Nine Songs from Newfoundland

Abstract

T HE National Museum of Canada first began research on the music of Newfoundland in I950, when Margaret Sargent (McTaggart) was sent there to make tape-recordings of folk songs. She covered the area around St. John's and journeyed to Branch, a small fishing village or outport in St. Mary's Bay, where she discovered many interesting Old World songs. The following year, I travelled by car throughout the southeastern part of the island, visiting outports on the three main peninsulas of that area. The most rewarding region was the north shore of the Bonavista peninsula where I was compelled to take down the songs by hand, since the absence of electricity made the tape-recorder useless. Despite the obvious disadvantage of not being able to capture the singers' voices on tape, I spent most of the summer of I952 in the northeast, travelling in local boats to many of the isolated outports which dot the coastline and coastal islands. These researches uncovered a large body of songs which may conveniently be divided into two main groups-songs from the Old World and songs of local origin. The Irish songs from the Old World were more numerous than the English, and Irish influence upon local song has been most pronounced. Everywhere I travelled, the best and the oldest songs were usually to be found in Roman Catholic communities which seek to preserve the orthodoxies and customs of the past. Joe Batt's Arm, for example, is both Roman Catholic and Church of England, and Tilting is completely Catholic. Although it is only five miles from Joe Batt's Arm, Tilting has somehow remained apart from the influences of neighboring communities and boasts a set of customs all its own, and even a special accent heard nowhere else in Newfoundland.