To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=154724
28 messages

Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?

11 Jun 14 - 03:57 PM (#3632265)
Subject: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Fergie

Hi all,

I've a great interest in James Francis Child's collection of early ballads (commonly referred to as Child ballads). I also have a great interest in Australian songs. This got me to wonder if any of the Child ballads had been collected in Australia, or if any of the Australian folksongs were based on stories from the Child ballads?

Fergus

11 Jun 14 - 04:27 PM (#3632269)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Steve Gardham

Hi Fergus.
Off the top of my head I don't think any of the Child Ballads turned up in Oz other than the really common ones like The Mermaid and Golden Vanity. Probably because the collecting of folk songs in Australia didn't really get going until the 50s with people like Meredith and Anderson. Earlier anthologies tended to be obsessed with native poetry and transportation ballads and outlaws. If you can turn up some more obscure ones in old manuscripts that would be wonderful. People from Scotland and England did settle in and were transported to Oz so there must have been some at one time.

11 Jun 14 - 04:27 PM (#3632270)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Steve Gardham

Also sorry to be pedantic but it's Francis James.

11 Jun 14 - 05:00 PM (#3632278)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Richard from Liverpool

John Thompson sings a version of Three Crows on his Australian folk song a day blog:

http://ozfolksongaday.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/three-crows.html

Apparently collected by Wendy Lowenstein in November, 1969 from Dave Guard, "an old resident of Georgetown, Queensland".

Now three black crows sat on a tree,
As black as any crows could be
Caw, caw, caw.

Said one black crow unto the other
"Where shall we dine today dear brother?"

"On yonder hill's an old grey mare.
I think my friends we shall dine there".

They perched upon her high backbone,
And picked her eyes out one by one.

Said the second black crow unto the other,
"Isn't she a tough old bugger"

Up come a squatter with his gun,
And shot them all excepting one.

Now that one black crow got such a fright,
He turned from black right into white.

Now that is why you'll often see
A white crow among the tree.

11 Jun 14 - 05:06 PM (#3632279)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Richard from Liverpool

The roud index comes back with 10 entries, covering 6 ballads:

The Outlandish Knight (Child 4)
Henry My Son (Child 12)
The Cruel Mother (Child 20)
Three Crows (Child 26)
Barbry Allen (Child 84)
The Golden Vanity (Child 286)

I daresay that the Roud index, impressive as it is, isn't exhaustive and there must be more out there!

11 Jun 14 - 08:50 PM (#3632315)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: GUEST,Gerry

There was a 2-CD set a few years back with about 20 traditional English ballads and Australian versions of those ballads. I couldn't say offhand how many were Child Ballads (and it really annoys me that I can't remember the name of the CD, so I can't provide any better information).

11 Jun 14 - 09:00 PM (#3632317)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: GUEST,Gerry

Found it. The CD is called Song Links: A Celebration of English Traditional Songs and Their Australian Variants, and a link to a track listing can be found at http://mainlynorfolk.info/wyndham-read/records/songlinks.html

12 Jun 14 - 05:10 AM (#3632387)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: GUEST,Reinhard

Unfortunately Song Links features only two Child ballads, The Golden Vanity and Barbary Ellen, even less than Richard noted above.

12 Jun 14 - 07:38 AM (#3632421)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick

I've just checked the database of my record collection for Australian versions of Child ballads. Admittedly, the Australian material in there is not that extensive, just 196 tracks, but there's absolutely nothing to which you could assign a Child No.

That is very strange, especially when one compares same with the slender list which Richard came up with. (Wot? No Seven drunken Nights?) To some extent it can be explained by the paucity of published field recordings (see below), and a limited number of book anthologies, but there's got to be more to it than that. Was there perchance no broadside trade in Australia?

Steve. Any chance you could knock up a paper on same in time for next Week's Trad Song Forum :-).

Here's my list of commercially issued field recordings.

Various. Bush Traditions. Larrikin 7
Sally Sloan.A Garland for Sally. Larrikin. LRF 136
Various. Traditional Musicians & Singers in Victoria. Wattle 2
Harry Cotter of Binalong, New South Wales. Victorian Folk Song & Dance Society SF 276
Various        Sharing the Harvest; Field Recordings from the Meredith Collection in the National Library of Australia        . No catalogue number
Charlie Batchelor. Larrikin

12 Jun 14 - 07:59 AM (#3632427)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Brian Peters

Granted collecting in Australia got going very late, but I also wonder whether the lack of ballads from there is because of the migration history. We think of the Appalachian Mountains as a hotbed of Child Ballads (Cecil Sharp was finding plenty of versions of 'Young Hunting', 'Two Sisters', 'Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender' and 'The Housecarpenter' in 1916), but the circumstances of that community were pretty unique. The so-called 'Scotch-Irish' were arriving in America by the middle of the 18th century, up to a hundred years before the main migration to Australia. Many of them had been transplanted to Ulster a hundred years before that, and my guess is that the Appalachian ballads present - at least to some degree - a snapshot of repertoire popular in Lowland Scotland and Northern England in the 17th century. Also of course the communities were very isolated, so the songs survived.

So perhaps by the time emigration to Australia really got going, those ballads were already falling from popularity in the old country. Also I suspect the Scots influence was smaller than in the Appalachians.

12 Jun 14 - 08:05 AM (#3632429)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Brian Peters

Fred, my Aussie contacts tell me there was no Australain broadside trade to compare with that over here. There certainly were broadsides printed in America (including 'Housecarpenter') but I can't quite believe all that Appalachian repertoire derived from American print.

12 Jun 14 - 12:53 PM (#3632523)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick

Brian. That's an interesting point, the one about dates of settlement, and it probably plays a part somewhere. Certainly, I agree about the Appalachian repertoire being something of a snapshot of the C18 Northern English/Scots repertoire.

So perhaps we shouldn't expect too much from Australia in this respect. However, when one considers the numbers of Scots and, even more so, Irish convicts who were settled in Australia, surely some of them must have carried ballads with them. Did The Rich Shipowner's Daughter never make it to the Antipodes, or The Outlandish Knight,or The Seven Yellow Gypsies, or the Holland Handkerchief?

To be honest, this is something which has never crossed my mind before, and I throw in the suggestion about the lack of a broadside trade as one possible factor; as clearly is the comparative lateness of Australian settlement.

18 Jun 14 - 02:08 PM (#3634354)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Fergie

A version of The Cruel Mother (Child 20) perhaps?

Transcribed from a piece in the Riverina Recorder. Page 6. Wed 5 Feb 1896

GRUB-STREET.
Some curious specimens of composition and printing of the order once known as Grub-street have recently found their way into our possession in a collection, made by a curious individual, of those once familiar sheets which were sold outside Newgate and other prisons on "hanging Mondays" and were by courtesy supposed to contain a full, true, and particular account of "the life, trial, and execution" of one of the many poor wretches who in the early years of the century almost weekly paid the last penalty of the law. A Mr, Carpue, of Old Montague Street, Osborn Street, Whitechapel, seems to have been responsible for a good many of these productions, and perhaps was the author as well as the printer of them, as they all give evidence of being written by the same person. In the majority of cases at the head of these sheets there is an illustration of the 'horrible deed' which brought about the trial in question, drawn by some gentleman who evidently had wonderful ideas of proportion and perspective, and a love of details in bedroom furniture, truly amazing. The particular bill now before us deals with the murder of an infant by a certain Ann Clarke, who is represented in the drawing as carving the head off a doll like child certainly not more than ten inches long opposed to her own ten feet of height. The inquest, we learn, was held at the sign of the Norfolk Arms in Hart's Lane, Bethnal Green, on January 9, 1835, when the sixteen gentlemen who formed the jury had no difficulty, after hearing the evidence, in finding a verdict of wilful murder against poor Ann. Then follow details of further proceedings, and the whole concludes with the following "affecting copy of verses," the poet's name, how ever, being withheld.

Oh, listen to this mournful tale, it's the worst you e'er did hear,
Will cause each Christian to bewail and draw from them a tear.
It's of a base and guilty wretch, her hands with blood imbrued,
Each feeling heart must be amazed when they hear this tale of blood.
        
In Pollards Row, Bethnal Green, the truth I will explain,
How a cruel mother her infant she has slain ;
She took a razor in her hand, without any fear or dread.
She cut its throat from ear to ear, and severed off its head.

When the husband he came home at night, and at the door did knock,
And on entering into the room how dreadful was the shook
To see the infant laying on the bed all weltering in its gore
Such a blood-thirsty deed as this was never heard of before.

The wretch who could stain her hand with her own infant's blood,
Such actions when discovered is for the public good,
Each feeling heart must now lament this sad atrocious deed,
Committed by a female hand on her own infant seed.

Then mothers all a warning take from this unhappy tale,
And whatever follies you commit never have it to bewail,
But she is now taken for this crime and is to Newgate sent,
And there she must lay, her trial to take, and in sorrow to lament.

It may be as well to add that the lady referred to in the above lines did not meet the fate usually awaiting persons so charged in her day, but, found guilty, was confined as a criminal lunatic during the please of the authorities.

18 Jun 14 - 03:33 PM (#3634369)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick

Sorry folks. I must be getting senile in my dotage, or dotty in my senility, but the reality penetrated some time after my previous posting.

It is that the number of Child ballads collected in any particular region simply reflects the extent of folk song collection in that region, and the numbers of folksongs collected. IE., compared to most other parts of the English speaking world, Australia was hardly collected at all until after the second world war, and then only by a small group of amateurs. (There is no derision intended in the use of the word amateur by the way. But you try competing with the likes of Lomax, Kennedy or Henderson when you need to fit your collecting activity around your day job.)

In other words, the more folksongs are collected generally, the greater will be the number of Child ballads turned up.

That is not the only factor of course. I've already mentioned the fact that the bulk of Australian songs were not collected until after the second world war, at a time when the Child ballad would presumably have been at least as moribund as it was becoming elsewhere.

Also, as Brian Peters has pointed out, the fact that emigration to Australia started much later than emigration to America probably meant that there were fewer ballads to collect.

Also, the motives of the collectors needs to be taken into account. In America, many collectors placed Child ballads at the top of their wish list. Therefore, they may have skewed the haul by making a point of asking for songs with talking parrots or milk white horses or house carpenters in them. Plus it's probably true to say that British and Irish collectors also prized ballads, and used similar memory joggers.

By comparison, it's possible that the Aussies were more pragmatic about what they collected, and took whatever they were given. If so, they may have just missed whatever gems may have been lurking in the backs of singers' minds.

And no. I don't think the piece posted from the Riverina Recorder is anything to do with The Cruel Mother.

18 Jun 14 - 03:45 PM (#3634374)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Brian Peters

Wow, Fergie, that's lurid stuff!

I've just come across another possible element in the picture, in an article on the collecting practice (actually involving songs sent to him by newspaper readers) work of the Rev. Dr. Percy Jones in Melbourne in 1940.   Apparently Dr. Jones believed in collecting only material obviously composed in - or at least relevant to - Australia, and the collectors who came after him followed his example, at least until the discovery of Sally Sloane. Keith McKenry, who wrote the article, suggested that a lot of good material was probably rejected by collectors looking for exclusively Aussie songs. Which supports what Fred is saying about collectors' motives. I still think Appalachia (and to a lesser extent the Canadian maritimes) are a special case, though.

18 Jun 14 - 05:31 PM (#3634401)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Steve Gardham

I think broadside trade and collectors' motives are red herrings. The late collecting is the main factor. I was collecting in Yorkshire in the 60s and I can't remember collecting any of the classic ballads other than fragments of the most common ones. For instance just about every farm labourer in the East Riding could sing a variant of 'An Acre of Land' which derives from the Elfin Knight, but that's about it.

Anderson, Meredith et al would have been thrilled to have come across a Child ballad, they just weren't there! I met Hugh Anderson when he came across to Blighty and he was very interested in those ballads that had come from Britain.

18 Jun 14 - 11:20 PM (#3634453)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: GUEST

For those interested in an overview of Australian folk song collecting, this link may be of interested.

http://folkstream.com/reviews/revival/origin.html

19 Jun 14 - 07:34 AM (#3634526)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Brian Peters

Regarding 'collectors' motives', I agree that finding a treasury of Child ballads in the 1950s might well have been unlikely anyway, but the full quote from McKenry is worth posting:

"...Jones established a practice which would be repeated a decade or more later by the next generation of field collectors – John Manifold, Russel Ward, Nancy Keesing and John Meredith – that of restricting their collecting to songs unique to Australian life. It was a practice which was to cost Australia dearly, for only a minority of singers' repertoires concerned such matters and so were recorded. Happily, that practice became untenable in 1956, when Meredith first recorded Sally Sloane. Sally's inherited repertoire of traditional Irish and other songs was just too wonderful to ignore, but by then the damage was done. In the fifteen years following Jones's first field forays in 1940–41 a generation of informants was lost, and unknown musical treasures with them."

If you look at the song lists on the page linked by the Guest above, the only British-origin songs are those dealing with transportation, plus of course 'The Wild Rover', whose exploits appear to have qualified him as an honorary Aussie.

19 Jun 14 - 09:00 AM (#3634549)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Steve Gardham

I still don't think the picture would have changed dramatically in 15 years. Even if they had started in the 20s I doubt they would have got much more than Outlandish Knight, Lord Bateman, Barbara Allen, Gypsy Laddie, Mermaid, Golden Vanity which have never been out of print or oral tradition since they were written.

I got a version of Lord Bateman in the 60s but considering just about every 19th century printer in the country printed it that's not surprising.

19 Jun 14 - 09:09 AM (#3634554)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Brian Peters

I'm sure you're right regarding Child Ballads - that wasn't really my point in posting McKenry, I just thought the practice regarding British songs in general was interesting. BTW, that ballad list you suggest is pretty much exactly what Kidson was finding in Yorkshire 80 years before your work there (plus I think 'Henry Martin' and 'Lord Thomas').

19 Jun 14 - 09:13 AM (#3634557)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Steve Gardham

In other words it would have been surprising if Kidson hadn't found them. Also Kidson would have had copies of the broadsides which they came from.

19 Jun 14 - 03:48 PM (#3634653)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Richard Mellish

Bert Lloyd had an Australian version of Our Goodman, though it may of course have been one of the "Bertsongs" that he constructed himself. One verse has what the husband sees as a "twelve-foot stock-whip" and the wife claims to be a "mousing snake". In the last verse, she claims that the head on the bed is "a Pommie servant girl".

19 Jun 14 - 05:55 PM (#3634696)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Steve Gardham

Yes, could be part Bertsong. You never can fully tell, but anyway Our Goodman is one of the common ones long in print in vastly different formats so it's as likely to turn up as anything. How it qualifies as a Child Ballad beats me! I suppose the continental equivalents tempted Child, but there's no real story and it's just a joke made up of incremental repetition.

20 Jun 14 - 04:24 AM (#3634819)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Richard Mellish

Steve said "How it qualifies as a Child Ballad beats me!".

It has often been pointed out that Child died before he was able to set out his criteria. He certainly included some with very dubious claims, but he also left out some that one might expect to have qualified, such as The Frog and the Mouse. (And I would be very surprised if no-one ever sang that one in Australia.)

20 Jun 14 - 03:17 PM (#3635019)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Steve Gardham

I think the problem with 'Froggy' Richard, is by the time Child started compiling it was perceived more as a nursery song than a ballad. It certainly has a long pedigree and has been rewritten many times using new tunes, formats and choruses.

The 'dubious claims' I go along with. However, to be fair to him, whilst not leaving us with the essay, he did set out his parameters from the off and generally stuck to them, even against his later better judgment. He set out to be inclusive and tried to include anything that offered evidence of popular features. Yes he did rather stretch this at times. For instance, Bessy Bell and Mary Gray, offers no real ballad features and is an obvious art song included in many art song anthologies throughout the 18thc. It is, however, based on true events from I think the 1660s which may have persuaded him to include it.

The top ballad in my list that he failed to include was 'Cragieston' or 'The trees they do grow high'.

Some people put forward 'Bramble Briar' but I'm convinced that was a mid 18thc broadside piece based on Boccaccio's Isabella.

23 Jun 14 - 08:08 AM (#3635978)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Fergie

Hi all,

So far I've turned up 'Shickered as He Could Be' as an Australian variant of 'Seven Drunken Nights' (My Goodman Child #274). Shickered As Can Be is in the DT

I've also found the Australian variant of 'Barbary Allen' (Child #84) that contains the verse;

"Don't you remember last Saturday night
Whilst drinking at the Royal?
You drank the health of all fair maids
But you slighted Barbary Ellen"

And sung beautifully by Cathy O'Sullivan HERE

I'm now trying to track down the Australian variant of The Golden Vanity.

Fergus Russell

23 Jun 14 - 09:33 AM (#3635997)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Sandra in Sydney

Martyn Wyndham-Read performed it on the double CD Song Links FECD 176D
'Song Links' is now launched!

The words are in the booklet. The song was collected from Simon (Simmy) McDonald & was one of the songs handed down from an Irish sailor ancestor.

oral history recording of SImon McDonald Fiddle: 1. Father O'Flynn, 2. Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, 3. Rakes of Kildare, 4. Mrs McLeods reel, 5. Frog potters, 6. Green shades of Gask, 7. Jack's the lad. Singing: 8. Claudy banks, fiddle intro. Conversation: 9. Interview by Norm O'Connor and Maryjean Officer, McDonald speaks of learning songs, family background. Singing: 10. There was an old woman wrapped up in a blanket. Conversation: 11. McDonald speaks of his family history, songs and tunes about Napoleon, playing and learning to play fiddle and tin whistle. Fiddle: 12. Napoleon's march. Conversation: 13. McDonald speaks of his father, learning songs, other family members and experiences. Singing: 14. The lost sailor, 15. Jenny of the moor, Side 2. Singing: 1. The golden vanity. Rest of side 2 is blank.

The CD is still available from Fellside

I've just found MW-R's Song Links version on this thread - Golden Vanity Variants - posted by Roberto on 24 Jul 04 - 02:18 PM, version 10

sandra

23 Jun 14 - 12:26 PM (#3636034)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Aussie versions of Child ballads?
From: Fergie

Hi Sandra and all,

Thanks to everybody for your assistance and help. Special thanks to Sandra for that nice version of Golden Vanity. I'll try to get my hands on that Song Links CD.
The reason I'm interested in Aussie versions of the Child ballads is due to my involvement in a project called Man Woman and Child . There was such interest in this project right across Ireland, that it has been decided to present it again with ten new singers who will each learn and sing a number of different Child ballads and present them at a series of concerts in the National Library of Ireland in Dublin next December. As I stated in my opening post to the thread I have a great interest in Australian songs. My interest stems from the time I lived down under in the 1970's and early 80's and I would like to include some of these Australian variants of the Child ballads in my repetoire.

Fergus Russell