Viability of CJ (in) NW folk literature

[Dave Robertson]

I meant to post about this some time back.  The last weekend in July, CBC
Radio 1 in BC ran a Sunday-morning feature on two folklorists who've spent
years researching in the Princeton, BC archives.  Now, that's a tiny town,
but this man and woman have dug up quite a few gems of locally-composed
poetry and songs that were popular in the area's early days, circa 1900. 
These two have recorded an album of what these coal-mining disaster ballads,
pro-railway ditties, and so on must have sounded like.  

It's genuinely catchy but part of my reaction was that it contains no
Jargon, so must be outside my special area of interest.  (Although some of
the material has to do with early settler Mr. Allison, who recorded some
words of the extinct Nicola Athabaskan language.  That's notable.)  But
later I realized that what I "took away from" the show, as people often seem
to say lately, is the researchers' insistence that these local songs were
tremendously popular in their time...

--which implies that the huge number of poems and songs we've seen composed
by settlers in Jargon, or using words of Jargon in English, probably were in
active currency too.  There's one I mentioned just a few weeks ago by
"Sitkum Siwash, Esquire" that was in fact reported as so popular that it got
reprinted in local newspapers.  (But I do remain skeptical that many people
got much use from the CJ translation of Byron!)  

Just a small note on what was for me a re-evaluation of some materials that
I may not have paid much attention to otherwise.

--Dave R

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