American Ballads Research Articles

Historic Truth and Ballad Truth: Two Versions of the Capture of New Orleans

The correlations between historical events and the folk literature which commemorates them present puzzling problems to students of folklore, literature, and history, the three disciplines involved in the study of such materials. Robert Seager II warns against the errors of interpreting folk documents as direct reflections of historic events or movements; what we may take to be folk literature celebrating such events or movements may result from the imposition upon the popular imagination of propagandists manipulating traditional jests, myths, and concepts of character to predetermined ends. The assumption that whatever is found in oral tradition is the product of the disinterested popular mind is, of course, a romantic fallacy.1 Such problems are as prevalent in ballad tradition as in the larger areas of national myth and national character with which Professor Seager is concerned. With respect to native American balladry there appear to be materials for reconstructing from popular sources the history of many occupations, especially those of the frontier.2 And many American ballads chronicle disasters, exploits of desperadoes and heroes and strong men, and phases of our military history. Which general principles, if any, influence the ways in which these images of the past are projected into the present in the lively annals of our native balladry? One method of determining what these principles are is to compare the ballad versions of historical experiences with the documentation of these events in official sources and eye-witness accounts. A number of such studies might clarify the relationship of folk projection to historic truth. This study of a forecastle ballad describing a naval engagement in the Civil War contributes toward that end. The ballad was composed by William Densmore, a seaman aboard the U. S. steam sloop Brooklyn, who took part in the attack on forts Jackson and St. Philip in the lower Mississippi. The fall of these forts and the destruction of the Confederate vessels which rallied in their defense made possible the Union capture of New Orleans. The force under Flag-Officer Farragut's command included six small steamers and twelve gunboats, ranging in size

The Ballad Tree; A Study of British and American Ballads, Their Folklore, Verse and Music, Together with Sixty Traditional Ballads and Their Tunes

The Ballad Tree; A Study of British and American Ballads, Their Folklore, Verse and Music, Together with Sixty Traditional Ballads and Their Tunes

The Ballad Tree: A study of British and American Ballads, their folklore, verse and music. Evelyn Kendrick Wells. (New York, 1950.) 370 pp.

The Ballad Tree: A study of British and American Ballads, their folklore, verse and music. Evelyn Kendrick Wells. (New York, 1950.) 370 pp.

The Ballad Tree: A Study of British and American Ballads, Their Folklore, Verse, and Music

The Ballad Tree: A Study of British and American Ballads, Their Folklore, Verse, and Music

The Ballad Tree: A Study of British and American Ballads, Their Folklore, Verse, and Music, Together with Sixty Traditional Ballads and Their Tunes.

The Ballad Tree: A Study of British and American Ballads, Their Folklore, Verse, and Music, Together with Sixty Traditional Ballads and Their Tunes.

A Panorama of American Ballads

A Panorama of American Ballads

Our Singing Country: A Second Volume of American Ballads and Folk Songs

Our Singing Country: A Second Volume of American Ballads and Folk Songs

Our Singing Country: A Second Volume of American Ballads and Folk Songs

Our Singing Country: A Second Volume of American Ballads and Folk Songs

An old American ballad

An old American ballad

Book Review: American Ballads and Songs.

Book Review: American Ballads and Songs.

Book Review: American Ballads and Songs.

Book Review: American Ballads and Songs.

Some Types of American Folk-Song

A BALLAD has been defined by Professor Kittredge as a story told in song, or a song that tells a story. This general definition of a ballad has been made more specific by various limitations. For instance, it is said that a genuine ballad has no one author; that, instead, some community or some group of people is its author. It is therefore the expression of no one mind: it is the product of the folk. Furthermore, the ballad has no date. No one knows just when the most treasured of the English and Scottish ballads were composed. For generations before Percy made his first collection of themand no one knows just how many generations they were handed down by word of mouth, as is the Masonic Ritual. A ballad, finally, is impersonal in tone; that is, it is the expression of no individual opinion. It might have been written by any one. A ballad, then, is a story in song, written no one knows when, no one knows where, no one knows by whom, and perhaps, some may think, no one knows for why. Notwithstanding, as the spontaneous poetic expression of the primitive emotions of a people, ballads always have had and always will have the power to move mankind. Have we any American ballads? Let us frankly confess, that, according to the definitions of the best critics of the ballad, we have none at all. There has, however, sprung up in America a considerable body of folk-song, called by courtesy ballads, which in their authorship, in the social conditions under which they were produced, in the spirit that gives them life, resemble the genuine ballads sung by our English and Scottish grandmothers long before there was an American people. We recognize and love the new ballad, just as we love the old, because the real ballad, perhaps as much as any other form of expression, appeals to our deepest, most intimate, and most elemental

The Southwestern Cowboy Songs and the English and Scottish Popular Ballads

Several writers recently have found analogy between conditions attending growth of cowboy songs in isolated communities in Southwest, and conditions under which arose English and Scottish popular ballads-those problematic pieces which form so special a chapter in history of English poetry. Mr. Lomax, chief collector of southwestern folk songs,' notes, when speaking of western communities, how illiterate people and people cut off from newspapers and books, isolated and lonelythrown back on primal resources for entertainment and for expression of emotion-utter themselves through somewhat same character of songs as did their forefathers of perhaps a thousand years ago. Professor Barrett Wendell2 suggests that it is possible to trace in this group of American ballads the precise manner in which songs and cycles of songs-obviously analogous to those surviving from older and antique times-have come into being. The facts which are still available concerning ballads of our own Southwest are such as should go far to prove, or to disprove, many of theories advanced concerning laws of literature as evinced in ballads of Old World. Ex-President

Fragments of Two American Ballads

Fragments of Two American Ballads

Early American Ballads. II

Early American Ballads. II

Early American Ballads

Early American Ballads