On 10/30/02, Peter Jones wrote:
>Two main queries for the group:
>
>1. I'm trying to find out how I contact Steve Roud to find out more about
>his broadside index. I've tried his dial.pipex email address but it keeps
>coming back at me.
>
>2. I've just completed a PhD on the Swing riots in the south of England,
>and noted that there are few if any genuine 'ballad culture' ballads which
>specifically deal with Swing (unlike, say, the Luddite ballads from the
>north of England). Has anyone come across any? Alternatively, does anyone
>have a reasonable explanation? I'm excluding here specifically local
>ballads (such as 'The Owselbury Lads'), and aiming to find nationally or
>regionally circulated songs.
>
>More in hope than expectation...
I wonder if you should really expect such a thing. If you look
at history, you find that many events which seem like obvious
ballad sources have NOT been commemorated. To produce a song
requires a songwriter -- and a good enough songwriter to produce
something worthy of widespread dissemination.
Consider songs about American disasters. Many prove to
be very local and transitory. I think, for instance, of the
Meeks murders in the Ozarks (1894). This was so locally
sensational that *five* different ballads on the subject
were produced.
If you look at the record, though, all of these five appear
to have been short-lived, and only one shows signs of escaping
the Ozarks. And even it was collected only once outside its
home region.
Those five songs were collected because the event was not
too long before Belden and Randolph were collecting everything
they could find in the Ozarks. Equivalent collections from
1830s Britain are relatively rare. The songs may simply not
have been written, or not sung, or not collected.
The basic rule on songs about events seems to be, Don't expect
them. Just be glad when you find them.
--
Robert B. Waltz - - - - - - - - Ballad Index Editor
1078 Colne Street
Saint Paul, MN 55103-1348
651-489-1930 - - - - - - - - - - e-mail: [log in to unmask]
The Ballad Index Web Site:
http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/BalladIndexTOC.html
|