Andy: A response and perhaps addition to your research--not to how you can use
the index. In a paper presented at Swansea, I commented on Barbara Allen as a
working class ballad: "Barbara Allen, in that most collected [and according to
the index most referred to] of Child ballads, denies the sentiment the ballad
is filled with and coldly turns away from her dying lover. She has been "sligh
ted," which can be read only as a masculine indescretion about the conquest of
a working girl "dwelling" in the town, in a drinking bout at the local tavern,
injury enough to cause her to withhold her sympathy or love, which the ballad s
uggests might have saved the dying man. No knights and ladies here, but a work
ing class affair operating under the same rules as Earl Brand or Lord Thomas."
I also comment on Lamkin (Child 93) as turning to his only resource, the violen
ce endemic to his culture (and the Ozarks-Appalachian one from which I write),
when a lord refuses payment for Lamkin's work. The little cabin boy in The
Sweet Trinity (Ch 286) is of the same stripe.
I too find ballads a rich source of class distinction, from Child through his
American mid-South collectors, Beldon and Randolph. Donald Holliday, Southwest
Missouri State, English Dept, Springfield, MO 65804
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|