folk songs from newfoundlandby maud karpeles

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Folk Songs from Newfoundland by Maud Karpeles Review by: A. L. Lloyd Folk Music Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1971), pp. 148-151 Published by: English Folk Dance + Song Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4521882 . Accessed: 12/06/2014 17:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . English Folk Dance + Song Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Folk Music Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 17:42:55 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Folk Songs from Newfoundlandby Maud Karpeles

Folk Songs from Newfoundland by Maud KarpelesReview by: A. L. LloydFolk Music Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1971), pp. 148-151Published by: English Folk Dance + Song SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4521882 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 17:42

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

English Folk Dance + Song Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to FolkMusic Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 17:42:55 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Folk Songs from Newfoundlandby Maud Karpeles

Reviews-Books Reviews-Books

The Ballad as Song By BERTRAND HARRIS BRONSON. University of California Press, 1969, xii + 324pp. $9.00. Anything that Professor Bronson

has to say about balladry is bound to command attention, since his work on providing Child's ballads with authentic tunes has given him unique authority. This book is a collection of eighteen essays arranged in chronological order of composition during the past thirty years as "efforts to control the material" that has accumulated from his editorial labours. This control of material is the next most pressing task in ethno- musicological and folk music studies since the sheer bulk of what has already been collected, to say no- thing of future acquisitions, is so formidable that some means of classifying and storing it for avail- ability is an urgent need. A beginning was made when students of the subject went one stage beyond spotting resemblances, at which Anne Gilchrist was adept, to group- ing tunes into families. Bartok for example used analysis by form, rhythm, mode, cadence and so on for purposes of indexing and classifi- cation, and Professor Bronson has carried the process a stage further by using charts and diagrams. It seems likely that this is the way the study is bound to go, though it involves techniques that some will find difficult. (I have to confess that for me the indication "as the diagram shows" is a warning that I shall have to elucidate obscurum per obscurius.) At any rate, the case for analysis and statistics is set out and illus- trated in at least two of these essays.

The other theme that runs through them all-and the natural repetition of the argument on different occasions is no bad thing-is the relation of words and music to one another,

148

The Ballad as Song By BERTRAND HARRIS BRONSON. University of California Press, 1969, xii + 324pp. $9.00. Anything that Professor Bronson

has to say about balladry is bound to command attention, since his work on providing Child's ballads with authentic tunes has given him unique authority. This book is a collection of eighteen essays arranged in chronological order of composition during the past thirty years as "efforts to control the material" that has accumulated from his editorial labours. This control of material is the next most pressing task in ethno- musicological and folk music studies since the sheer bulk of what has already been collected, to say no- thing of future acquisitions, is so formidable that some means of classifying and storing it for avail- ability is an urgent need. A beginning was made when students of the subject went one stage beyond spotting resemblances, at which Anne Gilchrist was adept, to group- ing tunes into families. Bartok for example used analysis by form, rhythm, mode, cadence and so on for purposes of indexing and classifi- cation, and Professor Bronson has carried the process a stage further by using charts and diagrams. It seems likely that this is the way the study is bound to go, though it involves techniques that some will find difficult. (I have to confess that for me the indication "as the diagram shows" is a warning that I shall have to elucidate obscurum per obscurius.) At any rate, the case for analysis and statistics is set out and illus- trated in at least two of these essays.

The other theme that runs through them all-and the natural repetition of the argument on different occasions is no bad thing-is the relation of words and music to one another,

148

which Professor Bronson has ana- lysed much more closely than any- one has done before. His last, and previously unpublished, essay is a delightful survey on the old theme of voice and verse, but it is less concerned with the employment of their "mixed powers" (Milton), of music and sweet poetry agreeing (Barnfield) or of their "successful rape" (Suzanne Langer) than with the actual mechanics of their integ- ration in folk song, including sacred parody, and ballads. Metres and phrase-lengths are examined to see which is chicken and which is egg, and Campion, Dowland and Burns are called upon to give evidence in the search for origins.

Subsidiary episodes, to use the language of musical analysis, are the history of British-American scholar- ship, the discovery of the ancillary group of white spirituals, which Bronson thinks Sharp may have missed in the Appalachians, the changes in oral tradition brought about by modem life, and one or two studies of particular ballads, begin- ning with "Edward". It is a rich book and it is a pleasure to read because Professor Bronson is not only a scholar but, unlike some professors of English studies, can write the English language with clarity and elegance.

FRANK HOWES

Folk Songs from Newfoundland Collected and edited by MAUD KARPELES. Faber and Faber, Lon- don, 1971, 340 pp., £7.00. Long waited for is come at last;

and welcome. Thirty of these songs presented themselves to us back in 1935, dressed up for the occasion with piano accompaniments by Vaughan Williams, Clive Carey and others, and a charming little advance guard they were. Some of them, notably

which Professor Bronson has ana- lysed much more closely than any- one has done before. His last, and previously unpublished, essay is a delightful survey on the old theme of voice and verse, but it is less concerned with the employment of their "mixed powers" (Milton), of music and sweet poetry agreeing (Barnfield) or of their "successful rape" (Suzanne Langer) than with the actual mechanics of their integ- ration in folk song, including sacred parody, and ballads. Metres and phrase-lengths are examined to see which is chicken and which is egg, and Campion, Dowland and Burns are called upon to give evidence in the search for origins.

Subsidiary episodes, to use the language of musical analysis, are the history of British-American scholar- ship, the discovery of the ancillary group of white spirituals, which Bronson thinks Sharp may have missed in the Appalachians, the changes in oral tradition brought about by modem life, and one or two studies of particular ballads, begin- ning with "Edward". It is a rich book and it is a pleasure to read because Professor Bronson is not only a scholar but, unlike some professors of English studies, can write the English language with clarity and elegance.

FRANK HOWES

Folk Songs from Newfoundland Collected and edited by MAUD KARPELES. Faber and Faber, Lon- don, 1971, 340 pp., £7.00. Long waited for is come at last;

and welcome. Thirty of these songs presented themselves to us back in 1935, dressed up for the occasion with piano accompaniments by Vaughan Williams, Clive Carey and others, and a charming little advance guard they were. Some of them, notably

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 17:42:55 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 3: Folk Songs from Newfoundlandby Maud Karpeles

"She's like the swallow", later became stalndard items in the reper- tory of student amateurs of endearing songs. We knew there were many more pieces to come from Miss Karpeles' Newfoundland voyages, and taking the elegant thirty to be a fair sample, we were impatient to meet the rest. We've had to wait, and we've sometimes wondered why, but now here they are, unadorned by any instrumental setting, in as much of a state of nature as cold print allows, in a handsome-looking volume- cruelly expensive alas, but there, it's unseemly to begrudge the fare- money of such agreeable arrivals.

Originally the expedition to New- foundland had been planned as a kind of finale or at least a coda to Cecil Sharp's Appalachian work. Suspecting that the maritime North- east might show "old country" folk song riches comparable to those of the South, Sharp had planned to visit there in 1925, but his death interveined, and the valiant com- panion of his Appalachian journeys decided, with some trepidation, to go alone. In fact, Miss Karpeles made two trips, in 1929 and again in the following year. At the time, the world knew next to nothing of New- foundland song. She had no idea of what lay before her and believed she was entering virgin territory. As it happened, two ladies from Vassar College, Mrs Greenleaf and Miss Yarrow (later Mrs Mansfield) had preceded her by a couple of months. They were luckier than Miss Kar- peles in promptly finding a publisher, and their collection (texts of 185 songs and about 100 tunes and variants) appeared in 1933. Since then, we have had the excellent three- volume Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, edited by Kenneth Peacock (1965) offering over 400 titles with a fair number of variants, and com- prising about half of the fund of Newfoundland songs in the collection of the National Museum of Canada.

In the same year, the National Museum also published McEdward Leach's good collection of Folk Ballads and Songs of the Lower Labrador Coast, with 138 titles. So Miss Karpeles' book, which should have been well towards the front of of the queue, stands unfairly at the tail of it, robbed of some quality of surprise, but not of its bloom.

The settlements visited by Miss Karpeles lie along the southern and eastern coast of the Island of New- foundland, a territory of herring driftermen, cod trawlermen, sealers and, to a less extent, whalers. It is an area long settled, though the sizeable populations only arrived in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, mainly from Ireland and from the South-western counties of England. In forty settlements visited, Miss Karpeles noted 191 tunes from 104 singers, which indicates either that her informants had small repertories of folk song, or that her own standards of acceptance were very rigorous-or both.

In the Newfoundland of 1930, Miss Karpeles found it much harder to come upon old-style song than in the Appalachia of 1918 (though doubtless the song-styles of the Southern Uplands had changed drastically in the ensuing decade or so, due particularly to the spread of rural professionalism among moun- tain musicians consequent on the setting up of countless country radio stations and the expansion of the gramophone record market in the highland towns and settlements). In maritime communities, containing a high proportion of descendants of nineteenth-century Irish migrants, and with the menfolk, by virtue of their watery calling, frequently swap- ping songs with seamen from other parts, one would expect to find a minimum of "classic' peasant folk song and a maximum of relatively modern "come-all-ye" types, with a quite vigorous perpetuation of a

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Page 4: Folk Songs from Newfoundlandby Maud Karpeles

creative tradition, producing new songs all the while, naturally enough formed in more recent rather than older patterns of poetry and melody.

Indeed, that seems to be so with Newfoundland song. Miss Karpeles remarks: "The proportion of authen- tic folk songs is small compared with the general repertory. In addition to the composed songs of an earlier generation, songs are constantly being made up about contemporary events such as exploits at sea, shipwrecks, etc. These are often set to a well-known 'Come-all-ye' type of tune. They usually have but little aesthetic value, and since my interest lay in songs that represent an older tradition I did not note any of them". Rather a shame. It's almost as if a community is discriminated against because it hasn't yet lost its creative powers. The conventional aesthetic standards of educated Western cityfolk are not the only criteria by which to estimate a song's value. It is well known that the songs highest prized by the folk- lorist are not always those best esteemed by the folk, and the folk have their reasons that are just as valid as the folklorist's. It would be worth trying to analyse why the despised "come-all-ye" pattern came to dominate all other folk song forms over a large part of the English- speaking world from the beginning of the nineteenth century onward. "Because it's easy and uninventive, and typical of folk song tradition in decline", some would say. But many come-all-ye's are hard to sing, and if the form is stereotyped it has been found singularly apt for conveying detailed narrative texts, and many of the archaic melody-types admired by folklorists (perhaps because they're "quaint", Lord save us!) have far less to offer, musically, than the despised "come-all-ye". And finally, if it hadn't been for the revivifying effect that the "come-all-ye" forms brought to latterday folk song

creation, the honourable tradition of home-made melody would have been drowned a century ago under the flood of commercially-promoted ur- ban popular music.

Turning to more prestigious pieces, we find twenty-four Child ballads, including some that are uncommon not only in the British Isles but also in Southern Upland USA. For instance there's "The Bonny Banks of Virgie", generally quite rare, yet seemingly snugly at home in the maritime North-east of the continent, where several good sets to variants of a splendid tune are known to us through print or record. It is odd that so vivid a ballad, with the ad- vantage of a repetitive and thus easily memorable text, should dog- gedly flourish in Canada while it withered elsewhere. For this, Miss Karpeles gives us four tune-versions, all good. Another ballad that seems quite abundant in Newfoundland and most rare otherwise is "Sweet William's Ghost" (Child 77). Miss Karpeles found no fewer than nine tunes for this, and the two texts she offers are both excellent. Curious gems, these; another oddity is "Sir James the Ross" (Child 213), common enough in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and seldom now- adays found elsewhere. Miss Karpeles provides three versions. For some reason, where the ballad is found, it is usually sung at considerable length. One of the versions given here runs to 49 stanzas, presumably memorized, and firmly, from print and a doggerel print at that (verses such as: "By this the valiant knight awoke, The virgin's shriek he heard, He then rose up and drew his sword When this fierce band appeared", have the ring of uninspired educated poetry rather than any true creation of folklore, reminding us how difficult it is for those outside the tradition to pro- duce a convincing imitation of folk balladry).

Among the authentic products of

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Page 5: Folk Songs from Newfoundlandby Maud Karpeles

the folk we find no fewer than seven good "Cruel Mothers", one of whom acts out her lugubrious drama "in the green woods of Borneo" (of course, a mishearing of "so bonny o"). There is a nice complete "Unquiet Grave", and four sets of "Lamkin", one of them twenty verses long but with no dead wood. Also two good "Grey Cock" tunes, the first one with an unusual Lydian inflection. Hopes are raised by the presence of "The Streams of Lovely Nancy" in the Contents-list; are we at last, from far-off Newfoundland, to receive a version that will restore order to what we have hitherto only known as a picturesquely chaotic and unfathomable song? Alas, New- foundland singers reproduce the same cryptic jumble as our per- formers, and the song still remains obscure, veiled and quite irresistible.

It's an interesting reflection on the character of the modem folk song revival that certain songs almost, or entirely, unknown in print have a fair currency through the folk song clubs. Two such rarities appearing here are "The Bloody Gardener", which circulates in a form reasonably close to the Newfoundland one, and "When a Man's in Love" (here called "A Man in Love"), which our club singers know in a rather hand- somer version than that offered by Miss Karpeles. So far as I know neither of these songs has appeared in any British printed collection, though "When a Man's in Love" has become well-known through the efforts of Paddy Tunney.

Expensive as the book is, it is not entirely free from misprints. We even get, in bold capitals, a reference to the Appalachian collector SGARP. Still, it's full of fine songs, and it's a monument to the diligence and intrepidity of a folk song pioneer whose fruitful work is by no means over yet, praise be. If you can't afford it, agitate your local library to get it. It's a valuable collection,

the folk we find no fewer than seven good "Cruel Mothers", one of whom acts out her lugubrious drama "in the green woods of Borneo" (of course, a mishearing of "so bonny o"). There is a nice complete "Unquiet Grave", and four sets of "Lamkin", one of them twenty verses long but with no dead wood. Also two good "Grey Cock" tunes, the first one with an unusual Lydian inflection. Hopes are raised by the presence of "The Streams of Lovely Nancy" in the Contents-list; are we at last, from far-off Newfoundland, to receive a version that will restore order to what we have hitherto only known as a picturesquely chaotic and unfathomable song? Alas, New- foundland singers reproduce the same cryptic jumble as our per- formers, and the song still remains obscure, veiled and quite irresistible.

It's an interesting reflection on the character of the modem folk song revival that certain songs almost, or entirely, unknown in print have a fair currency through the folk song clubs. Two such rarities appearing here are "The Bloody Gardener", which circulates in a form reasonably close to the Newfoundland one, and "When a Man's in Love" (here called "A Man in Love"), which our club singers know in a rather hand- somer version than that offered by Miss Karpeles. So far as I know neither of these songs has appeared in any British printed collection, though "When a Man's in Love" has become well-known through the efforts of Paddy Tunney.

Expensive as the book is, it is not entirely free from misprints. We even get, in bold capitals, a reference to the Appalachian collector SGARP. Still, it's full of fine songs, and it's a monument to the diligence and intrepidity of a folk song pioneer whose fruitful work is by no means over yet, praise be. If you can't afford it, agitate your local library to get it. It's a valuable collection,

full of glowing pleasures. A. L. LLOYD

full of glowing pleasures. A. L. LLOYD

More Folk Songs from Lincolnshire Ed. PATRICK O'SHAUGHNESSY. Oxford University Press in con-

junction with the Lincolnshire. Association, 1971, vii+63 pp. 75p It has been a privilege to review

this book, particularly as two of the singers from whom the songs were collected are personally known to me. They also feature in the book designed to be a successor to Garners Gay. It is a coincidence that two people should have had the thought, almost simultaneously, of publicising Lincolnshire songs, even though the publication dates do not coincide. As Mr O'Shaughnessy states in his Introduction, this book, following his earlier one from Percy Grainger's Collection, now makes sure that there is a readily available selection of songs from this area.

The book follows a pattern similar to that of its predecessor. It has an Introduction plus 63 pages, made up of 15 songs (pp. 1-29), extensive notes on each song (pp. 30-59) and a very full bibliography (pp. 60-63). The notes include the singer's name, the locality of the song, the original key if an alteration has been made, the background story of each song, relevant information on any variants and an almost too full list of other published versions. Perhaps this moved Mr O'Shaughnessy to state in the Introduction that these lists are not guaranteed to be exhaustive. He certainly omitted Garners Gay as another source of a version of "The Derby Ram".

The choice of songs is varied, ranging from the classic ballad to sea songs, custom and ritual, and nursery songs. It seems debatable whether to include those songs which have so many other versions in print. What have they to justify their in- clusion in this comparatively small

More Folk Songs from Lincolnshire Ed. PATRICK O'SHAUGHNESSY. Oxford University Press in con-

junction with the Lincolnshire. Association, 1971, vii+63 pp. 75p It has been a privilege to review

this book, particularly as two of the singers from whom the songs were collected are personally known to me. They also feature in the book designed to be a successor to Garners Gay. It is a coincidence that two people should have had the thought, almost simultaneously, of publicising Lincolnshire songs, even though the publication dates do not coincide. As Mr O'Shaughnessy states in his Introduction, this book, following his earlier one from Percy Grainger's Collection, now makes sure that there is a readily available selection of songs from this area.

The book follows a pattern similar to that of its predecessor. It has an Introduction plus 63 pages, made up of 15 songs (pp. 1-29), extensive notes on each song (pp. 30-59) and a very full bibliography (pp. 60-63). The notes include the singer's name, the locality of the song, the original key if an alteration has been made, the background story of each song, relevant information on any variants and an almost too full list of other published versions. Perhaps this moved Mr O'Shaughnessy to state in the Introduction that these lists are not guaranteed to be exhaustive. He certainly omitted Garners Gay as another source of a version of "The Derby Ram".

The choice of songs is varied, ranging from the classic ballad to sea songs, custom and ritual, and nursery songs. It seems debatable whether to include those songs which have so many other versions in print. What have they to justify their in- clusion in this comparatively small

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