English Folk Song Bibliography 

David Atkinson 

2nd Edition, 1999

Contents

Preface

1. Revivals
2. Collecting and fieldwork
3. Singers and their songs
4. Song and ballad research

4.1. Approaches to folk song and balladry
4.2. The music of folk songs and ballads
4.3. Studies of selected folk songs and ballads

5. Song and ballad collections

5.1. General collections
5.2. North-east England
5.3. North-west England
5.4. Yorkshire and Lincolnshire
5.5. The Midlands
5.6. East Anglia
5.7. South-west England
5.8. Southern England

6. Early manuscripts, early print, and broadsides

7. Occupational songs

7.1. Various occupations
7.2. Sailors’ songs and songs of the sea
7.3. Miners’ songs
7.4. Soldiers’ songs
7.5. Songs of agricultural work

8. Travellers’ songs
9. Carols
10. Songs associated with customs
11. Children’s Songs
12. Bibliographies, databases, and other aids to research
13. Websites
14. Manuscript Collections in the VWML

Author/editor/name index

 

Preface

This bibliography is intended to serve both as an introduction to the study of English folk song, and as a guide to the numerous collections of songs which exist in print and manuscript. It is intended to be of assistance both to students of the subject, and to those who wish to sing the songs. The annotations offer a very brief guide to the nature of each item.

 

The term ‘folk song’ is retained here, in spite of the difficulties it raises over the types of songs and the nature of their singers. The phrase has been consistently used, and a measure of imprecision in what is meant by it is probably a good thing. If a description has to be offered, it is a song of a kind which is known to have been passed from person to person for their own cultural use, often though not always orally, and which has been shaped stylistically by this process, as well as songs of similar style which may be known only from printed sources. Folk songs accordingly tend to exhibit characteristics of ‘continuity and variation’ or ‘stability and change’. Occasionally, ‘traditional song’ is used as an alternative, although ‘traditional singing’ can encompass a wider range of material sung under similar circumstances. It seems necessary to provide an idea of the scope of the bibliography, and to alert users to the difficulties surrounding the terminology, but fortunately it is not the function of a bibliography to resolve them.

The bibliography makes no claim to be comprehensive, but it is based on the holdings of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, which is the primary resource for the study of English folk song. The focus is on English song, but it should also be said that the library contains substantial collections from all over the world.

I am very grateful to Malcolm Taylor, Librarian at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, who persuaded me to undertake this work and has provided invaluable help, and also to all those who helped with and commented on the first edition. The errors that remain are mine alone.

 

The following abbreviations are used:

EFDSS English Folk Dance and Song Society

JAF Journal of American Folklore

JEFDSS Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society

FMJ Folk Music Journal

ED&S English Dance and Song

JFSS Journal of the Folk-Song Society

VWML Vaughan Williams Memorial Library

 

 

 

1. Revivals

The ‘rediscovery’ of English folk song has taken place in two (not entirely discrete) waves. The first gathered momentum in the last decades of the nineteenth century and flourished in the early part of the twentieth. This ‘first’ revival arose out of a desire to collect and preserve what was held to be archetypically English song. The ‘second’ (post-war) folk revival has made extensive use of the materials collected in the first revival, but has also in part been a reaction to the way in which the earlier collectors selectively edited their material and arranged it for a more middle-class audience.

A significant reassessment of the English folk song revivals is taking place at the present time. The different, but in some degree complementary, studies of Gammon, Harker, and Boyes have established something of an orthodoxy which, from a perspective which can be described in general terms as that of the social historian, regards revival as a conscious and selective exercise in cultural intervention and the invention of an artificial construct known as the ‘folk’. This orthodoxy is itself now being questioned, and this is a very exciting period for research into folk song revivals.

Examples of some of the other approaches to the study of the folk revival(s) include the ideological (e.g. Watson), the sociological (e.g. MacKinnon), and that of popular music studies (e.g. Middleton). Also included here are two books which are not ectly about the English revival—Munro’s description of the post-war Scottish revival, and Rosenberg’s collection of essays about the North American revival—but which provide valuable comparative perspectives on the English experience.

An adequate history of either the first or the second revival has yet to be written, although studies of individual figures are beginning to appear (e.g. Francmanis’s study of Frank Kidson), and several researchers are currently investigating the history of both periods of revival activity. A few biographies of important revival figures are also included here.

Information on the post-war revival can also be gleaned from the pages of magazines such as Folk Review, Sing, Spin, and more recently Folk Roots and The Living Tradition.

Cross-references: A study of the post-war revival from the perspective of popular music studies has been published on the World Wide Web (482). Armstrong gives a revival singer’s perspective on singing ballads (41). Several studies of songs and ballads are also of relevance to the study of revivals (e.g. 82, 83, 99, 105, 119, 133, 148).

 

1. Armstrong, Frankie, and Brian Pearson. ‘Some Reflections on the English Folk Revival’. History Workshop Journal 7 (1979): 95-100.

  • A highly personal account of the ideology of the early post-war revival.

 

2. Boyes, Georgina. The Imagined Village: Culture, Ideology and the English Folk Revival. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993.

  • A book-length study of the social and intellectual background to the folk song revival, and the personalities involved, up until shortly after World War II.

 

3. Cox, Gordon. ‘The Legacy of Folk Song: The Influence of Cecil Sharp on Music Education’. British Journal of Music Education 7/2 (1990): 89-97.

  • Considers an area in which Sharp was deeply involved and made a significant impact.

 

4. Fox Strangways, A. H. Cecil Sharp. London: Oxford University Press, 1933.

  • The most straightforward, if uncritical, account of Sharp’s life and work.

 

5. Francmanis, John Valdis. ‘The Musical Sherlock Holmes: Frank Kidson and the English Folk Music Revival, c. 1890-1926’. PhD thesis, Leeds Metropolitan University, 1997.

  • A substantial piece of historical research into one of the leading early collectors and the context of the early revival (a copy of the thesis is held in the VWML).

 

6. Gammon, Vic. ‘Folk Song Collecting in Sussex and Surrey, 1843-1914’. History Workshop Journal 10 (1980): 61-89.

  • A pioneering historical-critical study of the selective aims and methods of quite a number of the early folk song collectors and of the ideas that guided them.

 

7. Harker, Dave. One for the Money: Politics and Popular Song. London: Hutchinson, 1980.

  • Explains the development of post-war popular song in terms of commercial manipulation, and looks at the claims of folk song to be regarded as ideologically different in this respect. Harker’s ideas about folk song were subsequently developed much further in Fakesong.

 

8. Harker, Dave. Fakesong: The Manufacture of British ‘Folksong’ 1700 to the Present Day. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985.

  • Traces the ‘bourgeois’ ideologies behind the collecting and publishing of folk songs. A thought-provoking book which challenges many of the basic assumptions of folk enthusiasts, but which is prone to overstatement and misrepresentation in the single-minded pursuit of its thesis.

 

9. Karpeles, Maud. Cecil Sharp: His Life and Work. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.

  • A re-writing of Fox-Strangways’ earlier biography by Sharp’s long-time assistant, intended to reaffirm Sharp’s pre-eminence in the revival of folk song in England.

 

10. MacColl, Ewan. Journeyman: An Autobiography. Introduction by Peggy Seeger. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1990.

  • Probably more interesting for what it does not say than for what it does, the autobiography of one of the most prominent and controversial figures of the post-war revival is a fascinating piece of myth-making.

 

11. MacKinnon, Niall. The British Folk Scene: Musical Performance and Social Identity. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993.

  • A sociological study of the post-war folk revival in both England and Scotland (with little discrimination), based on extensive surveys and interviews with participants, which generally takes a sympathetic view of the revival as a cultural activity.

 

12. Middleton, Richard. Studying Popular Music. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1990.

  • A standard textbook of popular music studies, which includes a rather hostile account of folk song, denying, in effect, the perceived difference of folk song from other kinds of popular music.

 

13. Munro, Ailie. The Democratic Muse: Folk Music Revival in Scotland. Including Folk Revival in Gaelic Song, by Morag MacLeod. 2nd ed. of The Folk Music Revival in Scotland [1984]. Aberdeen: Scottish Cultural Press, 1996.

  • A very readable account of the post-war revival in Scotland, which in ectly suggests both similarities and some important differences in relation to the English experience.

 

14. Porter, Gerald. ‘"The World’s Ill-Divided": The Communist Party and Progressive Song’. A Weapon in the Struggle: The Cultural History of the Communist Party. Ed. Andy Croft. London: Pluto Press, 1998: 171-191.

  • A reconsideration of the place of the Communist Party of Great Britain in the development of the post-war revival.

 

15. Rosenberg, Neil V., ed. Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

  • An impressive collection of fifteen essays and an introduction discussing folk music revivals in North America, with some allusions to the British experience, which suggests many historical parallels, influences, and distinctions, and raises many challenging theoretical issues.

 

16. Russell, Dave. Popular Music in England, 1840-1914: A Social History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987.

  • Provides a social and musical backdrop to the early stages of the English folk revival.

 

17. Smith, John L. ‘The Ethogenics of Music Performance: a Case Study of the Glebe Live Music Club’. Everyday Culture: Popular Song and the Vernacular Milieu. Ed. Michael Pickering and Tony Green. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987: 150-172.

  • A study of singing and of social interaction in a folk or ‘live music’ club in Sunderland, using a ‘role-rule’ model from social psychology to describe the behaviour of individuals in a special-interest group.

 

18. Stradling, Robert, and Meirion Hughes. The English Musical Renaissance 1860-1940: Construction and Deconstruction. London: Routledge, 1993.

  • A historical analysis of the drive in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for the development of a distinctively English national music, which became identified with folk music, particularly through the work of Vaughan Williams.

 

19. Sykes, Richard. ‘The Evolution of Englishness in the English Folksong Revival, 1890-1914’. FMJ 6 (1993): 446-490.

  • A detailed study of the significance of nationalism and the development of a concept of English identity as part of the cultural and political climate of the revival.

 

20. Vaughan Williams, Ralph. National Music. London: Oxford University Press, 1934. Rpt. in National Music and Other Essays. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

  • Vaughan Williams’s seminal exposition of his ideas on folk song and national musical culture, which gave impetus to the early English revival.

 

21. Watson, Ian. Song and Democratic Culture in Britain: An Approach to Popular Culture in Social Movements. London: Croom Helm, 1983.

  • An attempt to establish the central place of folk song in a cultural opposition to other popular forms motivated primarily by commercialism. Heavily informed by Marxism, the argument draws on ideas about industrial song developed by A. L. Lloyd, and extends to the revival and the work of later writers of oppositional songs in the traditional idiom. Ultimately, the book is probably of greater value in analysing the post-war folk revival than for studying folk song at large.

 

2. Collecting and fieldwork

 The early collectors of English folk song were not always equally interested in preserving the words and the tunes of the songs they collected. Moreover, some of the collectors of the early revival in particular made substantial editorial alterations before they could publish the songs, for example for use in schools or for a popular middle-class readership.

The items listed below include studies of some of the collectors and their methods, and of their published collections and surviving manuscripts.

Cross-references: There is also some discussion of the work of collectors in studies of revivals and of singers (e.g. 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 47, 59).

 

 22. Bearman, C. J. ‘The Lucy Broadwood Collection: An Interim Report’. FMJ 7 (1997): 357-365.

  • A description of the Broadwood collection, which has been catalogued in new detail.

 

23. Bishop, Julia C. ‘"Dr Carpenter from the Harvard College in America’: An Introduction to James Madison Carpenter and His Collection’. FMJ 7 (1998): 402-420.

  • An account of Carpenter’s vast (and, until recently, relatively unknown) collections made in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales in the late 1920s/early 1930s.

 

24. Bradtke, Elaine. ‘The H. Hurlbutt Albino Folk Music Collection (1913-38)’. FMJ 7 (1996):205-215.

  • Describes a little-known collection of songs, mostly from Gloucestershire, held in the VWML.

 

25. Clissold, Ivor. ‘Alfred Williams, Song Collector’. FMJ 1 (1969): 293-300.

  • A brief account of the self-styled ‘Hammerman Poet’, railway-worker, writer on rural life, and folk song collector in the upper Thames region.

 

26. Davies, Gwilym. ‘Percy Grainger’s Folk Music Research in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire, 1907-1909’. FMJ 6 (1992): 339-358.

  • Considers Grainger’s lesser-known collecting activities outside of Lincolnshire, and makes some comparisons with the work of other collectors.

 

27. Dawney, Michael. ‘George Butterworth’s Folk Music Manuscripts. FMJ 3 (1976): 99-113.

 

  • An introduction to the fieldwork of one of the early collectors, with several songs. Butterworth is well known as a composer who made significant use of folk song melodies, and was killed in World War I.

 

28. Deacon, George. John Clare and the Folk Tradition. London: Sinclair Browne, 1983.

  • A study of the poet John Clare as song collector and of the influence folk songs had upon him, which also reproduces traditional songs, tunes, and dances known to him.

 

29. Grainger, Percy. ‘Collecting with the Phonograph’. JFSS 3 (1908): 147-162.

  • An early account of the advantages of mechanical recording for folk song collecting, deriving from the ability to pick up a singer’s nuances in an uninterrupted performance. Several of the early collectors experimented with the phonograph, but Grainger was the most enthusiastic and systematic, and he encountered some scepticism, not to say hostility, from his contemporaries (see also 40).

 

30. Greig, Rory. ‘The Social Context of Traditional Song: Some Notes on Collecting’. Lore and Language 1/5 (July 1971): 1-5.

  • Discusses the social background of some Lincolnshire singers and its influence on their singing, from the point of view of a recent fieldworker.

 

31. Kendall, Tony. ‘"Through Bushes and Through Briars…": Vaughan Williams’s Earliest Folk-Song Collecting’. Vaughan Williams in Perspective: Studies of an English Composer. Ed. Lewis Foreman. N.p.: Albion Press for the Vaughan Williams Society, 1998: 48-68.

  • A reconsideration of Vaughan Williams’s discovery of folk song.

 

32. Olson, Ian. ‘The Folk Song Society’s Hints for Collectors (1898)’. ED&S 57/1 (1995): 2-5.

  • A reassessment of some of the methods for song collecting set out by Kate Lee in the early days of the Folk Song Society and the first revival.

 

33. Palmer, Roy. ‘Kidson’s Collecting’. FMJ 5 (1986): 150-175.

  • A substantial, and largely sympathetic, appraisal of the methods of one of the nineteenth century English collectors, whose interest was nevertheless more in tunes than in words (see also 5).

 

34. Palmer, Roy, ‘An Era of Song, Ninety Years Ago’. ED&S 56/3 (1994): 14-16.

  • Describes folk singing competitions which were held in various places in the early twentieth century, and which provided material for some of the early collectors.

 

35. Pickering, Michael. ‘Janet Blunt - Folk Song Collector and Lady of the Manor’. FMJ 3 (1976): 114-149.

  • A slightly unsympathetic account of Janet Heatley Blunt’s collecting, mainly in Adderbury, Oxfordshire, in the early decades of the twentieth century (see also 128).

 

36. Purslow, Frank. ‘The George Gardiner Folk Song Collection. FMJ 1 (1967): 129-157.

  • Describes the work of an early collector, and includes songs collected in Hampshire.

 

37. Purslow, Frank. ‘The Hammond Brothers’ Folk Song Collection’. FMJ 1 (1968): 236-266.

  • A description of the work of two early collectors, with some songs they collected.

 

38. Purslow, Frank. ‘The Williams Manuscripts’. FMJ 1 (1969): 301-315.

  • Describes the collection of folk songs (without tunes) made in the upper Thames region around 1914 by Alfred Williams, and includes some songs from the manuscript. The manuscript seems not necessarily to represent the material as it was collected in the field, but it does include items not readily classified as folk songs which people were nonetheless evidently singing.

 

39. Yates, Michael. ‘The Early Western Song Collectors’. ED&S 33 (1971): 8-9.

  • A brief introduction to some of the early collectors of songs in the west of England.

 

40. Yates, Michael. ‘Percy Grainger and the Impact of the Phonograph’. FMJ 4 (1982): 265-275.

  • Traces reactions to Grainger’s pioneering use of mechanical recording technology for folk song collecting in the first decade of the twentieth century (see also 29). He encountered scepticism from contemporaries like Cecil Sharp and Anne Gilchrist.

 

3. Singers and their songs

 The early collectors of English folk songs are sometimes charged with having given scant attention to the individuals from whom they collected songs. To some extent, this accusation may simply reflect changed views of social relations. It is possible, too, to find more information than has been recognised in the notes and prefaces to the published volumes of collectors like Sabine Baring-Gould and Alfred Williams, as well as in manuscripts.

The post-war period has seen more information published about singers, but even so there are still few substantial accounts. Notable exceptions are the three books by Bob Copper. Nevertheless, the shorter pieces included here can still give a feeling for the singers and their songs. Also included here is a considered piece by a revival singer (Armstrong).

There are other pieces on traditional singers to be found in the pages of magazines such as ED&S, and Traditional Music/Musical Traditions both in its older paper format and its current electronic format (482).

 Cross-references: There is also information on singers to be found in works of folk song research (e.g. 34, 93, 107, 108, 126, 128, 144, 145, 146, 147, 152, 405, 416, 419).

 

 

41. Armstrong, Frankie (with editorial assistance from Brian Pearson). ‘On Singing Child Ballads’. Ballads into Books: The Legacies of Francis James Child. Ed. Tom Cheesman and Sigrid Rieuwerts. Selected Papers from the 26th International Ballad Conference (SIEF Ballad Commission), Swansea, Wales, 19-24 July 1996. Bern: Peter Lang, 1997: 249-258.

  • A thoughtful, personal account of ballad singing by a well-known revival singer.

 

42. Arthur, Dave, ed. ‘Bob Roberts: Bargeman’. ED&S 44/1 (1982): 11-13; 44/2 (1982): 12-15.

  • A short, edited autobiography of one of the last sailing-barge skippers, who was also a great singer especially of songs about the sea.

 

43. Baring-Gould, Sabine. ‘Among the Western Song-Men’. ED&S 27 (1965): 70-72.

  • Extracts from an article by Baring-Gould in The English Illustrated Magazine, 1892, describing some of the singers from whom he collected songs in the west country.

 

44. Burstow, Henry. Reminiscences of Horsham, Being Recollections of Henry Burstow, the Celebrated Bell-ringer and Song Singer, with Some Account of the Old Bell Foundry at Horsham, of the Horsham Parish Church Bells and of Famous Peals Rung by Horsham Ringers, Together with a List of the 400 and Odd Songs He Sings from Memory. Horsham: Free Christian Church Book Society, 1911.

  • An account of the Sussex singer, whose songs were collected by Lucy Broadwood.

 

45. Carroll, Jim. ‘Michael McCarthy, Singer and Ballad Seller’. Singer, Song and Scholar. Ed. Ian Russell. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1986: 19-29.

  • An appreciation of an Irish traveller and singer resident in England.

 

46. Copper, Bob. A Song for Every Season: A Hundred Years of a Sussex Farming Family. London: Heinemann, 1971. New ed. Peacehaven: Coppersongs, 1997.

  • The first of Bob Copper’s books describes the life of one of England’s most celebrated families of traditional singers, and places the songs in the context of their everyday life. The book include songs from the family’s repertoire.

 

47. Copper, Bob. Songs and Southern Breezes: Country Folk and Country Ways. London: Heinemann, 1973.

  • Describes the songs and the lives of singers in Sussex and Hampshire, where Bob Copper spent some time collecting, and includes the songs.

 

48. Copper, Bob. Early to Rise: A Sussex Boyhood. London: Heinemann, 1976.

  • An autobiographical account of the Copper family, with songs from their repertoire.

49. [Cox, Harry.] ‘Harry Cox, English Folk Singer: A Personal Narrative Recorded and Introduced by Peter Kennedy, with Five Songs’. JEFDSS 8 (1958): 142-155.

  • An account of the great Norfolk singer, with a reminiscence by Francis Collinson.

 

50. Davies, Gwilym. ‘The Songs of Ray Driscoll’. ED&S 56/3 (1994): 7-9.

  • A short piece on a living singer, with some interesting songs.

 

51. Doel, Fran and Geoff. ‘Ken Thompson: A Kentish Man & His Songs’. ED&S 54/2 (1992): 22-23.

  • A brief account of the singer’s life and of how his songs fit into it.

52. [Doughty, Johnny.] ‘Johnny Doughty: An Interview with Vic Smith’. Musical Traditions No 7 (1987): 22-29.

  • A lively interview with the Sussex fisherman and singer.

 

53. Fraser, Doug, and Tony Green. ‘Phil Tanner’. Traditional Music No 7 (1977): 4-9.

  • An introduction to the great singer from the Gower peninsula (see also 65).

 

54. Lloyd, A. L. ‘The Singing Style of the Copper Family’. JEFDSS 7 (1954): 145-149.

  • Discusses some questions arising from the Coppers’ tradition of harmony singing.

 

55. Palmer, Roy. ‘Cecilia Costello and George Dunn, Traditional Singers from the Urban Midlands: An Introduction’. ED&S 34 (1972): 17-21.

  • A brief account of two urban singers, with a few of their songs (see also 57).

 

56. Palmer, Roy. ‘Songs of a Shantyman, Captain John Robinson’. ED&S 42/2 (1980): 2-5.

  • Recalls life and songs on sailing ships.

 

57. Palmer, Roy, ed. George Dunn: The Minstrel of Quarry Bank. Reminiscences & Songs of George Dunn (1887-1975). Dudley: Dudley Metropolitan Borough Leisure and Amenity Services, 1984.

  • Reminiscences of the iron trade, pastimes, and songs, in the Staffordshire singer’s own words; much the same material can be found in Oral History 11/1 (1983): 62-68; 11/2 (1983): 61-68.

 

58. Patten, Bob and Jacqueline. ‘Mrs. Amy Ford of Low Ham, Somerset: Song Learning in a Family Tradition’. Musical Traditions No 2 (1984): 12-18.

  • Describes the repertoire of a Somerset singer, and how she learned the songs.

 

59. Pegg, Bob. Folk: A Portrait of English Traditional Music, Musicians and Customs. London: Wildwood House, 1976.

  • A concise, nicely illustrated introduction to singers, traditions, and collectors.

 

60. Pickering, Michael. ‘Bartholomew Callow: Village Musician’. Musical Traditions No 6 (1986): 12-23.

  • A study of an Oxfordshire singer and musician, with an analysis of his repertoire.

 

61. Richards, Sam. ‘Bill Hingston: A Biography in Song’. Oral History 10/1 (1982): 24-46.

  • An extensive biography of a Devonshire singer, with a list of his songs.

 

62. Roberts, Bob:

 Rough and Tumble. London: Sampson Low and Marston, 1935. Rpt. Lavenham: Mallard Reprints, 1983.
Coasting Bargemaster. London: Edward Arnold, 1949. Rpt. Lavenham: Mallard Reprints, 1984.
Last of the Sailormen. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960.
A Slice of Suffolk. Lavenham: Terence Dalton, 1978.
Breeze for a Bargeman. Lavenham: Terence Dalton, 1981.
  • Fascinating volumes by the sailor and singer which, though they do not say much about his singing as such, say a tremendous amount about his life.

 

63. Stubbs, Ken. ‘The Life and Songs of George Maynard’. JEFDSS 9 (1963), 180-196.

  • An appreciation of a traditional singer from Sussex, with eleven of his songs.

 

64. Summers, Keith. ‘Sing, Say or Pay! A Survey of East Suffolk Country Music’. Traditional Music Nos 8 & 9 (1977/78): 5-53.

  • A survey of singers and musicians, singing and other traditions (see also 482).

 

65. Thomas, John Ormond. ‘The Old Singer of Gower’. Picture Post (19 March 1949): 30-33.

  • A short appreciation of Phil Tanner, with some splendid photographs (see also 53).

 

66. Thompson, Flora. Lark Rise to Candleford. 1939-43. Rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.

  • Contains a description of village pub singing at Juniper Hill, Oxfordshire, before World War I. The men’s singing may not have been witnessed at first hand by the young girl who wrote about it in her fictionalised autobiography much later in life, but it is still an account of potentially great significance (see also 129, 141).

 

67. Wales, Tony. ‘George Attrill of Sussex’. ED&S 27 (1965): 46-47.

  • A brief obituary of the singer, with one of his songs.

 

68. Wales, Tony. ‘George Townsend of Sussex’. ED&S 29 (1967), 70-73.

  • An obituary of the singer, with some account of his life, and a song.

 

69. [Webb, Percy.] ‘Percy Webb, Singer from East Suffolk, Interviewed by Ginette Dunn’. Traditional Music No 2 (1975): 14-21.

  • An edited transcript of the singer’s life story, told in his own words.

 

70. Yates, Mike. ‘Some Gypsy Singers in South East England’. ED&S 37 (1975): 14-16.

  • A brief account of gypsy singers and their songs, with two songs.

 

71. Yates, Mike. ‘The Cotswold Catalyst: A Neglected Influence on Song Tradition’. Traditional Music No 1 (1975): 10-14.

  • Considers the importance of village concert parties, with particular reference to the singing of Bob Arnold.

 

72. Yates, Mike. ‘Harry Upton: A Singer and His Repertoire’. Traditional Music No 10 (1978): 14-20.

  • An introduction to the singer, with a study of his song repertoire.

 

4. Song and ballad research

 

A variety of different methodologies is represented among the items included here. The most concentrated research effort has been in the study of ballads (narrative folk songs), especially the so-called Child ballads, and it therefore seems unrealistic to separate the study of ballads from that of folk song at large. The subject has an important international dimension, with many ballad studies in particular tending to deal with material from Scotland and/or North America, so in attempting to include some of the most significant materials for folk song research it is not possible to confine the listing to studies of English songs.

Some effort has been made here to separate approaches to folk song and balladry which have wide application and methodological importance (Section 4.1); studies which concentrate especially on the music of folk songs and ballads (Section 4.2); and studies of particular, selected songs and ballads, including material on the Robin Hood ballads (Section 4.3).

Research into other discrete genres of songs is included in subsequent sections on early manuscripts, early print, and broadsides; occupational songs; travellers’ songs; carols; songs associated with customs; and children’s songs (Sections 6-11 below).

Journals that regularly publish research on songs and ballads include FMJ, Jahrbuch für Volksliedforsching, JAF, Journal of Folklore Research, Southern Folklore, and Western Folklore.

 

4.1. Approaches to folk song and balladry

 

Scholarly research into folk song has benefited from an eclectic approach, in part because it has not been confined within the constraints of any one academic discipline. Folk song and ballad studies have drawn on the resources of a wide range of disciplines such as literary and historical scholarship, oral and textual theory, folklore, ethnology, and ethnomusicology.

The volume of material that has been published in ballad studies means that this area is inevitably under-represented here, although an attempt has been made to include items representing most of the recent developments in the field.


Cross-references: There is a wealth of scholarly information on ballads included in Child’s ballad edition and also Bronson’s edition of ballad tunes (223, 226). Atkinson provides a further bibliography of research into the Child ballads (470).

 

 

73. Abrahams, Roger D. ‘Patterns of Structure and Role Relationships in the Child Ballad in the United States’. JAF 79 (1966): 448-462.

  • Analyses ballads from a particular area in an attempt to identify patterns which can be used to interrogate the culture of that region.

 

74. Abrahams, Roger D., and George Foss. Anglo-American Folksong Style. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968.

  • A useful study which describes the characteristic style of folk songs, from a literary and to a lesser extent musical angle, using primarily American examples.

 

75. Andersen, Flemming G. Commonplace and Creativity: The Role of Formulaic Diction in Anglo-Scottish Traditional Balladry. Odense: Odense University Press, 1985.

  • A very significant study, of wide application, which makes use of mainly Scottish material to show how recurrent formulas in ballads have connotative functions over and above their immediate narrative import.

 

76. Andersen, Flemming G. ‘Technique, Text, and Context: Formulaic Narrative Mode and the Question of Genre’. The Ballad and Oral Literature. Ed. Joseph Harris. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991: 18-39.

  • A reconsideration of some of the problems of ballad style and the definition of the ballad genre.

 

77. Andersen, Flemming G., Otto Holzapfel, and Thomas Pettitt. The Ballad as Narrative: Studies in the Ballad Traditions of England, Scotland, Germany and Denmark. Odense: Odense University Press, 1982.

  • A very important book of interlinked essays, which considers the ballad genre from historical, structural, and stylistic angles, the interrelationships of oral tradition and print, and the under-representation of English ballads in Child’s collection, as well as suggesting interesting international parallels.

 

78. Atkinson, David. ‘Sabine Baring-Gould’s Contribution to The English and Scottish Popular Ballads’. Ballads into Books: The Legacies of Francis James Child. Ed. Tom Cheesman and Sigrid Rieuwerts. Selected Papers from the 26th International Ballad Conference (SIEF Ballad Commission), Swansea, Wales, 19-24 July 1996. Bern: Peter Lang, 1997: 41-52.

  • Considers the contribution one of the early English fieldworkers made to Child’s standard edition of ballads, and touches on the questions of Child’s attitude to oral tradition and the relationship of the English folk song tradition to the ballad canon.

 

79. Atkinson, David. ‘The Child Ballads from England and Wales in the James Madison Carpenter Collection’. FMJ 7 (1998): 434-449.

  • A discussion of the ballads collected by Carpenter, which suggests how they might fit in with a wider conception of a specifically English ballad tradition.

 

80. Baker, Ronald L. ‘The Image of Women in British Romantic and Humorous Ballads’. Midwestern Folklore 17 (1991): 125-130.

  • A brief, sensible look at a range of ballads from a feminist standpoint.

 

81. Barry, Phillips. ‘The Part of the Folk Singer in the Making of Folk Balladry’. The Critics and the Ballad. Ed. MacEdward Leach and Tristram P. Coffin. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1961: 59-76.

  • A forceful argument for the primacy of the singer in shaping folk song texts and tunes.

 

82. Bohlman, Philip V. The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988.

  • A broad-ranging, ethnomusicological, international approach to the concept of folk music, which is incidentally somewhat scathing about the idea of revival.

 

83. Boyes, Georgina. ‘New Directions—Old Destinations: A Consideration of the Role of the Tradition-Bearer in Folksong Research’. Singer, Song and Scholar. Ed. Ian Russell. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1986: 9-17.

  • Maintains that research into folk songs has been circumscribed by preconceptions as to what constitutes tradition, and urges a more open-minded approach.

 

84. Bratton, J. S. The Victorian Popular Ballad. London: Macmillan, 1975.

  • A study of nineteenth-century urban traditions, in the music halls and in other contexts.

 

85. Buchan, David. The Ballad and the Folk. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972. Rpt. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1997.

  • A major study of Scottish ballads, with much wider application, which combines a thorough analysis of ballad structure with a strong argument for the oral-formulaic theory of transmission, and also places the ballads in their socio-cultural context.

 

86. Buchan, David. ‘Propp’s Tale Role and a Ballad Repertoire. JAF 95 (1982): 159-172.

A methodologically important study which makes use of a concept originally developed by Vladimir Propp in The Morphology of the Folktale (1928) to classify the characters of traditional narrative according to their interactive functions, in order to establish structural and cultural categories. The method is applied here to an individual Scottish ballad repertoire, and in later studies to the analysis of particular sub-generic groups of ballads.

 

87. Buchan, David:

‘The Wit-Combat Ballads’. Narrative Folksong: New ections. Essays in Appreciation of W. Edson Richmond. Ed. Carol L. Edwards and Kathleen E. B. Manley. Boulder: Westview Press, 1985: 380-400.

‘Traditional Patterns and the Religious Ballads’. The Concept of Tradition in Ballad Research: A Symposium. Ed. Rita Pedersen and Flemming G. Andersen. Odense: Odense University Press, 1985: 27-41, 49-52.

‘Tale Roles and Revenants: A Morphology of Ghosts’. Western Folklore 45 (1986): 143-158.

‘Taleroles and the Otherworld Ballads’. Tod und Jenseits im Europäischen Volkslied. Ed. Walter Puchner. 16 Internationale Balladenkonferenz, Kolympari, Kreta, 19-22 August 1986, veranstaltet von der Kommission für Volksdichtung der Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et Folklore in Zusammenarbeit mit Société Hellénique de Laographie und Orthodox Academy of Crete. Ioannina: University of Jannina, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Folklore, 1986 [1989]: 247-261

‘Taleroles and the Witch Ballads’. Ballads and Other Genres/Balladen und andere Gattungen. Ed. Zorica Rajkovi . Zagreb: Zavod za istra Ÿ ivanje folklora, 1988: 133-140.

‘The Marvellous Creature Ballads’. Inte Bara Visor: Studier kring Folklig Diktning och Musik tillagnade Bengt R. Jonsson. Ed. S.-B. Jansson. Stockholm: Svenskt Visarkiv, 1990: 43-51.

‘Talerole Analysis and Child’s Supernatural Ballads’. The Ballad and Oral Literature. Ed. Joseph Harris. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991: 60-77.

‘The Anglophone Comic Ballads’. Arv: Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore 48 (1992): 289-295.

  • A very important series of articles which employ the methodology of tale role analysis to give weight to some of the categories into which the Child ballads have been classified.

 

88. Coffin, Tristram P. ‘"Mary Hamilton" and the Anglo-American Ballad as an Art Form’. JAF 70 (1957): 208-214.

  • Argues that the tendency of narrative song is to develop towards a lyric form which retains the ‘emotional core’ of the song. The argument has been influential, but it is founded on American examples, and there is some question as to how far it may be applicable to ballads from England, Scotland, and Ireland.

 

89. Donatelli, Joseph M. P. ‘"To Hear with Eyes": Orality, Print Culture, and the Textuality of Ballads’. Ballads and Boundaries: Narrative Singing in an Intercultural Context. Ed. James Porter. Los Angeles: Department of Ethnomusicology & Systematic Musicology, UCLA, 1995: 347-357.

  • A stimulating theoretical consideration of the relationship between songs in oral and printed tradition.

 

90. Dugaw, Dianne M. ‘Anglo-American Folksong Reconsidered: The Interface of Oral and Written Forms’. Western Folklore 43 (1984): 83-103.

  • A reconsideration of the relationship between oral tradition and print, which in particular draws attention to the presence of the same kind of variation in printed as in oral texts.

 

91. Dugaw, Dianne. Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Rpt. with a new preface. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996.

  • A study of a type of female heroine in broadsides and traditional songs, and their social and literary contexts, spanning two centuries.

 

92. Dugaw, Dianne, ed. The Anglo-American Ballad: A Folklore Casebook. New York: Garland, 1995.

  • Contains some items that are not so easily accessible, including papers by Addison, Percy, Ritson, Scott, Motherwell, and Child, but these are not printed in full..

 

93. Dunn, Ginette. The Fellowship of Song: Popular Singing Traditions in East Suffolk. London: Croom Helm, 1980.

  • An ethnographic study based on detailed fieldwork which describes the singers and the singing traditions of two Suffolk villages, relating them to the wider values held by their communities.

 

94. Easthope, Antony. Poetry as Discourse. London: Methuen, 1983.

  • Chapter 5 ‘The Feudal Ballad’ illustrates both the potential and the pitfalls of taking a purely literary critical approach to balladry.

 

95. Elbourne, R. P. ‘The Question of Definition’. Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council 7 (1975): 9-29.

  • An attempt to re-define traditional music in terms of its underlying social structure.

 

96. Elbourne, Roger. ‘A Mirror of Man? Traditional Music as a Reflection of Society’. JAF 89 (1976): 463-468.

  • A brief but timely caveat concerning the interpretation of songs, especially broadsides, as a ect reflection of social life.

 

97. Elbourne, Roger. Music and Tradition in Early Industrial Lancashire 1780-1840. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, for the Folklore Society, 1980.

  • Traces the effects of social change accompanying the Industrial Revolution on singing and other traditions in Lancashire.

 

98. Fowler, David C. A Literary History of the Popular Ballad. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1968.

  • A history of the ballads which is dependent for its chronology on the dates of their first being collected, so that its sense of progression might be somewhat misleading. It is particularly good on the medieval minstrel tradition and the early relations of the ballad form with other genres of medieval literature and song.

 

99. Friedman, Albert B. The Ballad Revival: Studies in the Influence of Popular on Sophisticated Poetry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

  • A detailed study of the development of the literary idea of the ballad.

 

100. Friedman, Albert B. ‘The Oral-Formulaic Theory of Balladry: A Re-Rebuttal’. The Ballad Image: Essays Presented to Bertrand Harris Bronson. Ed. James Porter. Los Angeles: Center for the Study of Comparative Folklore & Mythology, University of California, Los Angeles, 1983: 215-240.

  • A forceful objection to the oral-formulaic theory of ballad transmission championed especially by David Buchan in The Ballad and the Folk, which also includes all the references for the development of the theory and the controversy surrounding it up until its date of publication.

 

101. Gammon, Vic. ‘"Babylonian Performances": The Rise and Suppression of Popular Church Music, 1660-1870’. Popular Culture and Class Conflict 1590-1914: Explorations in the History of Labour and Leisure. Ed. Eileen Yeo and Stephen Yeo. Brighton: Harvester Press; Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1981: 62-88.

  • Traces the development of traditional church music and singing, and their suppression in the mid-nineteenth century, and relates these historical developments to socio-economic changes.

 

102. Gammon, Vic. ‘Problems of Method in the Historical Study of Popular Music’. Popular Music Perspectives: Papers from the First International Conference on Popular Music Research, Amsterdam, June 1981. Ed. David Horn and Philip Tagg. Göteborg and Exeter: International Association for the Study of Popular Music, 1982: 16-31.

  • Outlines some of the considerations and methodologies required in assessing music and song in social, cultural, and historical contexts.

 

103. Gammon, Vic. ‘Song, Sex, and Society in England, 1600-1850’. FMJ 4 (1982): 208-245.

  • An especially significant study, which argues that far from reflecting an atmosphere of sexual licence, eroticism in folk songs serves to reinforce the boundaries of behaviour acceptable to the community.

 

104. Gammon, Vic. ‘"Not Appreciated in Worthing?" Class Expression and Popular Song Texts in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain’. Popular Music 4 (1984): 5-24.

  • An analysis of preferred types of song in relation to social class.

 

105. Gammon, Vic. ‘A. L. Lloyd and History: A Reconsideration of Aspects of Folk Song in England and Some of His Other Writings’. Singer, Song and Scholar. Ed. Ian Russell. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1986: 147-164.

  • A balanced, critical appreciation of the influential work of A. L. Lloyd.

 

106. Gerould, Gordon Hall. The Ballad of Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932.

  • An early study of the ballads which still has many sensible things to say.

 

107. Goldstein, Kenneth S. ‘On the Application of the Concepts of Active and Inactive Traditions to the Study of a Repertory’. JAF 84 (1971): 62-67.

  • A theoretical consideration of the status accorded to particular songs in the repertoires of individual traditional singers.

 

108. Green, Tony. ‘James Lyons: Singer and Story-teller: His Repertory and Aesthetic’. Everyday Culture: Popular Song and the Vernacular Milieu. Ed. Michael Pickering and Tony Green. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987: 105-124.

  • An ethnographic study of an individual singer’s repertoire in relation to his life story and attitudes.

 

109. Greenhill, Pauline. ‘"Neither a Man Nor a Maid": Sexualities and Gendered Meanings in Cross-Dressing Ballads’. JAF 108 (1995): 156-177. 

  • A stimulating consideration of the possibilities for sexual meanings in songs about women dressing up as soldiers or sailors to follow their lovers.

 

110. Greenhill, Pauline. ‘"Who’s Gonna Kiss Your Ruby Red Lips?" Sexual Scripts in Floating Verses’. Ballads into Books: The Legacies of Francis James Child. Ed. Tom Cheesman and Sigrid Rieuwerts. Selected Papers from the 26th International Ballad Conference (SIEF Ballad Commission), Swansea, Wales, 19-24 July 1996. Bern: Peter Lang, 1997: 225-235.

  • A radical feminist deconstruction of the so-called ‘floating verses’ which often begin ‘Who will shoe your pretty foot?’ in relation to the prevailing sexual political economy of the contexts in which they are sung.

 

111. Harvey, Richard. ‘English Pre-Industrial Ballads on Poverty, 1500-1700’. Historian 46 (1983-84): 539-561.

  • Considers broadside ballads as the source material for a historical study of attitudes to poverty and begging.

 

112. Hodgart, M. J. C. The Ballads. 2nd ed. London: Hutchinson, 1962.

  • A concise and very readable account of the ballads, their style, history, and poetry. It also includes a useful chapter on their music. Although it should be supplemented by some of the more recent research, this remains probably the best introductory study of the ballads.

 

113. Howkins, Alun. ‘The Voice of the People: The Social Meaning and Context of Country Song’. Oral History 3/1 (1975): 50-75.

  • Addresses some of the questions of how a historian might make use of songs as evidence for underlying attitudes and emotions.

 

114. Howkins, Alun, and C. Ian Dyck. ‘"The Time’s Alteration": Popular Ballads, Rural Radicalism and William Cobbett’. History Workshop Journal 23 (1987): 20-38.

  • A study of songs of rural protest in the early nineteenth century, and their ultimate failure to match up to the actuality of radical social change.

 

115. Hustvedt, Sigurd Bernhard. Ballad Criticism in Scandinavia and Great Britain During the Eighteenth Century. New York: American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1916.

  • A history of ballad criticism and the evolution of the ballad concept.

 

116. Hustvedt, Sigurd Bernhard. Ballad Books and Ballad Men: Raids and Rescues in Britain, America, and the Scandinavian North Since 1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930.

  • A later history of ballad criticism and the evolution of the ballad concept, especially by Francis James Child.

 

117. Karpeles, Maud. An Introduction to English Folk Song. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.

  • A short book by Cecil Sharp’s assistant. Though it is quite a well-known book (partly because of its availability in paperback and its ease of reading), it is in effect little more than a restatement of Sharp’s own arguments, and was therefore outdated even at the time of its publication.

 

118. Lloyd, A. L. The Singing Englishman: An Introduction to Folk Song. London: Workers’ Music Association, [1944].

  • A fairly brief but significant early study which relates folk songs to their social environment, discusses industrial song, and is devoid of some of the romanticism evident in Folk Song in England.

 

119. Lloyd, A. L. Folk Song in England. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1967.

  • The most influential work of the post-war English folk revival, full of enthusiasm for the democratic roots of folk song, but poorly annotated and with an over-emphasis on international parallels. Gammon offers a balanced critique of Lloyd’s views (105).

 

120. Moreira, James. ‘Genre and Balladry’. Ballads into Books: The Legacies of Francis James Child. Ed. Tom Cheesman and Sigrid Rieuwerts. Selected Papers from the 26th International Ballad Conference (SIEF Ballad Commission), Swansea, Wales, 19-24 July 1996. Bern: Peter Lang, 1997: 95-109.

  • Links earlier notions of the ballad with current theories of genre as a fluid concept.

 

121. Nettl, Bruno. Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965.

  • An ethnomusicological study of Western traditional music in an international context.

 

122. Nygard, Holger Olof. ‘Popular Ballad and Medieval Romance’. Folklore International: Essays in Traditional Literature, Belief, and Custom in Honor of Wayland Debs Hand. Ed. D. K. Wilgus. Hatboro: Folklore Associates, 1967: 161-173. Rpt. Ballad Studies. Ed. E. B. Lyle. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, for the Folklore Society, 1976: 1-19.

  • Considers the relationship between ballads and medieval literature.

 

123. Palmer, Roy. ‘A. L. Lloyd and Industrial Song’. Singer, Song and Scholar. Ed. Ian Russell. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1986: 133-144.

  • A critical appreciation of A. L. Lloyd’s work in the study of industrial folk song. The ‘classification system for ballads of social event’, which categorises songs about societal rather than interpersonal conflict, included as an appendix to this article and attributed to Lloyd, is in fact the work of the American scholar D. K. Wilgus (FMJ 5 [1987]: 361); though seemingly very promising as a scheme of classification it does not appear to have been taken any further.

 

124. Palmer, Roy. The Sound of History: Songs and Social Comment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Rpt. London: Pimlico, 1996.

  • A fascinating and informative book which demonstrates the enormous potential of broadsides and folk songs to illuminate the responses of the common people to all kinds of historical events, the methodological difficulties in making use of such evidence notwithstanding.

 

125. Palmer, Roy. ‘"Veritable Dunghills": Professor Child and the Broadside’. FMJ 7 (1996): 155-166.

  • An assertion of the importance of the tradition of folk songs and ballads in print, which Child denigrated in the course of compiling The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, although in fact he made substantial use of certain broadsides.

 

126. Pegg, Carole A. ‘An Ethnomusicological Approach to Traditional Music in East Suffolk’. Singer, Song and Scholar. Ed. Ian Russell. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1986: 55-72.

  • An examination of some of the social factors which influence the sort of music and song current in a community.

 

127. Pettitt, Thomas. ‘The Ballad of Tradition: In Pursuit of a Vernacular Aesthetic’. Ballads into Books: The Legacies of Francis James Child. Ed. Tom Cheesman and Sigrid Rieuwerts. Selected Papers from the 26th International Ballad Conference (SIEF Ballad Commission), Swansea, Wales, 19-24 July 1996. Bern: Peter Lang, 1997: 111-123.

  • A reassessment of the definition of the ballad in the light of criticisms of the selective nature of the ballads canonised by Child.

 

128. Pickering, Michael. Village Song & Culture: A Study Based on the Blunt Collection of Song from Adderbury, North Oxfordshire. London: Croom Helm, 1982.

  • Describes the social context of folk song in an English village, from a broadly Marxist perspective, drawing on the collection of Janet Heatley Blunt; extremely difficult to read for both stylistic and typographical reasons.

 

129. Pickering, Michael. ‘Popular Song at Juniper Hill’. FMJ 4 (1984): 481-503.

  • Claims to study Flora Thompson’s account of village pub singing in Lark Rise to Candleford (66) within its wider cultural context, in contrast to the structuralist treatment accorded it by Renwick (141). Both, however, are dealing with a fictional description, and in any case the two accounts may not be entirely incompatible.

 

130. Pickering, Michael. ‘Song and Social Context’. Singer, Song and Scholar. Ed. Ian Russell. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1986: 73-93.

  • A theoretical piece which insists that folk song can only be understood in relation to the full social, and also political and historical, situation in which it is performed.

 

131. Pickering, Michael. ‘The Past as a Source of Aspiration: Popular Song and Social Change’. Everyday Culture: Popular Song and the Vernacular Milieu. Ed. Michael Pickering and Tony Green. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987: 39-69.

  • Looks at ‘The Husbandman and the Servantman’ as an example of the way in which the cultural meaning of a song can change over time, even with relatively little variation in the text. This provides the basis for some more general conclusions about cultural reception.

 

132. Pickering, Michael. ‘Recent Folk Music Scholarship in England: a Critique’. FMJ 6 (1990): 37-64.

  • A rather restricted survey of trends in the study of folk song over a period of some twenty years.

 

133. Pickering, Michael, and Tony Green. ‘Towards a Cartography of the Vernacular Milieu’. Everyday Culture: Popular Song and the Vernacular Milieu. Ed. Michael Pickering and Tony Green. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987: 1-38.

  • An introduction to a volume of essays, which explores some of the relationships between the folk or traditional (the authors prefer the term ‘vernacular’) songs that people choose to sing and their more general socio-historical conditions, and also makes some points about the question of revivals.

 

134. Porter, Gerald. Singing the Changes: Variation in Four Traditional Ballads. Umeå: Umeå University, 1991.

  • A short but very suggestive study which investigates variation in ballads in terms of their internal structure combined with the conditions of their performance.

 

135. Porter, Gerald. ‘Pesticides and Pastorals: Constructing Metaphors in the "Green Ballad"’. From Runes to Romance. Ed. M. Rydén, H. Kardela, J. Nordlander, and B. Odenstedt. Umeå: Swedish Science Press, 1997: 181-193.

  • Analyses representations of the rural environment in English folk songs.

 

136. Porter, James. ‘Ballad Explanations, Ballad Reality, and the Singer’s Epistemics’. Western Folklore 45 (1986): 110-125.

  • A forceful statement of the need to consider the singer’s own understanding in studying traditional songs.

 

137. Porter, James. ‘Muddying the Crystal Spring: From Idealism and Realism to Marxism in the Study of English and American Folk Song’. Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music: Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology. Ed. Bruno Nettl and Philip V. Bohlman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991: 113-130.

  • A very useful critical survey of ections in folk song scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

138. Porter, James. ‘(Ballad-) Singing and Transformativity’. The Stockholm Ballad Conference 1991. Ed. Bengt R. Jonsson. Proceedings of the 21st International Ballad Conference, August 19-22, 1991. Stockholm: Svenskt Visarkiv, 1993: 165-180.

  • A theoretical approach to the way in which folk songs are absorbed into the singer’s own epistemology.

 

139. Porter, James. ‘Convergence, Divergence, and Dialectic in Folksong Paradigms: Critical ections for Transatlantic Scholarship’. JAF 106 (1993): 61-98.

  • A very substantial critical survey of folk song scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic (for a rather more readable version of much the same material see 137).

 

140. Preston, Cathy Lynn. ‘"The Tying of the Garter": Representations of the Female Laborer in 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-Century English Bawdy Songs’. JAF, 105 (1992), 315-341.

  • A feminist study which sees bawdy songs as using sexual dialogue to represent power struggles among men differently identified by region and class.

 

141. Renwick, Roger de V. English Folk Poetry: Structure and Meaning. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980.

  • One of the most inspiring text-based studies of recent folk song research, which uses the methodology of structuralism to look at ways in which some folk song texts might function. It attracted substantial criticism, however, for its apparent lack of attention to ethnography.

 

142. Rieuwerts, Sigrid. ‘"The Genuine Ballads of the People": F. J. Child and the Ballad Cause’. Journal of Folklore Research 31 (1994): 1-34.

  • An excellent discussion of what Child had in mind in selecting and editing material for The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, which also reprints some key documents.

 

143. Rieuwerts, Sigrid. ‘From Percy to Child: The "Popular Ballad" as "a distinct and very important species of poetry"’. Ballads and Boundaries: Narrative Singing in an Intercultural Context. Ed. James Porter. Los Angeles: Department of Ethnomusicology & Systematic Musicology, UCLA, 1995: 13-20.

  • A brief survey of the development of the concept of the ballad up to and including the work of Child.

 

144. Russell, Ian. ‘Traditional Singing in West Sheffield, 1970-2’. 3 vols. PhD thesis, Institute of Dialect and Folklife Studies, School of English, University of Leeds, 1977.

  • A major piece of fieldwork and analysis which describes in depth traditional singing and its context for a number of singers from the Sheffield area, with numerous song transcriptions (a copy of the thesis is held in the VWML).

 

145. Russell, Ian. ‘Context and Content: A Study of the Repertoires of Arthur Howard’. Singer, Song and Scholar. Ed. Ian Russell. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1986: 31-54.

  • Demonstrates how a particular traditional singer’s choice of material varies according to the occasion.

 

146. Russell, Ian. ‘Parody and Performance’. Everyday Culture: Popular Song and the Vernacular Milieu. Ed. Michael Pickering and Tony Green. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987: 70-104.

  • A detailed study of song parodies in the repertoire of Arthur Howard, firmly based on fieldwork, which seeks to demonstrate the normative function of parody in song.

 

147. Russell, Ian. ‘Stability and Change in a Sheffield Singing Tradition’. FMJ 5 (1987): 317-358.

  • An important study of the ways in which song texts and tunes may vary within a small geographical area, based on detailed fieldwork. Russell proposes a terminology of ‘stability and change’ to replace Sharp’s ‘continuity and variation’, because the latter may imply widespread relationships among song versions which cannot in fact be demonstrated. This article summarises some of the conclusions of Russell’s three-volume thesis.

 

148. Sharp, Cecil J. English Folk-Song: Some Conclusions. London: Simpkin; Novello; Taunton: Barnicott & Pearce, 1907.

  • Hastily compiled by the most prominent of the early English collectors, Sharp’s influential ideas focus on the three principles of continuity, variation, and selection to establish a quasi-Darwinian explanation of the nature and transmission of folk song.

 

149. Shuldiner, David. ‘The Content and Structure of English Ballads and Tales’. Western Folklore 37 (1978): 267-280.

  • Examines the different, though complementary, narrative style, form, and content of ballads and tales; a study of great interest to scholars, singers, and storytellers alike.

 

150. Stewart, Polly. ‘Wishful Willful Wily Women: Lessons for Female Success in the Child Ballads’. Feminist Messages: Coding in Women’s Folk Culture. Ed. Joan Newlon Radner. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993: 54-73.

  • A feminist classification of the Child ballads which as it stands is rather crude but nonetheless suggests the possibilities in feminist analysis of folk song.

 

151. Toelken, Barre. ‘Figurative Language and Cultural Contexts in the Traditional Ballads’. Western Folklore 45 (1986): 128-139.

  • Examines some of the ways in which supra-literal meaning, of the kind discussed in greater detail in Morning Dew and Roses, can be generated by ballad texts, and provides a useful listing of different contexts which might influence the creation of such meaning.

 

152. Toelken, Barre. Morning Dew and Roses: Nuance, Metaphor, and Meaning in Folksongs. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

  • An important and readable study, which demonstrates wide-ranging poetic possibilities in ballads and folk songs, and relates them to their singing contexts. Chapters in the book reproduce several earlier classic articles by Toelken, for instance on the riddle or wit combat ballads and on metaphor and ambiguity in ballads.

 

153. Vicinus, Martha. The Industrial Muse: A Study of Nineteenth Century British Working-Class Literature. London: Croom Helm, 1974.

  • A wide-ranging study of popular literature, including broadsides, songs, and poetry, and dialect writing and song.

 

154. Wehse, Rainer. ‘Broadside Ballad and Folksong: Oral Tradition versus Literary Tradition. Folklore Forum 8 (1975): 324-334 [2-12].

  • A theoretical discussion of the symbiosis of oral tradition and printed texts in the transmission of folk songs.

 

155. Wilgus, D. K. Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship Since 1898. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1959.

  • The standard account of the development of folk song scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic, from the death of Francis James Child up to the mid-century.

 

156. Wilgus, D. K. ‘A Type-Index of Anglo-American Traditional Narrative Songs’. Journal of the Folklore Institute 7 (1970): 161-176.

  • Outlines a thematic approach to classifying folk songs.

 

157. Wilgus, D. K., and Barre Toelken. The Ballad and the Scholars: Approaches to Ballad Study. Papers Presented at a Clark Library Seminar, 22 October 1983. Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Library, University of California, Los Angeles, 1986.

  • Two papers which, although ostensibly demonstrating the confrontation between textual and contextual approaches to ballad and folk song study, actually display a lot of shared ground.

 

4.2. The music of folk songs and ballads

 

Cross-references: Bronson’s edition of ballad tunes includes scholarly comment on the music (223). Porter provides a further bibliography of musical studies (474). Others provide convenient, brief introductions to modal music (6, 112).

 

158. Barry, Phillips, Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, and Mary Winslow Smyth. British Ballads from Maine: The Development of Popular Songs, with Texts and Airs. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929.

  • The introductory matter contains a useful discussion of ballad melodies.

 

159. Bayard, Samuel P. ‘Prolegomena to a Study of the Principal Melodic Families of British-American Folk Song’. JAF 63 (1950): 1-44.

  • An important introduction to the study of folk song tunes, which defines some of the problems and attempts to establish the idea of tune families.

 

160. Bayard, Samuel P. ‘Two Representative Tune Families of British Tradition’. Midwest Folklore 4 (1954): 13-33.

  • An illustration of the concept of tune families.

 

161. Bishop, Julia C. ‘The Tunes of the English and Scottish Ballads in the James Madison Carpenter Collection’. FMJ 7 (1998): 450-470.

  • A detailed description of the recording and transcription of tunes in Carpenter’s collection, with an analysis of some sample tunes.

 

162. Bronson, Bertrand Harris. The Ballad as Song. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969.

  • Reprints a number of important papers about the music of ballads and folk songs, including ‘The Interdependence of Ballad Tunes and Texts’, ‘Folk-Song and the Modes’, ‘On the Union of Words and Music in the "Child" Ballads’, ‘The Morphology of the Ballad Tunes’, and ‘Toward the Comparative Analysis of British-American Folk-Tunes’, along with a variety of other interesting studies in folk song and balladry.

 

163. Cazden, Norman. ‘A Simplified Mode Classification for Traditional Anglo-American Song Tunes’. Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council 3 (1971): 45-78.

  • An attempt to revise and simplify the study of folk song tunes.

 

164. Mitsui, Tori. ‘How Was "Judas" Sung?’ Ballads and Boundaries: Narrative Singing in an Intercultural Context. Ed. James Porter. Los Angeles: Department of Ethnomusicology & Systematic Musicology, UCLA, 1995: 241-250.

  • A musicological study which considers how the oldest text in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, dating from the thirteenth century, might have sounded when, and if, it was sung.

 

165. Porter, Gerald. ‘Airs and Graces: Interpretation Based on the Musical Record’. The Stockholm Ballad Conference 1991. Ed. Bengt R. Jonsson. Proceedings of the 21st International Ballad Conference, August 19-22, 1991. Stockholm: Svenskt Visarkiv, 1993: 205-214.

  • A brief consideration of the aesthetic implications of the tunes to which some occupational songs have been sung.

 

166. Powers, Harold S. ‘Modal Scales and Folksong Melodies’. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980: XII, 418-422.

  • Explains the musical theory of folk song tunes, as part of a longer section on the modes in musical theory.

 

167. Simpson, Claude M. The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1966.

  • The standard reference work for the music of broadside ballads.

 

4.3. Studies of selected folk songs and ballads

 

Besides the more wide-ranging studies listed in Section 4.1, scholarly efforts have also been ected towards the elucidation of individual ballads and folk songs, and groups of songs such as the Robin Hood ballads and the religious ballads.

Some effort has been made here to select representative items of interest for the study of English song traditions in particular, and as a result ballad research at large is again substantially under-represented.

Cross-references: There is a wealth of information on individual ballads in Child (226), and there are detailed studies of particular songs in many of the more general works of song and ballad research in Section 4.1.

 

 

168. Allen, J. W. ‘Some Notes on "O Waly Waly"’. JEFDSS 7 (1954): 161-171.

  • Traces the three songs, related to the ballad ‘Jamie Douglas’, which seem to have gone to make up the song Cecil Sharp called ‘O Waly Waly’.

 

169. Andersen, Flemming G., and Thomas Pettitt. ‘"The Murder of Maria Marten": The Birth of a Ballad?’ Narrative Folksong: New ections. Essays in Appreciation of W. Edson Richmond. Ed. Carol L. Edwards and Kathleen E. B. Manley. Boulder: Westview Press, 1985: 132-178.

  • Traces the song about the Red Barn murder from print to oral transmission (see also 216).

 

170. Atkinson, David. ‘Marriage and Retribution in "James Harris (The Dæmon Lover)"’. FMJ 5 (1989): 592-607.

  • An interpretation of an English broadside version of a ballad in the light of some contemporary marriage customs (see also 180, 194).

 

171. Atkinson, David. ‘History, Symbol, and Meaning in "The Cruel Mother"’. FMJ 6 (1992): 359-380.

  • Considers the way in which meaning may be generated symbolically in a ballad.

 

172. Atkinson, David. ‘Incest in Ballads: The Availability of Cultural Meaning’. Lore and Language 11 (1992-93): 27-44.

  • Argues that the presence of the incest theme in certain ballads is largely dependent on their cultural function (see also 211).

 

173. Atkinson, David. ‘The Wit Combat Episode in "The Unquiet Grave"’. Images, Identities and Ideologies. Ed. John M. Kirk and Colin Neilands. Papers from the 22nd International Ballad Conference, Belfast, 29 June-3 July 1992. Lore and Language 12: 11-29. Enfield Lock: Hisarlik Press, 1994: 11-29.

  • Attempts an explanation of the occurrence of an obscure stanza in several versions of a ballad which is widespread in England.

 

174. Atkinson, David. ‘"Up then spoke a bonny bird", or Lady Isabel’s Secret: Transformation in "The Outlandish Knight"’. Southern Folklore 52 (1995): 231-248.

  • Particularly concerned with the function of the talking birds in ballads, especially in ‘The Outlandish Knight’ where it keeps its own counsel (see also 215).

 

175. Atk