Oral Transmission of Folk Songs

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Wavy lines of music and an artistic interpretation of a fiddle

Attribution and Authorship

When I’m talking to students about oral transmission of folk songs, my take is – perhaps a bit controversially – that I believe a lot of songs were actually written by ONE person. Passed on, passed around, changed certainly, but I don’t buy the idea that they somehow ‘grew’ anonymously or collectively out of the soil. Maybe a group of pals did sometimes sit in the pub, stand in the fields or sit at their looms working up words or a tune, but as often as not, someone ‘wrote’ or devised that song. We just don’t always know who did.

Tune Variants

The other problem, of course, is variants. If you pass things round and they get picked up by ear, or someone writes it down – but not exactly how it was performed by the last person – the tunes change slightly. Or, in times-gone-by, gaps between crotchets got filled in by two stepwise quavers, or an ornament got written out in full. And how do you determine what the ‘right’ version is? I don’t think you can, often enough, though you can certainly try to identify the most common form of a tune.  Or if you’re able to, the earliest printed version. (If Hamish McHamish wrote a song in 1825, then the earliest printed version is most likely to be closest to his intentions. But unless he took his tune to the printer, or published it himself, you can’t be sure. )

The Ravages of Time

So we have at least a couple of centuries in which some tunes had the opportunity to change a multitude of times. (And that’s before an accompanist decided that G7 would be better than E minor at a particular point …) Try and compare a song in three different published collections. It won’t necessarily be exactly the same.

The Strong but Wrong Singer

I also use the modern-day example of my own church organist experience. You teach the congregation a new tune. A strong singer gets something wrong, and thereafter, try as you may, everyone sings Jemima’s version of the tune. That, too, could be construed as oral transmission in action!

(And as for Technology)

Today, we had a new song. The choir had studiously learned it, syncopated rhythms and all. We sang it first as an anthem. Later, we sang it with the congregation. Even the syncopations went moderately well, though I can’t say I was listening out for those who, ‘like sheep had gone astray’ (to quote Handel’s Messiah). There was only one problem: the verses appeared on the PowerPoint in the wrong order, and there was not a thing could be done about it once we’d started. When the choir sang it with the congregation, the latter sang what they could, or what they saw on the screen …. ! Maybe that’s why the syncopations went well – not everyone was actually singing.

All I can do is offer a corrected version of the lyrics for the PowerPoint, and we’ll try again another day. Who knows what might have changed in the meantime?

Meddle the Thistle Wha Daur! (Old Poem, New Thistle)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Thistle against a white wall with graffiti reading ;'Vibe'

Our neighbours have a high white wall. There’s a tall thistle growing there, and some young joker has scrawled above it, ‘VIBE’. I don’t know if they were consciously referencing the metaphor of a prickly thistle to represent Scottish, and most particularly, Glaswegian identity, but – hey, they wrote it directly right above that thistle, so who knows? I took a photo anyway – it was too good an opportunity to miss.

Every time I walk down the road or get into my car, there it is, and every time it reminds me of a poem by one of ‘my’ Scottish song-writers. He published his book of poems in 1894, and it’s well out of copyright, so I can share it with you. Just look at that last verse – there’s a proud, very nationalist Scot for you!

“I’m a Scot and I carena’ wha’ kens it, Juist meddle the thistle wha’ daur,

They’ll maybe get mair than they wantit, An Scotia be little the waur …”

To be honest, I’m more interested in the poet for his work as an Edinburgh music teacher, than as a poet or local historian, but it’s all part and parcel of who he was. Two different musicians set this song to music – one was really pretty uninspiring, but the other one’s not too bad! (Well… musically competent, not remotely ‘Scottish’ sounding, nor particularly memorable, but competent.)

The poet-teacher gets a significant mention in my forthcoming book, especially his views about children singing Scottish songs.

I have just sent the manuscript back to the editor with my own amendments to the copy-editing, so watch this space! Now to turn back to the question of the second index … which I drafted a few weeks ago, but which now needs fine-tuning before I get the proofs back to link my index-terms to the publisher’s page numbers!

Image by Ralph from Pixabay

Jenny Joseph: ‘When I am an old Woman, I shall wear Purple’

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

You probably know Jenny Joseph’s brilliant poem, Warning?  It’s on the Scottish Poetry Library website.   The kind of poem you remember from time to time, and laugh wrily.

Well, I thought I’d make a dress. It’d be nice for my last librarianly day.  I cut it out this afternoon.  At that point, I realised.

What Have I Done?

I never thought when I chose that fabric … Well, too late now. I’d better get a red hat.

The Elocution Teacher’s Daughter: a Moral Tale

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Before you get too excited about the idea of an immoral daughter, I should let you down gently: the moral doesn’t concern this young lady at all – rather, it’s a warning of what a few holiday hours’ google-searching can turn up!

Brown, Mather, 1761-1831; The Battle of the Nile: Destruction of 'L'Orient', 1 August 1798
Battle of the Nile, destruction of L’Orient 1.8.1798, by Mather Brown (Artuk.org)

All I wanted was to find out was the identity of the young lady music teacher who composed a particular song.  A colleague and I are working on a paper about women who composed Napoleonic songs, and I found another which looked chronologically timely, and potentially interesting.  Musically, it truly isn’t a great song in the slightest regard.  The lady didn’t appear to have much clue about harmony, harmonic progressions or satisfactory cadences, and expected her singer to reach a top B twice, not to mention five As!  The British Library has it online – I don’t think anyone will want to perform it, which leaves musicological detectives like me to pore over it and explore its context!

I was curious as to who she was, nonetheless, and equally curious as to the poet who supplied her with the words.  (He probably also published it, since it was later advertised in a novel that he’d published.)  It referenced the Battle of the Nile, and – in a nutshell – the poet believed he’d be able to forget his wounds when his beloved shed tears over them.  It’s a sentimental, human take on the horrors of war – I imagine our young composer would have enjoyed the thought that the protagonist was simply yearning for the sympathetic embrace of his sweetheart.

How the composer encountered the publisher/poet is something we’ll never know.  He was based in London, she in Edinburgh.  Along with literature and a bit of poetry by famous names, he had also already carved a reputation for himself as the pseudonymous “Thomas Little”, editing and publishing illustrated books about – ahem! – romantic love and reproductive anatomy.  (I’m trying not to attract the bots here!)  Shall we just say that the illustrations were detailed, and some years later, one of his books was found being circulated and well-thumbed by the occupants of a prison.  There was also a court-case about the Hansard reporting of this.  John Joseph Stockdale unknown artist image courtesy of British Museum Public DomainAnother of his disreputable triumphs was the publication in 1826 of  a very famous courtesan’s autobiography. Harriette Wilson had been one of Wellington’s mistresses.  So now you know where the phrase, “publish and be damned” comes from – Wellington said it when his identity was revealed.

What does this have to do with a young music teacher composing a setting of a Napoleonic song?  Absolutely nothing!  Her publisher/poet’s first troublesome publication had been released in 1811; perhaps she knew nothing about it.  Her own song was published five years later in 1816.  She married an Edinburgh artist in 1818, probably lived near Dollar in Clackmannanshire when he became art professor at Dollar Academy in 1824, and was widowed in 1829, with three young daughters to look after. (Their only son had died in infancy.)

During her lifetime – before and after marriage – she published ten musical pieces, at least a couple of hymn-tunes, and a melodrama.  Four of her pieces were settings of Scottish songs, and one of them was dedicated to Sir Walter Scott’s daughter, a distant relative.  It’s possible that one of the other songs may also have a Napoleonic theme, but until I go and see the sole surviving copy, I can’t really be sure.  I discovered that she was “a very fine harpist”, but the observation was unreferenced.  (As we all know, you need a CITATION!)

Howe Street Mrs GibsonOne of the hymns – appropriately named with an Edinburgh location – was “Howe Street”, which appeared in Sacred Harmony for the Use of St George’s Church Edinburgh.  You can find this book on IMSLP, or see an abc transcription of the tune on Jack Campin’s Embro, Embro website.  But – as final demonstration that I’ve probably spent too long on the internet today – you can also find the tune used for a psalm-like modern interpretation of a Georgian herbal by scientist Elizabeth Blackwell – with musical adaptation by Frances M. Lynch.  If our lady music teacher doesn’t turn in her grave at the exposure of her Napoleonic poet for what he was, then she will certainly rise to haunt the imaginative interpreters of her psalm-tune!

Curious Herbs (With Mary’s love without her fear)

And the moral of the tale? Sometimes it’s better to take the evidence at face-value.  A composer, a poet, a Napoleonic song – the rest makes for a great day’s Googling, but really has little bearing on the topic in hand!