1851 jest about trad repertoire

[Jonathan Lighter]

No puns on "fictional" allowed !

  JL

Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: 1851 jest about trad repertoire
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Hmmm. Fictional evidence. Is that a little like truthiness?

A genuine FOLK ballad exists only in the process of performance, therefore of variation and evolution. That "natural" process in impeded when texts become fixed by broadside publication or inclusion in songsters--or by commercial recordings (as in the bogusly-named "folk revival" of the 1950s and 1960s). Of course, a given ballad can pass back and forth between oral tradition and commercial media. Still, folkloristic eyebrows rise when texts FAIL to show variation . . . .

Anyhow, I took the question to import whether the ballad itself, "The Mermaid," was known in America--not just the one version of the single stanza.

--Charlie
________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 15:32:22 -0700
>From: Jonathan Lighter
>Subject: Re: 1851 jest about trad repertoire
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>Thanks, Charlie. But the 1851 chorus is closer to the way it's usually sung right now (i.e., 40-odd years ago when the Clancy Bros. & Tommy Makem recorded their boisterous rendition).
>
> Also, the context of the novel is stronger evidence that the song really was being sung in America by 1850 than is its appearance in the songster, which could simply be reprinting a British broadside.
>
> I know. Picky, picky.
>
> JL
>
>
>Charles Doyle wrote:
>
>The stanza in question belongs principally to the ballad regularly titled "The Mermaid" (Child, no. 289); however, like other memorable snatches of old tunes, it could migrate to different songs.
>
>Child's "A" text, from "Newcastle, 1765?" lacks the stanza, which appears in the "B" text, quoted from Chappell’s Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859):
>
>Then three times round went our gallant ship,
>And three times round went she;
>For the want of a life-boat they all went down,
>And she sank to the bottom of the sea.
>
>Child associated his "B" version with the date 1840, although Chappell identified his text of the ballad is a composite, with some stanzas perhaps annexed from later sources.
>
>The vastly popular Forget-Me-Not Songster (by 1850, editions had issued from a dozen or more publishers in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Saint Louis, Montreal, and probably elsewhere), contained "The Mermaid," including this stanza (with its ironic point of view):
>
>Then three times round went our good ship,
>And sank immediately,
>Left none to tell the sorrowing tale,
>Of our brave company.
>
>I've quoted from a 1974 reprint of an undated New York edition; the reprint company (Norwood Editions) claims 1835 as the year of publication.
>
>So, to respond to Jonathan’s query, there was definitely "mention of that ballad in America" prior to 1851.
>
>--Charlie
>
>________________________________________
>
>
>---- Original message ----
>
>
>Jonathan Lighter's query:
>
>>
>>>This idea of a wrire poking fun at the expected repertoire of a traditional singer so long ago comes as something of a surprise, to me at least. Perhaps the author had Mrs. Hogg in mind. The source is _Bertie, or Life in the Old Field: A Humorous Novel_, by "Gregory Seaworthy" {George Higby Throop] (Philadelphia: A. Hart, 1851), p. 123:
>>>
>>> We resumed our singing, and ran over the greater part of my aunt's collection of songs; the most of which, I undertake to say, did not date farther back than the fifteenth century.
>>>
>>> This part of the story is set in North Carolina. The only trad song quoted (p. 43) is "The Mermaid":
>>>
>"Then three times round went our gallant ship,
>Then three times round went she;
>Then three times round went our gallant ship,
>And she sunk to the bottom of the sea!"
>>>
>>> Is this the first mention of that ballad in America?
>>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>
>
>Larry Horn's reply:
>
>
>>As usual, I don't know from antedates, but I do know this same quatrain shows up elsewhere in traditional Anglo-American ballads, e.g. in "House Carpenter", often in slightly different versions, e.g.
>>
>>Oh twice around went the gallant ship
>>I'm sure it was not three
>>When the ship all of a sudden, it sprung a leak
>>And it drifted to the bottom of the sea
>>
>>I think it's sometimes "three times around...I'm sure it was not four"
>>
>>Recorded by Jean Ritchie, Joan Baez, even Dylan...
>>
>>LH
>

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