Talk:Child Ballads

message: A lot more of these deserve links and articles. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:38, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You're probably right, though I'd do the articles, then the links (huge lists of redlinks are rarely a good thing), in most cases. I linked a few beyond what there were articles for, thinking or (or maybe someone else) would be writing articles for them before long. Haven't got around to a bunch of them yet. If there are a few glaring oversights, go ahead and link them. I don't think there are any unlinked that are of the caliber of Barbara Allen or anything; I think Geordie is probably the most significant ballad lacking an article as of now. Any you had in mind particularly? -R. fiend 11:57, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Coming at this as a musician rather than a musicologist, it is possible that I don't always correctly know some of these ballads from the titles as given by Child, but several that I think would have article potential are "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" (possibly together with "Riddles Wisely Expounded", they are closely related), "Sheath and Knife", "King Henry" (I assume that is the one about "bring more meat to me..."?), "Allison Gross", "Willie MacIntosh" (I assume this is "The Burning of Auchindown", a magnificent short ballad, and tied into significant historic events), and "The Gypsy Laddie" (a.k.a. "The Raggle Taggle Gypsies", "Gypsy Davey", etc.: very interesting as an example of a romanticized view of gypsy life, sometimes crossed with the "Gypsy" of the title revealing his identity as a Lord). That was at a quick skim; I'm sure there are many others. About half of these I don't know, or at least not by these titles. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:07, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm guessing you have at least one Steeleye Span album in your collection. But, yes, I think you made some pretty good choices there. One of my main criteria when I made links and articles was that I personally knew of more than one recording of the song in question, giving some verification that the song is somewhat widely known, and that I wasn't basing my decision on what one band happened to record (though in a case or two I may have violated this). "Riddles Wisely Expounded" was one I probably should have linked, though the others I personally knew of only one recording by (not that I can say I did a search, this is mostly just from the music I happen to own). "False Knight" I could only think of the Steeleye Span version, likewise "King Henry", and "Allison Gross" (those two particularly it seems to me Span made their own through their unconventional arrangements), "Sheath and Knife" I know the Ewan MacColl version. Until you mentioned it, I hadn't realized that "Willie MacIntosh" was "The Burning of Auchendoun"; you were quite right, and again I only know MacColl's. "Raggle Taggle Gypsy" is certainly derived from "The Gypsie Laddie", but I'm not 100% I'd call them the same song. Skimming through Child, I don't see any mention of "raggle taggle gypsy" in any of the versions. Much like "The Gypsy Rover" which has some similarities, it might be different enough to be considered separate (like "The Elfin Knight" and "Scarborough Fair"). Then again, they could probably be covered in the same article, even though those two examples aren't (maybe they should be? Admittedly I did briefly cover "Our Gudeman" in "Seven Drunken Nights"). Certainly with every teenybop flavor of the week single getting an article that just mentions its position on every conceivable chart, I would not oppose an article on any Child Ballad. Some are certainly more deserving than others though. If you're familiar with anything close to half of them, I'm very impressed; the vast majority of them I don't know at all. But to make a long rambling short: write some articles on any of these songs. I'll likely add to them, I've got quite a few good sources. -R. fiend 23:45, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

text: On another note, was that typo "Widely" there from the beginning? I can't believe I never caught that myself. (And I noticed I did it again above, and had to fix it). -R. fiend 23:47, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, I have pretty much every Steeleye Span album in my collection (and, yes, "Allison Gross" and "King Henry" I know only through their arrangements; ditto "Lamkin"), though I knew a lot of this music before they were around. I learned some of these (mostly in American variants) from my father, who grew up in Popular Front culture, so not the most "authentic" line of transmission (basically, via Alan Lomax and Pete Seeger), but not the least, either. I studied under Jean Redpath, so I have a very legitimate lineage for the Scottish ballads and street songs. In the 1970s I spent a lot of afternoons at Cecil Sharpe house looking for good ballads that were not already well known. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the general picture. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:42, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I went and did it.  It was too annoying to add links every time I added an article, so it's now a mass of red-links.  Then, I did it so I could refer to the plots from various articles where they were convenient instances, and therefore the articles are stubs. Goldfritha 16:23, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree, since virtually every traditional British or folk rock artists has recorded several ballads, there is no possibility or need to record them all. A few for illustration might be useful.--SabreBD (talk) 10:17, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: There is a new major search engine for traditional songs here:
http://library.efdss.org/cgi-bin/query.cgi?cross=off&index_roud=on
The compiler, Steve Roud, has assigned "Roud numbers" to thousands of songs (over 143,000 references from books and records). More and more scholars using Round numbers rather than Child numbers. There are cross references to child numbers, Sharp numbers, Hammond, Gardiner etc. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.82.16.42 (talk • contribs) 17 May 2006.
: Perhaps. But even on the "currentist" Internet, a google for "'Child numbers' + folk" gets ten times the hits of "'Roud numbers' + folk", and "'Child Ballads' + folk" adds another factor of 100. (roughly 30 vs. 300 vs. 30,000) - Jmabel | Talk 00:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Roud numbers" 

message: I've created a separate List of the Child Ballads as a separate item, and moved the list of the 305 items there.  I tried out this kind of organisation for :sv:Sveriges Medeltida Ballader, and I think it makes the articles easier to view.  Now, there is no ínformation within the proper article text coming after the long list; i.e., if you use standard set-up only the category membership information is to be found there; while you with no problem may survey the entire main article (including Child Ballads in modern popular culture).--JoergenB 14:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Separated list 

message: This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 10:46, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: I recently came across a blog (Better Know a Child Balad) that is such a good resource it seems worth including as an external link.  Although (as the person who reversed my edit points out) links to blogs are discouraged, this one is devoted only to the subject and particularly useful for collecting relevant online videos of each song type into one place.  I won't try to redo the change, but will post here for reference.
Bookishwench (talk) 08:29, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relevant Blog? 

message: I came to the article with no knowledge of the subject, and it was not  at all clear to me, until I followed the Gutenberg Project link,  whether Child even included transcripts of melodies. (He doesn't, only the words)
Ballads are usually but not always sung - some are just in verse form to be narrated; but apparently most of the ones Child collects from Broadsides were songs, as far as I can tell. It's in the nature of folk ballads that different melodies and variants of the text exist, but some reference in the introduction or early in the text to the fact that many or all were songs would make the article more intelligible to the layperson.
At the moment therefore, the lack of any mention of the music in the introduction results in a jump in the text: the section "Modern Adaptations" starts by saying, "Many Child Ballads have appeared in contemporary music recordings." which begets the question, "What about the melodies as they were known at the time Child compiled these texts?" They didn't have gramophone yet, so do we know whether what people today are singing corresponds at all to what Child would have heard? Are the "adaptations" the section refers to using old melodies or not?
I suspect  answers to these questions are in the book "Bronson, Bertrand Harris. The Singing Tradition of Child's Popular Ballads" which is cited in the Literature section, but it would be nice if a brief mention in this Wikipedia article would save me the need to track it down!
Northtowner (talk) 09:41, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I had the same problem. The article should make it clear immediately whether by ballad we mean song or poem, and if we mean song whether a collection includes music. I would assume it to include music unless specifically informed otherwise. We find very late in the article that apparently one volume of one edition of Child's major work does include some music, but you have to dig to find that, and even then it's hardly clear. TheScotch (talk) 08:49, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Child Ballads  - what about the traditional melodies? 

message: There seems to be some confusion (here and in particular in the article on Francis James Child) over the production and format of the actual printed work so I offer up the following new section for comment that attempts to clarify some of these points. Note, informal pseudo references only are included in the draft text below for replacement later.
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads were originally published as a series, comprising 5 very large volumes, starting in 1882. Each volume was published in two physical parts, with each part appearing some months or years apart. In each case, the page numbering of the second part of a volume simply continued from the first part. Thus it is true to say both that the ballads were published in 5 (logical) volumes and that they were published in 10 (physical) parts.
All 305 ballads are included within the first 9 parts, which were published prior to Child's death in 1896.[Ref Part IX]. The final tenth part was published in 1898 after Child's death, the final work being based upon Child's substantially complete manuscript was completed by George Lyman Kittredge [Ref Part X]. This work is unique in that it includes no additional ballads but comprises supplementary material including additions and corrections, indices, bibliography, and the airs (music) for over 40 of the ballads.{Ref Part X].
Although there are only 305 ballads in total across the five volumes, there are often many versions of each, for example nine versions of No. 4 "Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight", eighteen of No. 58 "Sir Patrick Spens" and twenty eight of No. 173 "Mary Hamilton". [ref 1904 Preface p v]. There are also voluminous introductions to each set of ballad versions, often running to many pages, including references to the sources of the texts.
In 1904 an abbreviated single volume edition of the Child Ballads was published by Helen Child Sargent and George Lyman Kittredge. It included 300 or the original 305 ballads, but restricted the number of versions of each and the length of the introductions. The numbering of the ballads and the variants that do appear is identical to those of the original work.[ref 1904 Preface p v].
In 1965 the original works were republished in five physical volumes by Dover publications.
Inspeximus (talk) 14:47, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Publication and Structure 

message: This passage of florid, opinionated nonsense really needs to come out, and isn't even rational ("bank"? who can you store money in it?): "The poetry, rhetoric, drama, mythos, mystery, metaphysics, therapy, judgment, talent, creativity, energy and sounds that are stored in the Child Ballads and emitted and elicited by them have made them function as an unofficial bible and bank of the English-speaking peoples."  Temp4590 (talk) 00:20, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: While the terms in which the previous editor dismisses this passage are incorrect - in the English language a bank is a repository for anything - sperm, data, food, blood, memory - this sentence is not encyclopaedic and must be removed.  You may report someone else's opinion but you must not express your own. Catwizzle (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 08:11, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: as a "start" class article, it generally needs a whole lotta lovin all around. fee free to take your eraser and pen and bookshelf and start lovin. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 09:46, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  School-essay-style viewpoint pushing 

message: Since my access to Grove is now more limited than it used to be, I'm putting below its entire (short) Child Ballad entry in the hope that some of it may be useful for this Wikipedia article:
:A collection of 305 ballads from oral tradition included by FRANCIS JAMES CHILD in his The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–98). Approximately 120 have been found in American oral tradition. While many of the ballads deal with British historical events, those that survive in America generally concern universal themes such as unrequited love (“Barbara Allen” [Child No. 84]), love triangles (“Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender” [73]), infidelity (“Gypsy Davy” (200)), and adultery (“Little Matty Groves” [81]). A few treat humorous subjects, such as “Our Goodman”/“Three Nights Drunk” (274), about a drunkard cuckolded on successive nights by his sharp-tongued wife, or “The Farmer’s Curst Wife” (278), about a farmer whose pact with the devil to take his wife away goes awry. The timelessness of such themes has kept these ballads alive, not only in oral tradition, but also in commercial genres such as country music (“Barbara Allen,” by the Everly Brothers and Dolly Parton), blues/rhythm & blues (“Wake Up Baby” [274] by Sonny Boy Williamson), classical music (Custer LaRue and the Baltimore Consort have recorded several), and pop music: “The Elfin Knight” (2) was the basis for Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair/Canticle.”
An interesting quote from an article I found on the web called "Early Child Ballads" written by one Dani Zweig:
:While some broadsides, particularly later ones, came with music, the more common custom was to name a popular tune to which the song or ballad could be sung.
TheScotch (talk) 02:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible source quotations possibly to be mined. 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140826120601/http://web.viu.ca/atkinsona/English%20316/316%20articles/Child%20Ballad%20Study%20Guide%20with%20Select%20Bibio%20and%20Discography.pdf to http://web.viu.ca/atkinsona/English%20316/316%20articles/Child%20Ballad%20Study%20Guide%20with%20Select%20Bibio%20and%20Discography.pdf
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 - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 23:53, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: For the interested. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:13, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#Roud_Folk_Song_Index_and_Child_Ballads_nr_in_the_WP:LEAD_of_articles_about_songs|Roud Folk Song Index and Child Ballads nr in the WP:LEAD of articles about songs]]