E. David Gregory. Victorian Songhunters. The Recovery and Editing of English Vernacular Ballads and Folk Lyrics, 1820-1883. Lanham, Maryland/Toronto/Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, 2006. viii, 447 pp. ISBN 0-8108-5703-0. Softbound. (About $50.)
by Murray Shoolbraid [from BCF No.21, pp.59-63 (June 2008)]

This is a large book (quarto:10½ x 8¼ inches; 26.7 x 21 cm.), and a bit weighty (nearly three pounds), but handy, and is very well got up. The lines of type, mind you, are quite long, but will only bother those with failing sight. As for the contents:

DG had a good idea here, to summarise the history of the collection and publication of folk song in England over 63 years, though for obvious reasons he begins a little earlier. So we go from D’Urfey (Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1719-20) and Percy (1765) through Evans, Ritson, Chappell, the Percy and Ballad Societies, F. J. Child, and the “revival” of late Victorian times. The books are examined and the authors’ methods discussed, rather well, and exemplary songs are quoted, with the music. Appendices give “Issues and Interpretations” and an alphabetical listing of the illustrative songs (with the sources); Bibliography, and General Index. I use “England”, by the way, properly; DG deals only cursorily with the other U.K. nations.

It is in many ways an excellent book, but I have my reservations. Perhaps the following strictures can be applied to the next edition – for I’m sure this will be a standard textbook for both undergraduate and postgraduate college classes, and well received by folklorists, not to mention the interested general public.

The proofreading is sometimes a bit off — which means some typos, and some repetitions where editing or a copy-and-paste system is careless; e.g. p. 82, in an extended quotation from Chappell’s Collection of National English Airs (1838), where the beginning of the quotation is repeated after half a dozen lines. This does not interfere with one’s understanding; but it’s annoying nonetheless. Another pure typo (caused by the proximity of K and L on a keyboard) is the mention (p. 23) of John Skelton’s “Ballade of the Scottyssche Lynge” (sic). The converse happens on p. 78 (“Elsie Marley”), where “Lambton” becomes “Kambton”. Other errors of a like sort, and a few of a different sort, are the following, which I’m sure is not exhaustive:

p. 44, par. 3, the editor of the 1902 edition of Scott is T. F, not T. H., Henderson. This error is repeated in the note (no. 33), the Index, and the Bibliography (Secondary Sources), so it’s not just a unique typo. (The entry in the Bibliography under Scott, however, is correct.)

p. 47, in a quotation from Evans’s Old Ballads, there’s a misprint where Evans is made to talk about the ballad singer “playing his crown”; it should of course be “crowd”.

p. 60, last stanza of “Here’s to the Maiden” in The London Minstrel: lines 3-4 ring changes on each other, and I can’t believe the original (in the songbook) does this. If I’m wrong, all right; but it’s the only text I’ve seen with that variation [i.e. “So fill a pint bumper quite up to the brim, / So fill up your glasses, nay, fill to the brim”].

p. 64, par. 2, for “Stathallan’s” (Lament) read “Strathallan’s”.

p. 180, last paragraph: leading up to printing Chappell’s Martin Parker song, “When the King Enjoys his own Again”, DG names the tune as “Hey, Then Up We Go”. This should be “Hey, then Up Go We”, however unusual the syntax.

In quoting Chappell’s reasoning about the English nationality of “The Broom of Cowden Knowes” (p. 182), as an example of his analytic method, he adds that it is “strong circumstantial evidence but hardly conclusive”, which is half right, anyway. A counter-argument is brought by John Glen (Early Scottish Melodies [Edinburgh: Glen, 1900], 35), who succeeds in demolishing a good deal of Chappell’s rabid remarks about Scottish claims to English songs.

Accurate citation is not always attained — e.g. the English/Latin song on p. 111-2, where it is obvious that something has happened since we get unlikely words like popmis, an evident error for pompis. Thus alerted, one may compare with the original [on the Net] and discover errors in the copying of the English also. The point being that text in other than modern English [Middle English, Latin] has to be checked more assiduously than the rest. It is not much use being accurate to the spelling, capitalisation, punctuation of texts if that accuracy is diminished by mis-spellings (call them typographical errors) and such. In regard to these old texts, it would have been useful to have some glossing of the odd words - after all, Child does it - and perhaps a translation, however minimalist, of the Latin. Generally, the notes just cite the page reference. As an example of help not given, take the ballad of “Judas” (pp. 116-7), from Thomas Wright’s Reliquiae Antiquae, and included by Child as no. 23. Child’s notes to his printing (I.243-4) point out that he has changed the S of some words to H, making a lot more sense. [Examples: miste/mihte, cnistes/cnihtes – i.e. “might”, “knights”.] Gregory of course prints the original; but makes no effort to help the reader as Child does. [Incidentally, line 7 of the quotation (p. 117) should end with a period and not a “>” – a mistake by using the shift key, of course.]

The idea of giving illustrative quotations of texts and tunes is a good one; but the choices are sometimes curious and their treatment (i.e. discussion) even curiouser. For instance, The Universal Songster, or Museum of Mirth (1825-27). This is examined (like the other collections), naming the titles of interesting or typical contents, stressing, when found, the vernacular and especially the folk songs therein. Volume two seems to produce only two such. One is the “glee” of “Dame Durden”, probably from another book noticed on pp. 59-60, The London Songster (1821). The other is “Saw Ye My Father?”, described as “a version of the night-visiting ballad usually known as ‘The Grey Cock.’ It was written in part in dialect, so it was clearly a northern variant, deriving from either Northumbria or across the Scottish border.” The seven stanzas quoted are however practically literatim as found in Herd’s 1776 volume. Its quoting therefore strikes as being unnecessary, and the space could well have been occupied by something more significant, not to say English. (See further, Child no. 248.)

When we get to Thomas Crofton Coker (p. 103 ff.) we’re told of his excellent collection Historical Songs of Ireland, edited for the Percy Society in 1841. The title continues: Illustrative of the Revolutionary Struggle between James II and William III. One of the songs from the Catholic side is “It Was A’ For Our Rightfu’ King”, “ascribed to Captain Ogilvie of Inverquharity”, called “a simple but beautiful Jacobite lament that told the fate of the vanquished after the battle of the Boyne.” The trouble is that this particular text is by Robert Burns. All the editors [Kinsley, Dick, et al.] agree: he wrote this, basing himself upon an old ballad, as was his habit, using only one stanza from the old song and creating his own beautiful lament. [It’s Hogg (Jacobite Relics, 1819, no. xv) who ascribes this to Ogilvie; followed uncritically by such as Malcolm, Mackay, and McQuoid. The older song, titled “Bonnie Mally Stewart”, is given by Sharpe from a stall copy in Additional Illustrations, 466; the last stanza is borrowed by Burns.] While on Burns, it must be said that the remark (p. 33, note 76) that “Catherine Logy” in D’Urfey’s Pills would later be transformed into Burns’s “Highland Mary” is a gratuitous aside that is misleading, for the Bard only used the tune for his love song. I should also point out that while it’s correct to say (p. 43) that The Merry Muses of Caledonia included vulgar versions of some “Scots Musical Museum” songs, it’s incorrect to imply that “The Rantin’ Dog the Daddie O’t” is a vulgar rehash; it’s not, it’s the original.

When on Cromek (p. 46), and the “interesting” Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song (1810), DG seems unaware that a very great deal of the contents was supplied by Allan Cunningham, who pretended the songs and “fragments” were traditional; so it’s a bit weak to say their authenticity “is uncertain, since it is difficult to know the extent to which [Cromek] followed his mentor [i.e. Burns] in touching up or rewriting his sources.”

The love songs in Halliwell’s Loyal Garland (Percy Society, 1850) are exemplified for some reason by “Good Advice”, “in fact almost identical to Robert Herrick’s famous poem ‘To the Virgins, to make much of Time’”, i.e. [in this text] “Gather you rose-buds whilst you may” – which does not, surely, need to be quoted at all.

DG tends to accept his source as accurate, but this is not necessarily so. Scholarship has shown the authorship of a good few anonymous or mistakenly accredited songs, and a case in point is “The Land o’ the Leal”. On p. 201 Gregory includes it in a list of songs by Burns in Davidson’s Universal Melodist (1848), and it is true that the text there is attributed to Burns, but this is wrong. The song is by Lady Nairne, and it has been altered (as G. F. Graham noticed) by some chapbook editor to make it the parting words of Burns to his wife Jean. [See on this Robert Ford’s Song Histories (1900), 110 ff.] In a case like this we need a comment of correction. Something similar seems to happen previously (p. 59), where The London Minstrel (1821) is discussed. “Despite the title, a number of popular Scottish songs, some of them from the pen of Robert Burns, were in evidence, including ‘Ye Banks and Braes of Bonny Doon,’ ‘Kitty of the Clyde,’ ‘Scots wha ha’e wi’ Wallace bled,’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne.’” From this (perhaps only unfortunately worded) note one might gather that “Kitty of the Clyde” is by Burns. Actually it’s by Charles Dibdin, Junior, and hence isn’t even Scottish; besides, the tune is by William Reeve, popular opera composer of the day. It was, mind you, probably accepted as Scottish at the time, or close enough anyhow, being sung “by Mr Slader, at the Aquatic Theatre, Sadlers Wells in the Caledonian Spectacle of An Bratach [= Gaelic, “the Banner”]”, as the sheet music says.

Sometimes DG seems to draw wrong conclusions. A minor example is his remark about a Shropshire version of “Sir Hugh”, from Notes and Queries, in Halliwell’s collection of songs about the boy martyr. The text is of course available these days in Child (no. 155; III.233 ff.; 2nd ed. III.262 ff.), this being version K. DG curiously says it “depicts an encounter between the slain boy’s ghost and his mother”, which is an odd take on

I durst not come, I must not come,
Unless my little playfellows come along,
For if my mother sees me at the gate,
She’ll cause my blood to fall.

Here the boy is still alive and fearing parental retribution.

The editors are sometimes accused of over-editing, or even censorship, and they deserve black marks for not having modern sensibilities. (At the same time, DG is at pains to point out the futility of such comment on an earlier more hidebound and less critical age.) However, it would have been interesting, or even useful, to be given notice of this whenever it occurred. For instance, Chappell (praised as a good editor) prints the Middle English words of “Sumer is icumen in”, with a modern rendering, which quite simply misleads the unwary reader: “Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth” is rendered “Bullock jumps, buck frequents the green fern” [in the music, set as “Bullock starteth, buck to fern go’th”], plausibly enough deriving the troublesome verb from French vert. In fact of course, it simply means (as the Oxford Dictionary will grudgingly tell you) “farteth”. [See further, Thomas Pyles, “Innocuous Linguistic Indecorum: A Semantic Byway”, in Modern Language Notes LXIV no. 1 (Jan. 1949, pp. 1-8), p. 1 note 1.] Again, when he’s giving the old song-fragment “Westron Wynde”, from Henry VIII’s time (Pop. Music, I. 58), he “softens”, as they say, the sentiments:

Westron wynde when wyll thou blow?
The smalle rain downe ‘doth’ rayne;
‘Oh!’ if my love were in my armys,
‘Or’ I in my bed agayne.

The quotation marks, for which I commend Chappell, are a subtle warning that all is not as it seems. (When DG prints this with the music, p. 165, he omits these markers.) The original, as is well known in these unbuttoned days, has for the above marked words can, Cryst, and And — which alters the sense considerably. There is no comment from Gregory. (It may also be pointed out that Chappell refers to Dauney’s Ancient Scottish Melodies [1838, 199], in turn quoting Ritson, where the original words are given.) Likewise, “Sally in our Alley” (Pop. Mus. 645-8) is given with last lines “And then how happily we’ll live- / But not in our alley.” This has been softened from “O then we’ll wed, and then we’ll bed”, which prudery frowned on.

When we come to Ebsworth, DG does point out with some sympathy the sometimes tortuous squirming of the hapless editor confronted with an all-too-common problem: what to do when faced with a rude set of words, having proclaimed that strict scientific and scholarly treatment was the desideratum? A few words, (just thirty) he said, were replaced by dots, and it is relatively easy to restore the vulgar originals, e.g. a song in Choyce Drollery (1656), on the burning of an outhouse, “Upon a House of Office over a River” (evidently to the tune of “Greensleeves”):

The present cause of all our wo, but from Tobacco ashes, oh!
Twas s...n luck to perish so, which nobody can deny.

When it involves a rhyme, of course, it is much easier:

Whose genius if I hit aright, may be conceiv’d Hermaphrodite.
To both sex common when they s.., which nobody can deny.

(The number of dots, it will be noticed, isn’t the same as the number of missing letters.)

One later author deserves special mention, namely Charlotte Burne, a notice of whose activities first appeared here [issue no. 18 (Oct. 2002), pp. 4-13, titled “Forgotten Folklorist: Charlotte Burne and Shropshire Song”]. There was a follow-up article to this by John Burne, great-nephew of CB (“Not Forgotten, a clarification of some references made in [the former article]”; BCF no 20 [Nov. 2005], 35-41), but DG has not taken it into consideration in re-editing the material (pp. 376-382, “Georgina Jackson, Charlotte Burne, and Shropshire Song”), which is a pity, because apart from correcting one or two misapprehensions it does give excellent background. On the other hand, he might not have seen it in time for this printing; but as said above it could be usefully used in the next edition.

The appendix on “Issues and Interpretations” (pp. 392-405) gives a good critical survey of the secondary literature, particularly dealing with the somewhat off-the-wall theory (call it dogma, since it seems ideologically based) of Dave Harker set out in Fakesong: The Manufacture of British ‘Folksong’, 1700 to the Present Day (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985), and Harker’s disciples. This needs doing, for Harker’s very odd and grossly overstated thesis seems to have attracted some following.

As will be seen from the above remarks, Gregory’s historical-critical anthology is not perfect; all things considered, though, this book, warts and all, is important and a necessary addition to the folk song shelf. It should have a warm reception.