mary ellen brown wrote:
>
> I find it enormously exciting to read of so much interest/enthusiasm for
> Motherwell and I can assure you HE IS WORTH BOTHERING WITH. Judging
> someone from the early l9th century by printed text alone is deceptive.
> With Motherwell, as McCarthy has shown before me, there is manuscript
> after manuscript. In fact his ballad manuscript was proclaimed by FJChild
> to be worthy alone of a new editions of ballads--thus Child started his
> l882-l898 work. He influenced Grundtvig who influenced Child and so on.
> His introduction to Minstrelsy: Ancient and Modern (l827), really an
> afterword written AFTER he had finished the work, begun collaboratively,
> is an extraordinary piece of scholarship, albeit early l9th century. I
> encourage you to read it and Chapter 4: The Ballad Errantry in William
> Motherwell's Cultural Politics. The book contains a full bibliography
> that will lead you to lots of sources.
>
> Best,
> MEB
Sorry for that slip of the tongue, it should have been Motherwell's
'Minstrelsy' isn't worth bothering with.
One can dig out from F. J. Child's ESPB many pieces Motherwell
collected, somehow, but never published, but there are no known tunes
for any of them. [However, much remains to be learned on the subject of
the traditional tunes Andrew Blaikie collected (NLS MS 1578)]
Cheers, Bruce Olson
Old English, Irish and, Scots: popular songs, tunes, broadside
ballads at my website (no advs-spam, etc)- www.erols.com/olsonw
or click below <A href="http://www.erols.com/olsonw"> Click </a>
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