From: jtn@nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period songs and their content (very long, with primary sources)
Date: 4 Sep 92 15:56:46 GMT
Followup-To: rec.org.sca
Organization: The Rialto.

Greetings to all, but especially Sarra Graeham, from Angharad 
ver' Rhuawn.

Sarra has posted a marvelous letter on medieval English songs, 
with some lovely references.  (I'd particularly like to second 
the reference to Dobson and Harrison, _Medieval English Lyrics_, 
because it is widely available.  When I get home, I'll try to 
remember to pull my copy and pick up the publisher and ISBN.)

First of all, and before I go any farther: thank you, thank you,
thank you!  That posting took a lot of time and work to put
together, quite apart from the time and work of knowing the 
content that went behind having the idea to do it.  It is a
lovely thing, and I am glad to have seen it, and you should
send it off elsewhere (say, _TI_) to be published as a note
on songs, because I'm sure that many people not on this net
would be _very_ glad to have the benefit of this.

Now a bit on content.

Actually what many Scadians work from in terms of popular 
songs is a few collections from the first decade and a half of 
the 17th C (Thomas Ravenscroft's collections of popular songs 
and rounds; since they are collected rather than written, it is 
reasonable to suppose that they are at least similar to what 
was sung ten to thirty years before, making them stylistically 
appropriate for very late period), and those of the Child ballads 
that have documentable roots in period.  All this material is
Renaissance rather than medieval.  Some of the patterns are the
same, but some are slightly different.  But many people do seem
to misunderstand what those differences are.

So I'd like to add a couple of further notes on ballads.

First, there is a general bias to the effect that ballads are 
very old, and that even those that are first documented latish can 
be presumed to have been sung earlier.  All serious modern 
scholarship attacks this.  (1) There is good reason to suppose 
that few ballads antedate the late 16th C, and no songs in that 
form antedate the 15th (see e.g. Hodgart, _The Ballads_; I believe 
it is a Penguin book; if someone wants to know for sure, write me, 
and I'll pull my copy, also at home, darn it).  (2) There are many 
ballads of which we have many copies and many versions.  The 
evidence from these is that ballads change rapidly, that they 
spring up in one place, spread, and then, in most cases, die away.  
(3)  Not all ballads were written by our old friend Anon.  In some 
cases, we know precisely when a ballad was written, and by whom.
There are other evidences, but I don't have my sources with me,
and I don't want to keep going without them....

There are ballads with early roots (though we frequently have 
only references to their early forms) that have supernatural 
elements.  They largely correspond, even in their OOP form, with 
Mistress Sarra's observation that old supernatural = Christian.  
The primary counterexamples are the first few ballads in Child
(as I recall, 1-3; Child 1 is the song from which, way way down
the line, Scarborough Fair is descended), which refer to elf
knights.  Virtually all other supernatural beings are ghosts or
devils, and the setting is clearly Christian.

If you go through Ravenscroft, you will also find that although 
the subject matters of his songs and rounds (not ballads -- they
are a specific form, and very few of Ravenscroft's songs are
ballads, the best known exceptions being "The Three Ravens" and
"Yonder Comes a Courteous Knight") are very different from those 
of the songs Mistress Sarra cited, the rule of "No real names, now" 
is astonishingly consistent -- as it is in much Elizabethan art 
music (does Dowland _ever_ name a party to the tale of a song?).  

In short, Steeleye Span is a bad model, and so are 60s folk songs.

Again, thanks, Sarra!  I love to see real actual citations and
stuff.  (I suppose that means I should do more of it....)  

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca