Ancient Themes and Characteristics Found in Certain New England Folksongs

Abstract

WITH MY SUBJECT this morning Ancient Themes and Characteristics Found in Certain New England Folksongs I can cite here in my allotted twenty minutes but a few of those I have encountered. For the oldest, I will choose one superior authority. I shall confine myself chiefly to the book published in 1956 entitled From the Tablets of Sumer by the eminent Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer.2 His forthcoming book The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character will be published by the University of Chicago Press next spring (I963). But I have much to bring to the fore for your consideration, particularly his translation of legends and myths millennia old, where lines of poetry seem akin to some in my collection of New England folksongs. I shall read excerpts from that particular book, From the Tablets of Sumerexcerpts which led me to revalue, now here, now there, what is in my files. I will quote with permission from the publisher (The Falcon's Wing Press) what I think is analogous so that you may form your own opinions. In Sumerian there occur incremental repetitions where an envoy repeats a message word for word as first given him and it advances the plot whenever it recurs. For instance, in the first tale of resurrection there is the myth in the words of the ancient poet himself. Dr. Kramer translates Inanna's instructions to her vizier Ninshubur.3 Note the patterned repetitions of