Scottish Ballads Research Articles

Bibliography of Theses and Dissertations Pertaining to Southern Appalachia: 1912-1991 (review)

it's suicide to stay there." Covington is a writer in search of stories to tell. This is what Salvation on Sand Mountain is about: Covington's story. This book is not useful as a study of serpent handlers or of religion in Appalachia. The people and their beliefs are presented stereotypically. We are reminded of supposedly outdated clothing, poverty, and the toothless. Covington's imagination and writing skill transform even the most basic facts. The Porters' pleasant brick house gets transformed into a bricked-over double-wide trailer. (It is not; I have been to this house). Covington is unlikely to be back on Sand Mountain. He teaches creative writing (not journalism) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham . He is truly a talented writer who used his considerable creative skills to transform more than the Porters' brick home. His story robbed those on Sand Mountain of the fair opportunity to have their own story told in any approximation to historical or descriptive adequacy . In a passionate and tearfully troubled reaction to Covington's book from the wife of the serpent handler Covington most befriended, we have the other more truthful side of the critical acclaim many have heaped upon Covington's book: "He betrayed our trust; he just wanted to tell a story." —Ralph W. Hood, Jr. Dexter Collett. Bibliography of Theses and Dissertations Pertaining to Southern Appalachia: 1912-1991. Berea, Kentucky: Appalachian Imprints , 1994. 136 pages. $29.95. If literature (drama, fiction, nonfiction, oral literature, and poetry) is a mirror of culture, then literary criticism is a study of the quality of the mirror. Among the forms of criticism are theses and dissertations which we require graduate students to write and then, all too often, put on the shelf and forget. Not Dexter Collett. In Bibliography of Theses and Dissertations Pertaining to Southern Appalachia: 1912-1991, he reminds us ofa significant number of critical and scholarly studies on Appalachian literature and folklore, 1185 to be exact, produced in the colleges and universities in the region and outside it. Obviously this has been a huge effort by Collett and a valuable one. Anyone with any involvement in Appalachian studies should own a copy of this book. For graduate faculty in the region who direct theses or dissertations on a regular basis, it is indispensable. While Bibliography is primarily a listing, no little achievement in itself since Collett actually held in hand every entry mentioned, a thirty-page 56 foreword and structure facilitate ready use. The six major divisions are (1) Early Narrative and Travel Sketches, (2) General Studies, (3) Individual Authors, (4) Creative Writing, (5) Folklore, and (6) Drama, Theater, and Film. If my arithmetic is correct, there are 266 studies of folklore on a wide range of topics such as English and Scottish ballads, musical instruments, folk tales, folk speech and dialect, arts and crafts, superstitions, and children's folk games. A breakdown of studies according to theme in the folklore section might have been helpful, but students of folklore and language will still be grateful for this abundant material in its present form. Many of the theses clearly involve primary research; for example, "Mary A. Gannaway, 'The Singing Games of the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee,' Master's Thesis, George Peabody College, 1935." Several of the studies have been published, such as the 1941 Ph.D. Columbia University dissertation, "Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountain Speech," by Joseph Sargent Hall, but most have not, which is no intended criticism of their value. Several of the titles are compelling such as the M.A. thesis by Robin L. Geller done at the University of North Carolina in 1974, "Feuding in Appalachia and the Middle East: A Comparative Analysis." Of the ninety-three general studies, Collett pays special attention (and tribute) to dissertations on Appalachian literature by (1) Laurie Leslie Banner, University of North Carolina, 1984, (2) Carvel Collins, University of Chicago, 1944, (3) Isabella D. Harris, Duke University, 1948, (4) Danny Miller, University of Cincinnati, 1985, (5) Barbara S. Kirkpatrick, University of Maryland, 1974, (6) H. R. Stoneback, Vanderbilt University, 1970, and of course Cratis Williams, New York University, 1961. A listing of other useful sources appears in "Works...

David Buchan, 1939–1994

When his own book, The Ballad and the Folk, was published in 1972, David took issue with all the theoretical attitudes implicit in this anecdote. Influenced by the work of Albert Lord and, before him, of Milman Parry, he argued that the great international story songs, usually mistakenly referred to in school poetry lessons as the Border Ballads, could only be understood as the product of oral singers using traditional techniques of re-creation and re-composition-in other words, as a living oral tradition. What was perhaps more revolutionary was the equal weight given in both the title and the content of the book to the social context in, and out of, which ballad singing sprang. The Ballad and the Folk was awarded both the Chicago Folklore Prize and the Blackwell Prize in the year it was published. This influential book was followed by A Scottish Ballad Book (1973), which was later reprinted in paperback as A Book of Scottish Ballads (1985), and by a multiplicity of essays and articles about the traditional ballad. Consequently, most people will remember David as one of the most innovative and influential ballad scholars of his age; but we should not forget the substantial contribution which he also made to the understanding of anecdotes, jokes, contemporary legends and many other forms of traditional culture. The scope of his Scottish Tradition (1984) covers folktales, riddles, lyrics, comic and occupational songs, rhymes, legends and guisers' plays. His last work, Folk Medicine and Folk Tradition in Scotland (reviewed in this volume), is an edited anthology of the work of the Edinburgh doctor David Rorie. British Universities have been notoriously wary of Folklore Studies, so David decided to venture abroad to allow himself scope to develop his research interests and talent for teaching. From 1964 to 1968, he held posts at the University of Victoria in Canada, then at the University of Massachusetts in the USA. He returned to Scotland in 1968 to take up a job at the University of Stirling, where he remained for some time, and single-handedly built up an impressive programme in folklife studies. After eleven years at Stirling he realised that folklore was becoming increasing marginalised there and was tempted back to Canada with the post of Professor of Folklore at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St John's. He remained there till his death, becoming its Head of Department from 1979 to 1985, and the first University Research Professor in 1987.

‘The Cruel Jew's Wife:’ An Anglo-Irish Ballad of the Early Nineteenth Century

AMONG the holdings of the British Library is a small volume from Clonmel containing a unique version of Child ballad 155, 'Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter.' Additional Manuscript 20099 was purchased in 1854 from Thomas Crofton Croker's estate, at which time the British Museum acquired several manuscript and blackletter ballads pertaining to Irish history and life.' Add. Ms. 20099, however, is composed largely of legends 'taken down' according to 'A.H.B., its anonymous collector, 'in the words in which they were related,' but she admits that much of its contents were 'already published,' although she claims to have been 'familiar [with the material] in the days of a happy childhood.'2 The ballad which is transcribed in the MS is described as 'very ancient' though the collector is aware that it appears in more than oral form and, indeed, 'may not [have] be[en] out of print' in 1826 when A.H.B. transcribed it for Croker.3 Though her informant, like Mrs Brown of Falkland from whom Francis James Child took his principal version of this ballad, 'may never [have seen]... one of [her contributions]... in print or manuscript,4 it is clear that A.H.B. is aware of the ballad's literary existence even as she recognized that it circulated orally and was 'sung in Ireland to a very wild & melancholy tho' monotonous air.'5 Unfortunately, she provided no further information either about its method of performance or the music to which it was sung, details of considerable interest considering the formal nature of the verse in contrast with the violence of its subject. From the number of ballads traced to Irish sources, Child concluded that 'the remnants of Anglo-Irish balladry might with reasonable expectation be looked for in Ireland, where as yet no systematic attempt has been made to form a collection of that kind.6 About the same time Charles Gavan Duffy remarked on the British-and perhaps literarysource of Anglo-Irish song, observing that 'many of the ballads in Percy are more familiarly known here (in Ireland) than in England.'7 Duffy's reference to Percy's collection is not inappropriate for, despite informants such as the Clonmel resident who came from 'an old Protestant family,'s and thus may have had personal contacts with Britain, Ireland beyond the Pale remained largely Celtic until the nineteenth century when English became more common in the countryside.9 As a result, those ballads which found 'favour with a poetic people,' were as likely to have originated from printed as from oral sources. This derivation does not diminish their importance either for Irish literary history or for the history of the ballad. One of Child's less valued informants, Margaret Reburn, presented him with a most 'strange and interesting variant' of 'Sir Hugh' which, although probably extracted from books, '...enlarg[ed] our knowledge, especially as [her ballads]...suggest that some Scottish ballads were known in the English-speaking part of Ireland in the nineteenth century.' 'The Cruel Jew's Wife' similar to Child's version 'T' extracted from M. H. Mason's Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs,12 which later was reprinted by Bernard Bronson as ballad 155, item 24, and to the variant which Bronson published as item 25, are

A Book of Scottish Ballads

A Book of Scottish Ballads

Scottish and Border Battles and Ballads

Scottish and Border Battles and Ballads

The Victorian Popular Ballad; Scottish and Border Battles and Ballads

The Victorian Popular Ballad; Scottish and Border Battles and Ballads

Old British ballads in Ireland

AbstractThis article is concerned with the European ballad genre as defined in practice in the English and Scottish field by F. J. Child, and I shall use the term ‘old’ balladry to refer strictly to that genre. My purpose is firstly to consider in general how and to what extent Ireland has absorbed, diffused and preserved old English and Scottish ballads, and secondly to present particular unpublished ballad versions recorded by me from the tradition of the North-West counties Donegal and Derry during the years 1968 and 1969 My choice of examples has been governed by intrinsic merit as well as illustrative value, not by mere length. Length is no guarantee of poetic merit in ballads; even so, some of these texts are both strikingly beautiful and unusually long. Long or short, they are the first exclusive collection of old British ballads from Ireland yet to appear.

Folklore in English and Scottish Ballads

Folklore in English and Scottish Ballads

English and Scottish Ballads

English and Scottish Ballads

REVIEWS

The Common Muse. An Anthology of popular British ballad poetry xvth‐xxth century. Edited by V. DE SOLA PINTO and A. E. RODWAY.English and Scottish Ballads. Edited with an introduction by ROBERT GRAVES.The Organization of Science in England. D. L. S. CARDWELL. HeinemannReligion Without Revelation. JULIAN HUXLEY. Max ParrishEducation and the Philosophic Mind. Edited by A. V. JUDGES. HarrapThe Rise of the Novel. Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. IAN WATT. Chatto & WindusDemocracy in England. DIANA SPEARMAN. Rockliff

Some English and Scottish Ballads from California

Some English and Scottish Ballads from California

Notation For Ballad Melodies

Some time ago, in a comparative study of European balladries, the problem of the melodies halted me till Professor César Barja told me that my problem had already been solved by Professor Sigurd B. Hustvedt, who sent me a short time later his valuable pamphlet, A Melodic Index of Child's Ballad Tunes (Univ. of California Press, 1936). I have made an extensive use of his system, having introduced a few modifications, and venture to think that my experiments may serve as (so to say) laboratory confirmation. His business has been with English and Scottish ballads; mine has been international.

Grundtvig's Index B of English and Scottish Ballads

While Francis James Child was preparing the manuscript for the publication of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Svend Grundtvig sent to him, in the form of enclosures with letters dated August 25, 1877 and January 29, 1880, a numbered list of English and Scottish ballads arranged in the order which Grundtvig, at Child's earlier request, meant to propose as a proper sequence for publication. This list is printed in full in my Ballad Books and Ballad Men under the designation of the “Grundtvig-Child Index.” This index was prepared by Grundtvig mainly from two other manuscript indexes which he had drawn up many years before for convenient reference in his work with the Danish ballads. The first of the two, named Index A by Grundtvig himself, contained what he regarded at the time as a standard list of English and Scottish ballads. The second, named by him Index B, comprised ballads which he regarded for various reasons as questionable. Index A began in 1850; Index B appears to belong to approximately the same period. Between twenty and thirty years afterward, when Grundtvig prepared for Child's guidance the Grundtvig-Child Index, he admitted into it many ballads from Index B. In the interval he had obviously changed his mind or resolved his doubts as to the merits of a group of ballads originally regarded by him as distinctly secondary in value. It is to be observed, however, that, in his classifications for Child in the Grundtvig-Child Index, Grundtvig admits no ballad from Index B into his First Class, in his opinion the most ancient poems; on the other hand, he places a large number of pieces from Index B in his Fourth Class, “consisting of imitations of the old ballad style.” Whether, then, we take into account Grundtvig's earlier or his later judgment, Index B represents a secondary order of merit. Careful attention should be paid, meanwhile, to the variety of reasons which led Grundtvig, according to his own introductory note, to the formation of Index B. This index was to him in effect a sort of ballad purgatory, from which in the course of time he released such of the numbers as appeared to him worthy of liberation.

Ritson's Life of Robin Hood

Joseph Ritson's antiquarian interest was of early inception. From his school days in Stockton, he had been interested in history, old songs, and ballads. This interest continued throughout his life. It resulted in a series of publications ranging from the history of certain legal offices, through British topography and royal geneology, to old English and Scottish songs and ballads. In all this work he was careful to use the oldest manuscripts and sources he could find: he showed amazing diligence in searching out original documents. His editing was in accord with modern practice: it did not suffer from the misleading procedure of such editors as Percy. He was extremely critical of the treatment of texts by his contemporaries, and justly deserves to be called the watchdog of English scholarship.

On the Dating of the English and Scottish Ballads

The practice has established itself among literary historians and anthologists of associating the English and Scottish ballads primarily with the fifteenth century, sometimes with the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One of the best and most popular of the histories of English literature now used in schools and colleges states in its revised editions: “These ballads appear to have flourished luxuriantly among the folk in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after which their composition ceased. Over three hundred of them, in 1,300 versions, have survived, and have been collected and printed.” The now widely used History of English Literature by M. Emile Legouis, the most ambitious among recent histories of our literature, remarks of the ballads: “They cannot all be claimed for the fifteenth century, for poems of this sort must have had an earlier beginning and certainly were produced until a later time, but the impulse to make them seems to have been particularly active in this century, to which, moreover, the oldest extant specimens belong.” A recent excellent poetical anthology has: “Ballad is the name applied to a simple form of narrative poetry which in England and Scotland flourished between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.” Statements like these leave with readers the definite impression that the fifteenth century was the heyday of ballad production, and that the bulk of the three hundred ballads in Professor Child's collection emerged from this century, or from an even earlier period.

Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads.

Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads.

Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads

Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads

A Recent Theory of Ballad-Making

Professor Gordon Hall Gerould's article entitled “The Making of Ballads” is an attractive essay, written in the fluent and polished manner that we are accustomed to expect from this scholar. It has charm of style, and its positions, taken as a whole, may be termed accepted positions. Because of its literary quality, because it brings together in one paper what has hitherto been stressed in scattered places, and because of its appreciation of the poetical quality of those English and Scottish ballads sought out by the notable collectors of the earlier nineteenth century and made available in the volumes of Professor Child, the paper has real value for the student. That “The Making of Ballads” is a research article, the product of painstaking investigation, Professor Gerould would not, I think, himself maintain. He is a literary theorist in the realm of traditional song, rather than an experienced field worker or a practical folk-lorist. He brings forward little that has novelty for the special scholar. This circumstance would call for no particular comment except for the fact that the paper has been announced as new and subversive—as something independent of old theories. It has been referred to by several scholars as “The Gerould Theory of Ballad Origins.” The author himself leads us to expect something revolutionary when he asks us to— dismiss from our minds, for the time being, our preconceived and well-buttressed theories as to the narrative lyrics we call ballads; forget, if we can, our arguments; and . . . . look at certain . . . . indisputable phenomena of the ballad. Oddly enough, though they are perfectly well known, they have been much neglected. Very rarely has their existence been noticed in writings on the ballads, while never, I believe, has their true significance been fully recognized.

Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads. Lowry Charles Wimberly

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsFolklore in the English and Scottish Ballads. Lowry Charles Wimberly Archer TaylorArcher Taylor Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 26, Number 3Feb., 1929 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/387780 PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

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Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads. By Lowry Charles Wimberly. Illinois: Univ. of Chicago Press (Cambridge Univ. Press), 1928. 9" x 5 7/8". Pp. xiii + 466. 25s.