What's so special about F. J. Child?

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: Anglo
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 12:59 PM

Well, Bertrand Bronson, who collated as many extant tunes to the Child ballads as he could find, thought Child's work, incomplete as it was, was the only logical place to start. So without Child there probably wouldn't have been Bronson. I suspect I might be of your parents generation, and I learned many of my Child ballads from Bronson. I suspect the people of your parents generation from whom you learned the songs, who recorded these records and tapes you quote, did too, directly or indirectly.

When Cecil Sharp (who did collect folk songs, by the way) published his works, he thought Child's opus was good enough for his major category. When people like MacColl and Lloyd recorded them, they thought Child's name. and his numbers, were a useful categorization. So perhaps, if you don't think the name of Child is worth preserving in the pantheon, maybe you could give us a list of the ballads you know instead, and give them IanC numbers. Then we can all start again from scratch :-)

Maybe I'm a little cynical (many of us get that way as we get older) but I don't really see your point. Shall we go and burn the books?

Subject: WHO the hell is F. J.Child?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 12:57 PM

I've never even heard of the bloke...

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 12:51 PM

Like almost any field of research, there are various ways to do it. Child did his part, and partly in response to him, others did other parts...(often using Child as a jumping off point). I don't know that Bronson ever sang a song, either, but I'm glad he researched some tunes.

As has been said, it is pretty pointless now to be pointing out what he 'could' have done, or didn't do....

(and I have some serious reservations about the way the Lomaxes 'collected', but they DID the work, they did it their way...and I'm glad they did it.)

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: IanC
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 12:50 PM

Malcolm

Thanks again for your well argued post. I'm very sorry that we appear to have cross-posted.

I'm not sure how responsible Child was for a resurgence of interest in folk music, I think it was already there before him and I await evidence that he had any real influence in that direction.

As regards C20th collectors, it's certainly true to say that Vaughan Williams (for example) was mainly interested in the music and, of course, in broadside ballads about which he was something of an expert. Child treated the songs which passed through his hands as texts only, so he can't be credited with any influence in that direction. I'm really not very sure, either, if not knowing about Child would have prevented people like Sharp from collecting folk songs either. Their excitement came from discovering something real out in the world.

What I said about ballads wasn't intended to be in criticism of Child, but rather in reply to your point that Child didn't miss out many ballads (as opposed to folk songs). By his own definition, of course, he didn't ...

I'd dispute that very many of Child's texts were that obscure or even inaccessible (see my figures above).

Of course people have always used books etc. as sources for songs, but most people have always had access to plenty of materials (for example broadsides) at relatively cheap prices. Most of your "folk singers" in the C19th wouldn't have had access to copies of Child.

BTW, singers are still singing and we don't know about it. People not knowing has never yet prevented it happening and sometimes the opposite (take, for example, the effect on "The Ship" singers of Lomax's 1953 film).

:-)
Ian

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: mousethief
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 12:41 PM

Why the sudden need to attack Child?

He may have printed ballads from previous collections, but are those collections still in print? Saying "it's already been collected" is all well and good, but if the collections are out of print, and rare (Child is out of print but not rare), then it doesn't do practitioners of folk music a hell of a lot of good.

Do we think that NO collectors went out and collected because they were inspired by Child? NO compilers of subsequent compilations did what they did because they were inspired by Child? That's a pretty strong claim.

Alex

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: GUEST,JohnB
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 12:37 PM

He did a whole piss pot full more than I, or probably anyone I know, will do in their lifetime to ensure that the songs survive. Not too many have equalled or excelled him. JohnB

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: IanC
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 12:33 PM

Child collected NO ballads or songs, merely published songs from other peoples' works. Of his sources, 25% of the texts came from books by Scott and Percy a further 15% from Ritson and Buchan. Books by a grand total of 7 authors account for 70% of the texts he used. (source Harker, Dave (1985) "Fakesong").

GUEST, yumyum, I do sing songs I learned from my parents generation, from friends and from records and tapes. I don't think professor Child did.

Masato, thanks for the site (the information is duplicated). I'll use it in the F.J. Child section of my PEOPLE category in the Basic Folk Library.

:-)
Ian

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 12:31 PM

Without the resurgence in interest that Child (and others, of course) partly instigated and had such a seminal influence upon, many subsequent collectors and scholars would never have embarked on their work, which eventually gave rise to the Revivals of the 20th century, and in turn led to a great many traditional singers being "discovered" and acquiring audiences outside their small, immediate circle of acquaintances.  Doubtless, many would still be singing (though many would not, having only begun to sing again when they found that there was actually somebody who was interested), but we wouldn't know about it.  Traditional singers do not live in a vacuum, and are no longer, as early collectors saw them, unlettered peasants living in remote areas with little contact with the outside world; many of them have indeed learned a proportion of their material from books and records, many of which would not exist but for Child's influence.  I see nothing incredible or even mildly contentious in my comment.

Although the texts Child published were taken from other collections, many of these were obscure and inaccessible, or available in "improved" (that is, chopped about and re-written) form only.

So far as defining ballad goes, it should be remembered that such definitions vary with time and context, and that "ballad" and "folksong" are not necessarily the same thing.  Child stuck, for his purposes, to the narrative form, which is and was perfectly proper.  It is fairly pointless criticising him, with the benefit of a century's hindsight, for not being more inclusive, and I'd think that to try to examine his achievement using different terms of reference from those he actually worked with is unlikely to achieve much.

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: GUEST,yum yum
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 12:16 PM

IanC without him we would not have half the ballads that do the rounds today! We all must do our bit to keep this living oral history alive! What have you done to preserve it ? come on now don't be shy---speak up.

yum yum

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: SharonA
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 12:03 PM

Well, she's a great cook but she has a kind of a funny voice... Oh. Sorry, that's J. Child. ;^)

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: IanC
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 11:31 AM

Thanks Malcolm. Lets start with "Ballads" shall we?

Though it wasn't only Child, he was the main instigator of the C19th movement to define what a ballad is, basically in the terms "A ballad is what I say it is". Hardly surprising that he didn't miss out too many "ballads" ... he was deciding which were and which were not. He even dropped certain "short romances which formerly stood in the first book ... in order to give the collection a homogeneous character".

I'd prefer to use a more general and, should I say, proper definition of the word ballad than Child. Can we use the following dictionary definition of a ballad?

bal·lad (bld) n.

A narrative poem, often of folk origin and intended to be sung, consisting of simple stanzas and usually having a refrain. The music for such a poem. A popular song especially of a romantic or sentimental nature.
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[Middle English balade, poem or song in stanza form, from Old French ballade, from Old Provençal balada, song sung while dancing, from balar, to dance, from Late Latin ballre, to dance.]
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I'll try and argue some other points later but can we really say with any credibility that practitioners of English-language folksong are indebted to him? The songs were there already. All of them were in collections so he didn't even make them available. I'd maintain that people who sing folk songs would be singing them just as much and just as well if Child had never existed.

:-)
Ian

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 11:22 AM

Thanks, Malcolm. Your reply is to the point. But let me add a word. We can read David E. Bynum's paper, "Child's Legacy Enlarged: Oral Literary Studies at Harvard Since 1856" on the web, which was written from a different point of view but may be of some help. There are two versions, though substantially the same. The sites are here and here.

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 10:43 AM

What he did do was amass an extraordinary corpus of scholarship on the subject which has not been equalled to this day.  Categorisation is a matter that continues to perplex, and opinions are still divided; his system was by no means arbitrary, but can seem impenetrable, particularly as he died before he was able to complete his Introduction to the work, which would presumably have detailed his priorities and general approach.  The only other attempt at a classification system, that of G. Malcolm Laws, is if anything harder to understand.  I don't yet know what approach Steve Roud is taking to classification in his ongoing Index, so I can't comment on that.

There are certainly a (relatively small) number of ballads (as opposed to folksongs) which are generally considered to warrant a place in the corpus; The Fowler/ Molly Bawn/ Shooting of His Dear and Bruton Town/ Bramble Briar (etc) being two, but Child did pretty well in the circumstances.  If he had also been out there collecting material directly from tradition, he wouldn't have had time to compile the books; he encouraged others to collect, however.  He died before the collecting boom of the early 20th century happened, of course.

There is probably no student of English-language folksong, and few practitioners of it, who are not indebted to him.  Such a work can by its nature never be complete, and his sudden death didn't help; obviously it would be a mistake to imagine that ballad scholarship ended with him, and many who have come after him have expanded our knowledge and understanding beyond what he was able to accomplish.  The fact remains, however, that they are standing on the shoulders of a giant.

Subject: RE: BS: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: MMario
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 10:26 AM

Must have done something right. Hired the right publicist, or something.

Subject: What's so special about F. J.Child?
From: IanC
Date: 23 Aug 01 - 10:15 AM

Hardly did anything for folk song, did he? Never collected a single song, Categorised ballads arbritrarily and missed out quite a few of the most important ones.

Anyone want to defend him?

;-)
Ian