserks who would embark on an improvised ballad under the influence of strong drink. The performance could go on for several days and was punctuated with the minstrel killing members of the audience when performing particularly moving passages of his ballad.

So Beowolf, why not?.... But warn me in advance and I'll slip out for a pee,

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 May 19 - 03:04 PM

Dave,
your comparison of 'earliest chanson' with 'modern chanson' is like comparing 'Chevy Chase' with Richard Thompson's ballad. Chalk and cheese comes to mind.

Subject: RE: If you don't like ballads......
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 May 19 - 02:59 PM

Guest 4.12. Don't follow. Has anyone said otherwise?