When they sound the battle cry, God protect him carefully

I will sing my heart a song, comforting myself alone
So though loss is deep and strong, I won't die here on my own

Landlord, Fill the Flowing Bowl

Landlord, fill the flowing bowl until it doth run over
Landlord, fill the flowing bowl until it doth run over
For tonight we'll merry be, for tonight we'll merry be,
For tonight we'll merry be -
Tomorrow we'll be sober

To Drive the Cold Winter Away

All hayle to the dayes,
That merite more praise,
    then all the rest of the yeare:
And welcome the nights,
That double delights,
    as well the poore as the Peere:
Good fortune attend,
Each merry mans friend,
    that doth but the best that he may:
Forgetting old wrongs,
With Carrols and Songs,
    to drive the cold winter away .

The Michigan Dogman: a case study in myth-making

Where England has its Black Shuck and the pine barrens of New Jersey have the Jersey Devil, Michigan has the Dogman, a creature said to resemble a dog or a dog-human hybrid that is sighted in years ending in 7. Sometimes it is thought to change shape, like a werewolf. Like these other cases, it seems probable that cultural legends shape how people perceive the spooks of the darkness which the idle brain generates from misunderstood or imagined stimuli - but in the case of Michigan, we know precisely where the legend comes from, and so we can see the myth-making process in action.

There is no reality hiding behind the Dogman. The entire legend was created in 1987 as an April Fools' joke.

Inventiveness in Oral Music on the North Carolina Coast

Not long ago I acquired an album - I use the term slightly generously - from Smithsonian Folkways entitled Between the Sound and the Sea: Music of the North Carolina Outer Banks. It's a glimpse into the last generation of a lost oral tradition in coastal North Carolina, as captured by a modern folklorist without the prejudices that bedeviled the antiquarian tradition of prior decades of folklore studies, and so serves as a perfect case study for the role of authorship in at least some oral cultures.

Bedlam boys are bonny

To see mad Tom o' Bedlam
Ten thousand miles I'd travel
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes
To save her shoes from gravel
Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys
Bedlam boys are bonny
For they all go bare and they live by the air
And they want no drink and no money

Pete Seeger and the Modern Folk Music Landscape

Pete Seeger broke folk music.

Born in 1919, Seeger was a communist, labor-rights activist, WWII veteran, folksong collector, singer, songwriter, banjo and guitar player whose best-known band, the Weavers, gave birth to the folk music boom of the mid 20th century. Were it not for Seeger, American traditional music would remain a niche interest, ever fading. Were it not for Seeger, American traditional music would not be politicized. Were it not for Seeger, the twelve-string guitar would be virtually unknown in America.

The Rock Island Line is a mighty good road
The Rock Island Line is the road to ride

Pete Seeger died yesterday at the age of 94. His legacy in American folk music will forever be complicated, for how he at once rescued it from perpetual obscurity and inadvertently distorted the entire tradition to match his own tastes and politics.

Burns, Modernity, and the Folk Process

We've seen examples many times before of artists who rework folkloric material in a literary manner, to suit their own preferences. I myself have done so many times, both in condensing the longer ballads I translate into performable versions and in taking things I know from multiple sources and deriving a version which I eager to perform. On this blog, we've seen at least two examples of one of the most prolific poets to make extensive use of this tactic: the 18th-century Scottish poet Robert Burns.

We Hope in a Short Time to See You Again

"Spanish Ladies" is one of the oldest known sea songs in the English language, with the first reference to it appearing in 1624 (and that on dry land, suggesting the song itself was likely older). We don't know what it sounded like until the 18th century. But at that time, it had a minor-key version of the melody that would become familiar from later versions, probably sounding something like in this video.

If that melody sounds oddly familiar, don't be too surprised - like "The Unfortunate Rake," versions of "Spanish Ladies" have been collected all across the globe, and indeed the melodies are closely related. (I would say they are precisely the same, but there are many small variations from one version of the tune to another; even within either family of lyrics, the precise tune is not constant.)

Now I'm a Young Man Cut Down in My Prime

"The Unfortunate Rake" is a song first known from the late 18th century which is notable in large measure for its truly massive number of derivatives. It may be one of the most widely-transmitted songs in the pre-revival Anglophone folk repertoire, and at least two well-known songs with completely different melodies appear to be derived from it also. Variants appear not only in English, Scottish, and American folk music, but in country, jazz, and punk versions as well. It is, in other words, one of the world's great folksong families.

What Sea Shanties Are And Aren't

The anglophone sea shanty tradition is a well-known one, and the phrase "sea shanty" is even better known. It's not uncommon, nowadays, to apply the term to every traditional song with a nautical background. But the pedantic distinction between the two made by folklorists is rooted in a history far more interesting.

"Twa Corbies" as a Deconstructionist Ballad

"Twa Corbies" (Child 27, Roud 5) is a border ballad of the Anglo-Scottish tradition first published in print by Sir Walter Scott in Minstrelry of the Scottish Border (1802). It fell partway into obscurity with the loss of a melody for it in the oral tradition, but was revived when Steeleye Span set it to an old Breton air; with their tune, it's now fairly well-known, and has been recorded by other bands, such as in the wonderful rendition by Sol Invictus. (There's also a great Norwegian translaton by the band Folque, under the title "Ravene.") For the benefit of listeners who don't speak Scots, it's not uncommon for liner notes to explain a little bit of the vocabulary.

What the liner notes almost never mention is that "Twa Corbies" probably originated as a parody.

The Devil's Nine Questions

If you don't answer my questions nine
Sing ninety-nine and ninety
I'll take you off to Hell alive
And sing I'm the weaver's bonny

Tell me, what is whiter than milk?
Sing ninety nine and ninety
And tell me, what is softer than silk?
And sing I'm the weaver's bonny

Burns' Merry Muses as Folkloristic Collection

Robert Burns is best-known today as an early Romantic or proto-Romantic lyricist, but he was also a collector of traditional lyric. He also loved traditional melodies, and much of his poetry is intended to be sung to airs far older than what he wrote; this is, of course, perfectly in keeping with the core notions of Romanticism, which are best spelled out in the preface to Lyrical Ballads (1789), which describes a poet's task as "fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation" - something at odds with much of the poetry of the 18th century, which used deliberately archaic and learned forms. Burns did no such thing, preferring commonsense Scots just as Wordsworth favored everyday English.

A number of Burns' poems are light tweaks of preexisting ballads. "John Barleycorn" is likely one such, for example. In many cases, it's likely he wasn't even so much writing his own versions as attempting to present a version that would fit within an occasionally varied tradition.

The Merry Muses of Caledonia is a collection of such, printed ca. 1800 from a manuscript collection of verse Burns compiled throughout his adult life. This singular volume records the folk doggerel of the mid to late 18th century. The material in it likely does not originate with Burns, but he is known to have been fond of it and chose to compile quite a collection of such work, and it stands as an account of the 18th century's oral culture. The collection is united by a single common feature: every song in it is sexual in nature.

The Full English

It's not historical (or rather, it's mostly relevant to about a century ago), but there's a brand new web resource for the study of English folk culture: the Full English, an archive hosted by the English Folk Dance and Song Society. It's a browseable and searchable collection of notes from many of the most important early folklore collectors in English folkloristics, and it's entirely free thanks to a generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Go check it out; it's pretty amazing.

Authenticity, Comprehension, "Matona," Folklore, and Musical Performance

The first time I ever heard "Matona, Mia Cara" I knew the lovely Italian Renaissance text was entirely beyond my comprehension, but musically I felt I'd heard enough choral music to feel like I had some sense of what I was hearing anyhow.

I was wrong.

Ballads so old they're new to you

Here are EBBA links for ten ballads you've almost certainly never heard of, which might be interesting to revive (though in all cases, making them work as well for a modern audience would take effort beyond just learning the words and a matching melody). The newest among them is from 1625.

Broadsheets, Folksong, Copyright, and the Early Publishing Industry

In 1473, a London bookseller named William Caxton collaborated with a Flemish printer named Colard Mansion on a project which would bring overwhelming changes to English culture: The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, Caxton's own translation of a Burgundian account of the Trojan War. It was the first book ever printed in the English language, and Caxton sold enough copies that he proceeded to invest in setting up his own press in Westminster - the first in Great Britain. In 1476, he released the first title from his Westminster press: a mass-produced edition of the Canterbury Tales (which draws on enough folkloric material I guarantee I'm going to write a post or two on it later).

Caxton would go on to print 87 known titles, 26 of which were his own translations of foreign materials. While his aims were much the same as any modern translator's - accurately presenting the foreign material to English readers - he doesn't seem to have been very good at it, and a great many foreign words show up in his translations. ("Recuyell," for example, is not and hasn't ever been an English word, and I would never be able to read his 1481 History of Reynard the Fox without modern footnotes explaining the Dutch words therein.) Still, business was good, and by the 1480s, other printers had begun to operate their own presses in competition with Caxton. Caxton responded by expanding his shop through the help of his business partner, Wynkyn de Worde, who would go on to take over the business after Caxton's death in 1492. By the 1500s, there were a great many of them, and the publishing industry ballooned. Soon, printed material was a part of everyday life for the middle classes.

One of the products of this explosion was a sharp upswing in the composition and spread of ballads.

Barbara Allen's Cruelty, or the Young Man's Tragedy

In Scarlet Town where I was bound,
There was a fair Maid dwelling,
Whom I had choosd to be my own,
Her name was Barbara Allen.

All in the merry Month of May,
When green leaves were a springing
This young Man on his Death-bed lay,
For love of Barbara Allen.

Music for the Romancero

(Last post about romances for at least a little while, I promise.)

The texts in the romancero viejo were probably intended to be sung, or at least singable, exactly like ballads in English. But what were the melodies like?

I must confess, I have no idea, though I have a few tantalizing clues from secondary and tertiary sources. This post is mostly here to solicit the input of people more knowledgeable about early music than I, and to arm them with what knowledge I already have access to in order to help with this question.