Some of you have wondered, "Why learn to play the dulcimer, when you're such a cracking harper?"
Gosh, there are all sorts of reasons. In answer to the question, "Why don't you just play that on the harp?" I guess I would say this:
All instruments are different, and they all bring something different to whatever music you make with them. Because I play the wirestrung harp, I have to keep my fingernails relatively long on at least two fingers of my left hand, since one plays the wire harp with the fingernails. When I started playing the harp, I gave up playing the guitar. I miss an instrument I can make easy, strumming or fingerpicked chords on. What I do on the harp does not sound like a fretted, strummed instrument.
The wire harp, like the most traditional dulcimers out there (but unlike my dulcimer, which has a number of extra frets), is essentially a diatonic instrument. While you can do a lot with a wire harp tuned in C to bring things into other moods, a diatonic scale (the one that begins, 'do, re, mi') cannot be played on any key other than the key the harp is tuned in, in my case C. Retuning a 32-string harp to a different key requires changing at least four strings by a semitone even to make it to the next key up in the circle of fifths (from C to D, for example, all Fs need to be sharped). Wire harps do not come with sharping levers. Wire strings do not take being bent the way that nylon strings do; sharping blades or levers will crimp and break them.
Not all songs fit comfortably into my vocal range when played in C or A minor, and that's just a fact. When I'm singing something, I like it to be in the best possible range for my voice, and having an instrument capable of at least chording in three different keys from the get-go (even without all the extra frets) will make it easier for me to cover for whatever I like and to write different things that suit my voice. It'll also be possible for me to jam with people in the key of D if I want.
It's a different instrument. It's not a question of, "Why not just play that on the harp?" It's a question of "Why not branch out and try something new and different?" Of course there will be reasons why I choose to play one song on dulcimer or on harp, but I don't know if they need to be explicitly stated for folks, nor do I think they will be obvious if they aren't explicitly stated for folks.
Anyway. I'm still committed to playing cracking harp, since that is what I do best.
17 June 2007
06 June 2007
A musical what-if: Toward a series of Appalachian-ispired magical ballads
(First posted elsewhere, 27 July, 2006)
I'm doing research for what to me is a fascinating bit of musical 'what-if'.
First, let’s define an important term: ‘ballad’. For my purposes, the definition is narrow. This is from Kittredge’s introduction to Child.
A ballad is a song that tells a story, or -- to take the other point of view -- a story told in song. More formally, it may be defined as a short narrative poem, adapted for singing, simple in plot and metrical structure, divided into stanzas, and characterized by complete impersonality so far as the author or singer is concerned. This last trait is of the very first consequence in determining the quality or qualities which give the ballad its peculiar place in literature. A ballad has no author. At all events, it appears to have none.... Unlike other songs, it does not purport to give utterance to the feelings or the mood of the singer. The first-person does not occur at all, except in the speeches of the several characters. Finally, there are no comments or reflections by the narrator. He does not dissect or psychologize. He does not take sides for or against any of the dramatis personae.... If it were possible to conceive a tale as telling itself, without the instrumentality of a conscious speaker, the ballad would be such a tale.
--George Lyman Kittredge, Introduction to English and Scottish Popular Ballads, edited from the collection of Francis James Child. Houghton Mifflin,1904. p xi
This definition outlines what is, for me, the major distinction between a ballad and any song that tells a story. There is no personal reflection at all. It's not a story being told and then talked about by a person; there's no emotional involvement, unless you count moralistic warnings to young women as emotional involvement (and I have known a few people who might). ;)
Now, further to that above definition, there are ballads which are commonly called 'magical' ballads. These are stories in which magic or fairies or mythical or mystical creatures are a central and underlying element. Even some ballads that have magical-sounding names (The Elfin Knight, Lady Isobel and the Elf Knight) aren't all that magical when they're sung. Even Scarborough Fair, a version of the Elf Knight, for all its impossible task enumeration, does not, in the form that it's usually sung, have a central theme of magic or fantastic events. So when I use the term 'magical ballad', I'm using a fairly narrow definition. And in the Appalachians, ballads like 'House Carpenter', which has a ghostly theme but ends with a 'wages of sin' sort of lesson, don't really fall into the magical realm, because they are about the wages of sin.
As a preface, and some of you already know this, there's no solid (and not much tenuous) history of magical ballads surviving in America. Numerous theories have been posed for this: for me, the most believable is the one that says the people's lives were too hard and too basic and too grounded in focused protestant religion for those songs to carry on. While murder, abduction and incest ballads (no jokes about Southern US inbreeding, please; I really think I've heard them all) all thrived, because people were singing about things they knew, the big magical ballads just didn't have context in the Appalachians, and not really elsewhere in America, either. The 196(mumble) Jean Ritchie Songbook has one song in it with one line about a character being of elfin or fairy descent, and her notes on that song mention that the song collector who heard her sing that song was flabbergasted to hear a reference to magic and fairies in an Appalachian ballad.
But let's delve into the fascinating and compelling world of 'what-if'. What if, alongside the hard working life, alongside the deeply literal religious life, there had been a tradition of mystical ballads, taken, like the murder ballads and love ballads, from the countries all those people originally emigrated from? We know that generations of folk wisdom and folk magic did not die out completely-- many people who knew my Alabama grandmother, for example, swore she could cure warts with a potato.
What if the big magical ballads had survived in the Appalachians? What would they sound like? What motifs from their English and Scottish sources would they keep?
I will let you in on a little secret: I'm already working on Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, and I have been for awhile. Don't worry: I'll share the fruits of my labour; I'm just not comfortable sharing songs or extractions in progress publicly.
So, let's say I were thinking of doing a series of these, maybe a lecture's worth, a workshop's worth, maybe a concert's worth of alternate musical history. I know that wouldn't appeal to all of you. But might it appeal to some of you? What's your favourite magical ballad? Which magical ballad do you think is often overlooked? Is there one you've only seen the source words for but never heard? What kind of tune do you think those songs would have if they were moved to Appalachia?
I'm doing research for what to me is a fascinating bit of musical 'what-if'.
First, let’s define an important term: ‘ballad’. For my purposes, the definition is narrow. This is from Kittredge’s introduction to Child.
A ballad is a song that tells a story, or -- to take the other point of view -- a story told in song. More formally, it may be defined as a short narrative poem, adapted for singing, simple in plot and metrical structure, divided into stanzas, and characterized by complete impersonality so far as the author or singer is concerned. This last trait is of the very first consequence in determining the quality or qualities which give the ballad its peculiar place in literature. A ballad has no author. At all events, it appears to have none.... Unlike other songs, it does not purport to give utterance to the feelings or the mood of the singer. The first-person does not occur at all, except in the speeches of the several characters. Finally, there are no comments or reflections by the narrator. He does not dissect or psychologize. He does not take sides for or against any of the dramatis personae.... If it were possible to conceive a tale as telling itself, without the instrumentality of a conscious speaker, the ballad would be such a tale.
--George Lyman Kittredge, Introduction to English and Scottish Popular Ballads, edited from the collection of Francis James Child. Houghton Mifflin,1904. p xi
This definition outlines what is, for me, the major distinction between a ballad and any song that tells a story. There is no personal reflection at all. It's not a story being told and then talked about by a person; there's no emotional involvement, unless you count moralistic warnings to young women as emotional involvement (and I have known a few people who might). ;)
Now, further to that above definition, there are ballads which are commonly called 'magical' ballads. These are stories in which magic or fairies or mythical or mystical creatures are a central and underlying element. Even some ballads that have magical-sounding names (The Elfin Knight, Lady Isobel and the Elf Knight) aren't all that magical when they're sung. Even Scarborough Fair, a version of the Elf Knight, for all its impossible task enumeration, does not, in the form that it's usually sung, have a central theme of magic or fantastic events. So when I use the term 'magical ballad', I'm using a fairly narrow definition. And in the Appalachians, ballads like 'House Carpenter', which has a ghostly theme but ends with a 'wages of sin' sort of lesson, don't really fall into the magical realm, because they are about the wages of sin.
As a preface, and some of you already know this, there's no solid (and not much tenuous) history of magical ballads surviving in America. Numerous theories have been posed for this: for me, the most believable is the one that says the people's lives were too hard and too basic and too grounded in focused protestant religion for those songs to carry on. While murder, abduction and incest ballads (no jokes about Southern US inbreeding, please; I really think I've heard them all) all thrived, because people were singing about things they knew, the big magical ballads just didn't have context in the Appalachians, and not really elsewhere in America, either. The 196(mumble) Jean Ritchie Songbook has one song in it with one line about a character being of elfin or fairy descent, and her notes on that song mention that the song collector who heard her sing that song was flabbergasted to hear a reference to magic and fairies in an Appalachian ballad.
But let's delve into the fascinating and compelling world of 'what-if'. What if, alongside the hard working life, alongside the deeply literal religious life, there had been a tradition of mystical ballads, taken, like the murder ballads and love ballads, from the countries all those people originally emigrated from? We know that generations of folk wisdom and folk magic did not die out completely-- many people who knew my Alabama grandmother, for example, swore she could cure warts with a potato.
What if the big magical ballads had survived in the Appalachians? What would they sound like? What motifs from their English and Scottish sources would they keep?
I will let you in on a little secret: I'm already working on Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, and I have been for awhile. Don't worry: I'll share the fruits of my labour; I'm just not comfortable sharing songs or extractions in progress publicly.
So, let's say I were thinking of doing a series of these, maybe a lecture's worth, a workshop's worth, maybe a concert's worth of alternate musical history. I know that wouldn't appeal to all of you. But might it appeal to some of you? What's your favourite magical ballad? Which magical ballad do you think is often overlooked? Is there one you've only seen the source words for but never heard? What kind of tune do you think those songs would have if they were moved to Appalachia?
05 June 2007
More Ballad Extraction: Two Sisters
(Originally posted elsewhere, 17 January 2006)
I've been familiar with "Two Sisters" for a long time, and of course I love all the English versions with harps and stuff, but I fell in love with a "Wind and Rain" version I heard on an Armstrong Family CD years ago, and that's the version that stayed with me.
I don't particularly like "Bonny Swans" versions, although a musician friend sang me a "Binnorie" once that I liked very much.
The "Wind and Rain" version I learned so long ago was very short, and I knew there must be a little more to it. Now, some Appalachian versions add a tag where the miller/fellow who builds the instrument from her bones is hanged for her murder, and some add a version where the sister is executed because she is accused by the sister, but I'm not sure I like that ending. But it can be evocative when you add a little imagery.
Anyway, here's the version I'm working on learning:
Two Sisters/The Wind and the Rain
There were two sisters of a northern town
Oh the wind and the rain
One was fair and the other was brown
Oh the dreadful wind and rain
And they both had love of the miller’s son
Oh...
But he was fond of the fairer one
Oh...
So she pushed her into the river to drown
And watched her as she floated down
She floated ‘til she came to the miller’s pond
Dead on the water like a golden swan
And she came to rest on the river’s side
And her bones are washed by the rolling tide
Then along the road came a fiddler fair
And found her bones just a lying there
So he made a fiddle peg of her long finger-bone
He middle a fiddle peg of her long finger-bone
He strung his fiddle bow with her long yellow hair
He strung his fiddle bow with her long yellow hair
And he made a fiddle fiddle of her breastbone
He made a fiddle fiddle of her breastbone
But the only tune that the fiddle would play
The only tune that the fiddle would play
(almost entirely from the singing of Gillian Welch, from one of the Songcatcher CDs)
I've been familiar with "Two Sisters" for a long time, and of course I love all the English versions with harps and stuff, but I fell in love with a "Wind and Rain" version I heard on an Armstrong Family CD years ago, and that's the version that stayed with me.
I don't particularly like "Bonny Swans" versions, although a musician friend sang me a "Binnorie" once that I liked very much.
The "Wind and Rain" version I learned so long ago was very short, and I knew there must be a little more to it. Now, some Appalachian versions add a tag where the miller/fellow who builds the instrument from her bones is hanged for her murder, and some add a version where the sister is executed because she is accused by the sister, but I'm not sure I like that ending. But it can be evocative when you add a little imagery.
Anyway, here's the version I'm working on learning:
Two Sisters/The Wind and the Rain
There were two sisters of a northern town
Oh the wind and the rain
One was fair and the other was brown
Oh the dreadful wind and rain
And they both had love of the miller’s son
Oh...
But he was fond of the fairer one
Oh...
So she pushed her into the river to drown
And watched her as she floated down
She floated ‘til she came to the miller’s pond
Dead on the water like a golden swan
And she came to rest on the river’s side
And her bones are washed by the rolling tide
Then along the road came a fiddler fair
And found her bones just a lying there
So he made a fiddle peg of her long finger-bone
He middle a fiddle peg of her long finger-bone
He strung his fiddle bow with her long yellow hair
He strung his fiddle bow with her long yellow hair
And he made a fiddle fiddle of her breastbone
He made a fiddle fiddle of her breastbone
But the only tune that the fiddle would play
The only tune that the fiddle would play
(almost entirely from the singing of Gillian Welch, from one of the Songcatcher CDs)
04 June 2007
The Path to Little Sparrow
(Originally posted elsewhere, 25 January, 2005)
The Little Sparrow extraction was actually easier than The Shirt of Lace. Easier because there have been many versions of Little Sparrow collected in the last 120 years or so, easy because it's a common theme but no one has popularised a version of it that's become ubiquitous to the point of losing the others in the reverberation of that voice.
In 2001, Dolly Parton released a CD called Little Sparrow, a triumphant return to her Eastern Tennessee roots that contains some beautiful bluegrass standards and, notably, the best cover of a pop song I have ever heard realised by a country artist ("Shine," by Collective Soul, redone with fiddles instead of electric guitars, a masterpiece).
One thing that puzzled me, though, was the title track, "Little Sparrow." It was gorgeous, but wasn't it a version of "Come All You Fair and Tender Maidens?" The by-line is Dolly, though-- it must be her song. Except it's not. Here are the lyrics as printed on the album.
Little sparrow, little sparrow
Precious fragile little thing
Little sparrow, little sparrow
Flies so high and feels no pain
All ye maidens heed my warning
Never trust the hearts of men
They will crush you like a sparrow
Leaving you to never mend
They will vow to always love you
Swear no love but yours will do
Then they'll leave you for another
Break your little heart in two
Chorus:
Little sparrow, little sparrow
Precious fragile little thing
Little sparrow, little sparrow
Flies so high and feels no pain
If I were a little sparrow
O'er these mountains I would fly
I would find him, I would find him
Look into his lying eyes
I would flutter all around him
On my little sparrow wings
I would ask him, I would ask him
Why he let me love in vain
I am not a little sparrow
I am just the broken dream
Of a cold false-hearted lover
And his evil cunning scheme
Repeat Chorus
All ye maidens fair and tender
Never trust the hearts of men
They will crush you like a sparrow
Leaving you to never mend
Little sparrow, little sparrow
Oh the sorrow never ends
I want to believe the best of Dolly, really I do. But the tune she uses for Little Sparrow is so similar to the first one I found in W.K. McNeil's Southern Mountain Folksongs, I'm just not sure what to think. I remember praising her for being a fantastic songwriter when I first heard this, because it sounded so authentic. Of course it sounds authentic: it is authentic. Dolly has done what I do, only the liner notes say, written by Dolly Parton.
Here are the lyrics from Southern Mountain Folksongs, published in 1993. This version was collected by George Foss from Florence Shiflett, Wyatt's Mountain Virginia, in 1962.
Come all you maids and pretty fair maidens,
Take warning how you love young men;
They're like the bright star in a summer's morning
First appear and then are gone.
It's once I had a own true lover
Indeed I really thought he was my own;
Straight way he went and he courted another
And left me here to weep and moan.
I wish I was a little sparrow,
Or some of those birds that fly so high;
It's after my true love I would follow,
And when he talked I would be nigh.
While he was talking to some other,
A-telling her of many those fine things;
It's on his bosom I would flutter
With my little tender wings.
But now I ain't no little sparrow
Nor none of those birds that fly so high;
I'll go home full of grief and sorrow
And sing and pass the time by.
Some versions are about a swallow. The sparrow/swallow image does not predate 1900, according to McNeil. Authorities believe it may be based on the Scottish ballad "Jamie Douglas." A popular version of 1727 called "Waly Waly, Gin Love Be Bony" includes this verse, which also will make you think of "Waly Waly" or "The Water is Wide," or whatever name you know it by:
O waly, waly! but love be bony
A little time while it is new
But when 't is auld, it waxeth cauld,
And fades away like morning dew.
Here's another verse, often echoed in "Little Sparrow:"
But had I wist, before I kissed
That love had been sae ill to win,
I'd lock'd my heart in a case of gold
And pin'd it with a silver pin.
I didn't want to use the tune Dolly Parton used, even though I found it nearly note for note in McNeil. Instead, I wanted something more haunting, so I went to Cecil Sharp and Olive Dame Campbell, who collected several versions of this song.
Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (1)
O don't you remember on yon green mountain
Where I and you first fell in love
Where the little birds was sweetly singing
And even too, the little doves?
Come all ye fair and tender ladies,
Be careful how you court young men;
They're like a star of a summer's morning,
They'll first appear and then they're gone.
They'll tell to you some pleasing story
They'll declare to you they are your own;
Straightway they'll go and court some other
And leave you here in tears to mourn.
I wish I were a littel swallow
And I had wings and I could fly;
Straight after my true love I would follow,
When they'd be talking I'd be by.
But I am no little swallow
I have no wings, nor I can't fly,
And after my true love I can't follow
And when they're talking I'll set and cry.
---
---
There's many a dark and rainy morning
Turns out to be a pretty day.
Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (2)
Come all you young and tender ladies
Take warning how you court young men
They're like a bright star in a cloudy morning
They'll first appear and then they're gone
They'll tell to you some lovely story
And tell you their love is true
Straightway to some other girl and court her
And that's the love they have for you
I wish I were a little sparrow
Had sparrow's wings and I could fly
I would fly away to my false true-love
And while he would talk I would deny.
But I am not a little sparrow
Got no wings nor I can't fly
I will sit right down in grief and sorrow
And try to pass my troubles by
If I had knowed before I courted
That love had been so hard to win
I'd locked my heart with the keys of golden
And pinned it down with a silver pin.
There are two other very similar versions in Sharp/Campbell.
The tune I chose for my version is the tune for the second version here, a pentatonic tune that I liked very much because resolves in what feels like a major key to the modern listener, but there's a haunting quality to the melody because of its modal structure.
Oddly, Niles doesn't mention this song, although McNeil says it's very common in the southeastern US.
Here is the version I ended up with.
Little Sparrow
(Sharp/Campbell 'b'; pentatonic, home G)
Come all you fair and tender ladies
Take warning how you court young men
They're like a bright star in a summer's morning
They'll first appear and then they're gone
It's once I had my own true lover
Indeed I thought he was my own
Straight way he went and he loved another
And left me here to weep and mourn
I wish I were a little sparrow
Had sparrow's wings and I could fly
After my true love I would follow
And when he talked I would deny
When he was talking to some other
A-telling her those pretty things
It's on his bosom I would flutter
With my little tender wings
But I am not a little sparrow
I've got no wings and I can't fly
I will go home full of grief and sorrow
I'll sing my troubles all goodbye
If I had known before I courted
Love would be so hard to win
I'd-a locked my hear with keys of gold
And pinned it down with a silver pin
Come all you fair and tender ladies
Take warning how you court young men
They're like a bright star on a summer's morning
They'll first appear and then they're gone
I wanted to include as many sparrow verses as I could. I have an affinity for sparrows.
So there you go.
The Little Sparrow extraction was actually easier than The Shirt of Lace. Easier because there have been many versions of Little Sparrow collected in the last 120 years or so, easy because it's a common theme but no one has popularised a version of it that's become ubiquitous to the point of losing the others in the reverberation of that voice.
In 2001, Dolly Parton released a CD called Little Sparrow, a triumphant return to her Eastern Tennessee roots that contains some beautiful bluegrass standards and, notably, the best cover of a pop song I have ever heard realised by a country artist ("Shine," by Collective Soul, redone with fiddles instead of electric guitars, a masterpiece).
One thing that puzzled me, though, was the title track, "Little Sparrow." It was gorgeous, but wasn't it a version of "Come All You Fair and Tender Maidens?" The by-line is Dolly, though-- it must be her song. Except it's not. Here are the lyrics as printed on the album.
Little sparrow, little sparrow
Precious fragile little thing
Little sparrow, little sparrow
Flies so high and feels no pain
All ye maidens heed my warning
Never trust the hearts of men
They will crush you like a sparrow
Leaving you to never mend
They will vow to always love you
Swear no love but yours will do
Then they'll leave you for another
Break your little heart in two
Chorus:
Little sparrow, little sparrow
Precious fragile little thing
Little sparrow, little sparrow
Flies so high and feels no pain
If I were a little sparrow
O'er these mountains I would fly
I would find him, I would find him
Look into his lying eyes
I would flutter all around him
On my little sparrow wings
I would ask him, I would ask him
Why he let me love in vain
I am not a little sparrow
I am just the broken dream
Of a cold false-hearted lover
And his evil cunning scheme
Repeat Chorus
All ye maidens fair and tender
Never trust the hearts of men
They will crush you like a sparrow
Leaving you to never mend
Little sparrow, little sparrow
Oh the sorrow never ends
I want to believe the best of Dolly, really I do. But the tune she uses for Little Sparrow is so similar to the first one I found in W.K. McNeil's Southern Mountain Folksongs, I'm just not sure what to think. I remember praising her for being a fantastic songwriter when I first heard this, because it sounded so authentic. Of course it sounds authentic: it is authentic. Dolly has done what I do, only the liner notes say, written by Dolly Parton.
Here are the lyrics from Southern Mountain Folksongs, published in 1993. This version was collected by George Foss from Florence Shiflett, Wyatt's Mountain Virginia, in 1962.
Come all you maids and pretty fair maidens,
Take warning how you love young men;
They're like the bright star in a summer's morning
First appear and then are gone.
It's once I had a own true lover
Indeed I really thought he was my own;
Straight way he went and he courted another
And left me here to weep and moan.
I wish I was a little sparrow,
Or some of those birds that fly so high;
It's after my true love I would follow,
And when he talked I would be nigh.
While he was talking to some other,
A-telling her of many those fine things;
It's on his bosom I would flutter
With my little tender wings.
But now I ain't no little sparrow
Nor none of those birds that fly so high;
I'll go home full of grief and sorrow
And sing and pass the time by.
Some versions are about a swallow. The sparrow/swallow image does not predate 1900, according to McNeil. Authorities believe it may be based on the Scottish ballad "Jamie Douglas." A popular version of 1727 called "Waly Waly, Gin Love Be Bony" includes this verse, which also will make you think of "Waly Waly" or "The Water is Wide," or whatever name you know it by:
O waly, waly! but love be bony
A little time while it is new
But when 't is auld, it waxeth cauld,
And fades away like morning dew.
Here's another verse, often echoed in "Little Sparrow:"
But had I wist, before I kissed
That love had been sae ill to win,
I'd lock'd my heart in a case of gold
And pin'd it with a silver pin.
I didn't want to use the tune Dolly Parton used, even though I found it nearly note for note in McNeil. Instead, I wanted something more haunting, so I went to Cecil Sharp and Olive Dame Campbell, who collected several versions of this song.
Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (1)
O don't you remember on yon green mountain
Where I and you first fell in love
Where the little birds was sweetly singing
And even too, the little doves?
Come all ye fair and tender ladies,
Be careful how you court young men;
They're like a star of a summer's morning,
They'll first appear and then they're gone.
They'll tell to you some pleasing story
They'll declare to you they are your own;
Straightway they'll go and court some other
And leave you here in tears to mourn.
I wish I were a littel swallow
And I had wings and I could fly;
Straight after my true love I would follow,
When they'd be talking I'd be by.
But I am no little swallow
I have no wings, nor I can't fly,
And after my true love I can't follow
And when they're talking I'll set and cry.
---
---
There's many a dark and rainy morning
Turns out to be a pretty day.
Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (2)
Come all you young and tender ladies
Take warning how you court young men
They're like a bright star in a cloudy morning
They'll first appear and then they're gone
They'll tell to you some lovely story
And tell you their love is true
Straightway to some other girl and court her
And that's the love they have for you
I wish I were a little sparrow
Had sparrow's wings and I could fly
I would fly away to my false true-love
And while he would talk I would deny.
But I am not a little sparrow
Got no wings nor I can't fly
I will sit right down in grief and sorrow
And try to pass my troubles by
If I had knowed before I courted
That love had been so hard to win
I'd locked my heart with the keys of golden
And pinned it down with a silver pin.
There are two other very similar versions in Sharp/Campbell.
The tune I chose for my version is the tune for the second version here, a pentatonic tune that I liked very much because resolves in what feels like a major key to the modern listener, but there's a haunting quality to the melody because of its modal structure.
Oddly, Niles doesn't mention this song, although McNeil says it's very common in the southeastern US.
Here is the version I ended up with.
Little Sparrow
(Sharp/Campbell 'b'; pentatonic, home G)
Come all you fair and tender ladies
Take warning how you court young men
They're like a bright star in a summer's morning
They'll first appear and then they're gone
It's once I had my own true lover
Indeed I thought he was my own
Straight way he went and he loved another
And left me here to weep and mourn
I wish I were a little sparrow
Had sparrow's wings and I could fly
After my true love I would follow
And when he talked I would deny
When he was talking to some other
A-telling her those pretty things
It's on his bosom I would flutter
With my little tender wings
But I am not a little sparrow
I've got no wings and I can't fly
I will go home full of grief and sorrow
I'll sing my troubles all goodbye
If I had known before I courted
Love would be so hard to win
I'd-a locked my hear with keys of gold
And pinned it down with a silver pin
Come all you fair and tender ladies
Take warning how you court young men
They're like a bright star on a summer's morning
They'll first appear and then they're gone
I wanted to include as many sparrow verses as I could. I have an affinity for sparrows.
So there you go.
03 June 2007
Ballad Extraction: It isn't really like Dentistry, Promise. Or maybe it is....
(Originally posted elsewhere, 25 January, 2005)
I come from two arrested singing families. By this, I don't mean my parents spent time in the slammer; they were both fairly mild-mannered people who would probably be quite surprised to see where I am and what I'm doing these days.
I mean that my grandparents on both sides had very musical families, but my mother and father were not themselves musical. They sang to me when I was a kid of course, and it was hard to stop me from singing pretty much from the day I was born, or at least that's what my mom used to say to people. My dad, who often said he never picked up a musical instrument except to move it off the chair he was about to sit in, had little use for the music his brothers and parents loved. He liked Nat King Cole and blues and jazz, and he used to work swapping 78rpm records out of juke boxes in Phenix City, Alabama. He ended up with a nice collection of lovingly worn 78s, which unfortunately got lost in my mom's move from South Carolina to Alabama.
It was hard to get my grandmother on my mom's side to sing. She'd been told by a teacher that she had a terrible voice. And she didn't, really. She had an ordinary voice. One day, I'll write more about how horrible school music teachers and the perfect-to-perform mentality have done their part to help destroy joyful music and the folk tradition some other time.
Anyway. I had two grandmothers, like most people who came from the Cleaver family. I had a grandmother Knighton (dad's side) and a grandmother Sanford (mom's side). Now, Grandmother Knighton was born Hill, and she came from a family that traveled all over the southeast but had its roots in Asheville, North Carolina. Grandmother Sanford was born Graham, and she'd lived all her life in Alabama but had extended family in Arkansas. Both grandmothers were only one or two generations removed from the mountains.
So while it was hard to get my Grandmother S to sing, she would occasionally oblige, sometimes with Hank Williams and sometimes with things a little older and wilder. My Grandmother K was a lot more willing to sing, and so was everybody else in her kitchen, when I visited her kitchen. Because she didn't like my mother, we didn't visit her very often. Although there were things about her I didn't like or understand, I would have loved to hear more of her singing and the singing of my uncles there in the back yard, too. She was one of those ladies who swept her back yard, and she had a room in her house that I distinctly remember as being completely filled with wire clothes hangers. Really.
My dad would sing to me. Mostly he sang pop songs from the 40s and 50s, but sometimes he'd reach back and sing something older. And all those songs got buried in my head, while I pursued choral music and classical training and got scholarships to places and won contests and stood for juries with people who thought, "How sweet, that little southern girl wants to be a real singer!"
A year at Interlochen taught me that I was really not cut out for a classical music career, and that's the only nice thing I can say about that. I learned a lot there, very little of it applicable to anything I do now, with the possible exception of some literature and poetry writing classes that served me very well.
So I went home to South Carolina, and then I spent a year at Clemson University. Going to Clemson was a poor decision, but the TA (teaching assistant) I had for my freshman English class (an honours survey; I tested out of the usual freshman English class) was no mistake. Aside from giving me a very nice cat at the end of the year, he was interested in folklore, and one of the things he gave our class to analyze was a ballad. It was Barbara Allen, and he talked about how it and most ballads like it came from England and Scotland, with side trips into Ireland and occasionally other places in Europe. I read the ballad, read the story, and it brought back a fragment of my grandmother Knighton's singing. I said, after class, "Mike, this is a song I learned from my grandmother, and she doesn't have anything to do with Scotland."
So after a semilong conversation about my grandmother, the TA took me down into the library and showed me some stuff about Appalachian versions of English and Scottish ballads. Now, I was already fascinated by British Isles culture, and this new link just served to whet my appetite more. I started reading a lot about ballads and balladry, collecting recordings, and that was that.
But really, for me, we're not talking about coming from a 'singing family,' like a Jean Ritchie. No; I come from an arrrested singing family, meaning the singingness has skipped a couple of generations. My grandmother sometimes only remembered a verse or two, and I only remember fragments of that.
So, from those broken memories, how do you rebuild a ballad and make it your own? I will tell you how I do it, and you may draw your own conclusions about me. I do not pass these songs off as songs my grandmother taught me. I do not lie about my background and say I grew up listening to old timers singing Lord Bateman late at night at the hootenanny up on the mountain after all the clogging was done. I have read several accounts of Jean Ritchie putting together several ballad fragments or changing words and adding bits to tunes to make them her own. She talks about this as a tradition in her family, and I think it's a perfectly valid part of the folk process. You will have to give me your definition of authenticity if you want to tell me that what I do isn't authentic, and you'll have to work hard to convince me that I'm not perfectly within the folk tradition. And if you want to go on at me about 'definitive' versions of traditional songs, go somewhere else, because I don't have that argument anymore. Definitive versions of traditional songs do not exist.
Because I don't have a rich oral tradition to draw on, I work from books. My sources are the usual: Child, Bronson, John Jacob Niles, Jean Ritchie, Sharp/Campbell, Lomax sometimes, Kennedy sometimes.
I have worked through ballad references enough to have passing familiarity with a lot of it. I won't say all; I don't think you really can be familiar with all that material: there's just too much. So when I'm looking for a new ballad, I go through, say, Niles first, because Niles was an Appalachian collector in the first half of the 20th century. He probably heard versions of ballads that either of my grandmothers might have heard. And I say, for example, "I'd like to work up an Appalachian version of 'The Elfin Knight' (Scarborough Fair)." So I see which tunes Niles found, where he found them, and then we work out from there. I say, "Let's do something modal, something haunting; there are too many raises and major resolutions in the version everybody knows (popularized by Paul Simon)." So I look for a tune that strikes my fancy. I play it on the harp, or I plug it into a music transcription program so I can listen to it, transpose it, play around with it. When I find the tune that most reminds me of something I might have heard in childhood or that moves me most, I look at the lyrics. Because so many of these ballads come down in fragments or variant versions, often I find tunes to which the singer could only remember a few verses. But that's OK, because I can sculpt the ballad out of what I have.
So let's say, using the Elfin Knight example, that I have found a natural minor tune I really like, in Niles, collected in Kentucky in 1908.
Lyrically, however, it's weak and doesn't put the ballad's story across. Here are the original lyrics:
Oh, water where there is no well,
Viny flow'r and rosemay tree,
Water where there is not well,
What name will my true love tell?
Viny flow'r and rosemay tree
(repeated lines are in every verse)
Oh, valley where no sun do fall,
Valley where no sun do fall,
Grows no crop no spring, no fall
If you should wash my linsey dress,
If you wash my linsey dress
And hang it in my mother's press
If you should wash my shirt of lace
If you wash my shirt of lace,
Be sure the buttons be in place
And then my acre 'side the sea,
Then my acre 'side the sea,
Will be halved up, my love, with thee.
So lyrically, this doesn't do what the ballad traditionally does. It's often a dialogue between the elfin knight and a lady, who assign a set of seemingly impossible lovers' tasks to one another before they can be revealed as one another's true loves. And it doesn't scan the way the ballad does in so many versions. There are five lines in each verse in the tune I chose, and rather than the changing lines being separated by the refrain lines as in the example stanza from the common version of the ballad below, two of the changing lines are sung after one another, so they must seem to follow a little more smoothly than in the common version.
Here is that example stanza, from the version many of us know:
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there:
She once was a true love of mine.
So I needed to weave a version of this ballad, to this tune, that kept the original story. The two things I really liked about this set of lyrics were the plaintive 'search for true love' theme put out in the beginning, and the repeated lines themselves, which have a much more Appalachian feel to them than the 'parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme' line in the version everybody knows.
I decided to make it a dialogue of tasks but not really mention any characters, although that takes it away from the distance that many ballads have. I began to read it as a spell to make one's true love appear. I considered it as a riddle, a ritual, all kinds of lovers' tasks. And a projection.
And this, in the end, is what I came up with.
The Shirt of Lace
Oh, water where there is no well
Viny flow'r and rosemay tree
Water where there is no well,
What name will my true love tell?
Viny flow'r and rosemay tree
My true love can make a lacy shirt
My love can make a lacy shirt
Without no seam nor needlework
My true love can clear an acre's land
My love can clear an acre's land
Between the water and the sand
My true love can wash my shirt of lace
My love can wash my shirt of lace
Without no soap nor water base
My true love can plow that land with thorn
My love can plow that land with thorn
And plant it with one peppercorn
My true love can dry that shirt of mine
My love can dry that shirt of mine
From a leaf without tree or vine
My true love can reap my land with leather
My love can reap my land with leather
And tie it all up in a sparrow's feather
I will wear my shirt and walk my land
I'll wear my shirt and walk my land
It's then I'll hold my true love's hand
So that's how I extract ballads. Yes, I fit all those lyrics to that tune. The words are all crafted and put in their places by me. But that doesn't mean this is my song. This is a ballad that I have taken out of tunes and texts and fiddled with until it suited me, and when I sing it, I won't ever insinuate that I wrote it, not even a little bit. It's not mine. It's not really my grandmother's. I think it's Kentucky's. Or maybe Asheville's. It belongs more to the mountain than to me.
If people are interested, I'll post the other extraction I did this past week, a version of "Little Sparrow," which is an Appalachian interpretation of "Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies."
I come from two arrested singing families. By this, I don't mean my parents spent time in the slammer; they were both fairly mild-mannered people who would probably be quite surprised to see where I am and what I'm doing these days.
I mean that my grandparents on both sides had very musical families, but my mother and father were not themselves musical. They sang to me when I was a kid of course, and it was hard to stop me from singing pretty much from the day I was born, or at least that's what my mom used to say to people. My dad, who often said he never picked up a musical instrument except to move it off the chair he was about to sit in, had little use for the music his brothers and parents loved. He liked Nat King Cole and blues and jazz, and he used to work swapping 78rpm records out of juke boxes in Phenix City, Alabama. He ended up with a nice collection of lovingly worn 78s, which unfortunately got lost in my mom's move from South Carolina to Alabama.
It was hard to get my grandmother on my mom's side to sing. She'd been told by a teacher that she had a terrible voice. And she didn't, really. She had an ordinary voice. One day, I'll write more about how horrible school music teachers and the perfect-to-perform mentality have done their part to help destroy joyful music and the folk tradition some other time.
Anyway. I had two grandmothers, like most people who came from the Cleaver family. I had a grandmother Knighton (dad's side) and a grandmother Sanford (mom's side). Now, Grandmother Knighton was born Hill, and she came from a family that traveled all over the southeast but had its roots in Asheville, North Carolina. Grandmother Sanford was born Graham, and she'd lived all her life in Alabama but had extended family in Arkansas. Both grandmothers were only one or two generations removed from the mountains.
So while it was hard to get my Grandmother S to sing, she would occasionally oblige, sometimes with Hank Williams and sometimes with things a little older and wilder. My Grandmother K was a lot more willing to sing, and so was everybody else in her kitchen, when I visited her kitchen. Because she didn't like my mother, we didn't visit her very often. Although there were things about her I didn't like or understand, I would have loved to hear more of her singing and the singing of my uncles there in the back yard, too. She was one of those ladies who swept her back yard, and she had a room in her house that I distinctly remember as being completely filled with wire clothes hangers. Really.
My dad would sing to me. Mostly he sang pop songs from the 40s and 50s, but sometimes he'd reach back and sing something older. And all those songs got buried in my head, while I pursued choral music and classical training and got scholarships to places and won contests and stood for juries with people who thought, "How sweet, that little southern girl wants to be a real singer!"
A year at Interlochen taught me that I was really not cut out for a classical music career, and that's the only nice thing I can say about that. I learned a lot there, very little of it applicable to anything I do now, with the possible exception of some literature and poetry writing classes that served me very well.
So I went home to South Carolina, and then I spent a year at Clemson University. Going to Clemson was a poor decision, but the TA (teaching assistant) I had for my freshman English class (an honours survey; I tested out of the usual freshman English class) was no mistake. Aside from giving me a very nice cat at the end of the year, he was interested in folklore, and one of the things he gave our class to analyze was a ballad. It was Barbara Allen, and he talked about how it and most ballads like it came from England and Scotland, with side trips into Ireland and occasionally other places in Europe. I read the ballad, read the story, and it brought back a fragment of my grandmother Knighton's singing. I said, after class, "Mike, this is a song I learned from my grandmother, and she doesn't have anything to do with Scotland."
So after a semilong conversation about my grandmother, the TA took me down into the library and showed me some stuff about Appalachian versions of English and Scottish ballads. Now, I was already fascinated by British Isles culture, and this new link just served to whet my appetite more. I started reading a lot about ballads and balladry, collecting recordings, and that was that.
But really, for me, we're not talking about coming from a 'singing family,' like a Jean Ritchie. No; I come from an arrrested singing family, meaning the singingness has skipped a couple of generations. My grandmother sometimes only remembered a verse or two, and I only remember fragments of that.
So, from those broken memories, how do you rebuild a ballad and make it your own? I will tell you how I do it, and you may draw your own conclusions about me. I do not pass these songs off as songs my grandmother taught me. I do not lie about my background and say I grew up listening to old timers singing Lord Bateman late at night at the hootenanny up on the mountain after all the clogging was done. I have read several accounts of Jean Ritchie putting together several ballad fragments or changing words and adding bits to tunes to make them her own. She talks about this as a tradition in her family, and I think it's a perfectly valid part of the folk process. You will have to give me your definition of authenticity if you want to tell me that what I do isn't authentic, and you'll have to work hard to convince me that I'm not perfectly within the folk tradition. And if you want to go on at me about 'definitive' versions of traditional songs, go somewhere else, because I don't have that argument anymore. Definitive versions of traditional songs do not exist.
Because I don't have a rich oral tradition to draw on, I work from books. My sources are the usual: Child, Bronson, John Jacob Niles, Jean Ritchie, Sharp/Campbell, Lomax sometimes, Kennedy sometimes.
I have worked through ballad references enough to have passing familiarity with a lot of it. I won't say all; I don't think you really can be familiar with all that material: there's just too much. So when I'm looking for a new ballad, I go through, say, Niles first, because Niles was an Appalachian collector in the first half of the 20th century. He probably heard versions of ballads that either of my grandmothers might have heard. And I say, for example, "I'd like to work up an Appalachian version of 'The Elfin Knight' (Scarborough Fair)." So I see which tunes Niles found, where he found them, and then we work out from there. I say, "Let's do something modal, something haunting; there are too many raises and major resolutions in the version everybody knows (popularized by Paul Simon)." So I look for a tune that strikes my fancy. I play it on the harp, or I plug it into a music transcription program so I can listen to it, transpose it, play around with it. When I find the tune that most reminds me of something I might have heard in childhood or that moves me most, I look at the lyrics. Because so many of these ballads come down in fragments or variant versions, often I find tunes to which the singer could only remember a few verses. But that's OK, because I can sculpt the ballad out of what I have.
So let's say, using the Elfin Knight example, that I have found a natural minor tune I really like, in Niles, collected in Kentucky in 1908.
Lyrically, however, it's weak and doesn't put the ballad's story across. Here are the original lyrics:
Oh, water where there is no well,
Viny flow'r and rosemay tree,
Water where there is not well,
What name will my true love tell?
Viny flow'r and rosemay tree
(repeated lines are in every verse)
Oh, valley where no sun do fall,
Valley where no sun do fall,
Grows no crop no spring, no fall
If you should wash my linsey dress,
If you wash my linsey dress
And hang it in my mother's press
If you should wash my shirt of lace
If you wash my shirt of lace,
Be sure the buttons be in place
And then my acre 'side the sea,
Then my acre 'side the sea,
Will be halved up, my love, with thee.
So lyrically, this doesn't do what the ballad traditionally does. It's often a dialogue between the elfin knight and a lady, who assign a set of seemingly impossible lovers' tasks to one another before they can be revealed as one another's true loves. And it doesn't scan the way the ballad does in so many versions. There are five lines in each verse in the tune I chose, and rather than the changing lines being separated by the refrain lines as in the example stanza from the common version of the ballad below, two of the changing lines are sung after one another, so they must seem to follow a little more smoothly than in the common version.
Here is that example stanza, from the version many of us know:
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there:
She once was a true love of mine.
So I needed to weave a version of this ballad, to this tune, that kept the original story. The two things I really liked about this set of lyrics were the plaintive 'search for true love' theme put out in the beginning, and the repeated lines themselves, which have a much more Appalachian feel to them than the 'parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme' line in the version everybody knows.
I decided to make it a dialogue of tasks but not really mention any characters, although that takes it away from the distance that many ballads have. I began to read it as a spell to make one's true love appear. I considered it as a riddle, a ritual, all kinds of lovers' tasks. And a projection.
And this, in the end, is what I came up with.
The Shirt of Lace
Oh, water where there is no well
Viny flow'r and rosemay tree
Water where there is no well,
What name will my true love tell?
Viny flow'r and rosemay tree
My true love can make a lacy shirt
My love can make a lacy shirt
Without no seam nor needlework
My true love can clear an acre's land
My love can clear an acre's land
Between the water and the sand
My true love can wash my shirt of lace
My love can wash my shirt of lace
Without no soap nor water base
My true love can plow that land with thorn
My love can plow that land with thorn
And plant it with one peppercorn
My true love can dry that shirt of mine
My love can dry that shirt of mine
From a leaf without tree or vine
My true love can reap my land with leather
My love can reap my land with leather
And tie it all up in a sparrow's feather
I will wear my shirt and walk my land
I'll wear my shirt and walk my land
It's then I'll hold my true love's hand
So that's how I extract ballads. Yes, I fit all those lyrics to that tune. The words are all crafted and put in their places by me. But that doesn't mean this is my song. This is a ballad that I have taken out of tunes and texts and fiddled with until it suited me, and when I sing it, I won't ever insinuate that I wrote it, not even a little bit. It's not mine. It's not really my grandmother's. I think it's Kentucky's. Or maybe Asheville's. It belongs more to the mountain than to me.
If people are interested, I'll post the other extraction I did this past week, a version of "Little Sparrow," which is an Appalachian interpretation of "Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies."
Real Silver Strings?
You bet. The bottom five strings on my Witcher lap harp (it has 24 strings) are silver. A few months ago, I broke two of them at once because I wasn't being careful, and so finally I have emailed Ann Heymann about some replacement strings. I've ordered the full set of five bottom strings, and they were shipped yesterday, hoorah!
When I first heard about the practise of putting silver strings on wirestrung harps, I scoffed. There are various references in Irish and Scottish poetry and balladry to harps being strung with gold and/or silver, but most of my teachers at the time (ten plus years ago now) were hard-line fans of brass harp strings, and only one of them (Ann) was really experimenting with strings made of precious metals. Lots of people were using twisted or catlined brass strings; I remember Bill Taylor once had me braid my hair into a catline to explain catlines to a class full of beginning wire harp students at either an Amherst Early Music gathering or the Edinburgh Harp Festival, and recent correspondence with Paul Dooley (who's probably making my next harp, ohyeah!) indicates that there are still plenty of reasons to use wound strings (he'd like to put them on the bass of my new harp).
Anyway, I'd never even thought of putting silver strings on my Witcher, although I'd complained from time to time about the thuddiness of those bottom strings. When my friend (and a former student who has progressed far beyond needing me for a teacher) Beth had a single silver string delivered to me shortly after her first trip to see me and my family in England, I was blown away. First of all, I figured it must have cost a mint to get a silver string for my harp. And then there was what happened when I put the string on. Suddenly, the lower "C" on my harp didn't sound sour anymore; it sounded like music! I was blown away, and last summer at Scoil na gClairseach I got four more strings from Ann herself. Suddenly I was excited about my small harp again. It's always been a beautiful instrument, but the moment I heard the way those five silver strings sounded, all I wanted to do was play that harp. Yum.
So since February, I've been dealing with the brass strings I had to put back onto the Witcher to replace the two silver strings. They'll be here in a couple of weeks!
When I first heard about the practise of putting silver strings on wirestrung harps, I scoffed. There are various references in Irish and Scottish poetry and balladry to harps being strung with gold and/or silver, but most of my teachers at the time (ten plus years ago now) were hard-line fans of brass harp strings, and only one of them (Ann) was really experimenting with strings made of precious metals. Lots of people were using twisted or catlined brass strings; I remember Bill Taylor once had me braid my hair into a catline to explain catlines to a class full of beginning wire harp students at either an Amherst Early Music gathering or the Edinburgh Harp Festival, and recent correspondence with Paul Dooley (who's probably making my next harp, ohyeah!) indicates that there are still plenty of reasons to use wound strings (he'd like to put them on the bass of my new harp).
Anyway, I'd never even thought of putting silver strings on my Witcher, although I'd complained from time to time about the thuddiness of those bottom strings. When my friend (and a former student who has progressed far beyond needing me for a teacher) Beth had a single silver string delivered to me shortly after her first trip to see me and my family in England, I was blown away. First of all, I figured it must have cost a mint to get a silver string for my harp. And then there was what happened when I put the string on. Suddenly, the lower "C" on my harp didn't sound sour anymore; it sounded like music! I was blown away, and last summer at Scoil na gClairseach I got four more strings from Ann herself. Suddenly I was excited about my small harp again. It's always been a beautiful instrument, but the moment I heard the way those five silver strings sounded, all I wanted to do was play that harp. Yum.
So since February, I've been dealing with the brass strings I had to put back onto the Witcher to replace the two silver strings. They'll be here in a couple of weeks!
Geeking on Ballad Singing
(Originally posted elsewhere, June, 2006)
Jean Ritchie says everybody in her family would find their own way to sing a song, even when many elements remained the same. When I first read that, it made me think about a class I had in Edinburgh years ago, a class that centred around storytelling with the harp.
Now, every storyteller will tell you that the key to telling a good story is not to memorise it exactly, not to tell it the same way exactly. Because if you try to memorise it, it will come out as if by rote, and your story won't be as interesting as it could be. I read somewhere once that harper William Jackson says his way of mastering a tune arrangement is not to have an arrangement. Total immersion in the subject, the song, the story, the tune, knowing it in your bones, that's the way I tell stories, it's the way I play the harp-- and it's the way I sing.
Sure, songs, rhyming songs, short songs, they're made to be remembered exactly. But what about big, long ballads? Like a story, every ballad has important elements that need to appear in each iteration of the ballad. Just like the line in Goldilocks and the Three Bears where Papa Bear's porridge is too hot, Mama Bear's porridge is too cold, and Baby Bear's porridge is just right, there are lines in ballads as in stories that listeners are waiting for. Sometimes these show up as repeated lines that they can sing along with you ("Oh, the wind and the rain," for example, or perhaps "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme," for another), and sometimes they show up as plot elements, like the fact that the elf queen's horse's mane must have a number of silver bells hanging from it, or the idea that in their journey to Fair Elfland, True Thomas and the elfin lady have to go over a river of tears and a river of blood, and they have to pass through an orchard of cursed apples and come to an intersection with four roads: the one they came from, the road to righteousness (heaven), the road to folly (hell), and the road to Elfinland. These are all story elements, and it might be easier to remember them in a particular order, but is it important that it all be the same, all the time, every time?
When I sing Barbara Allen, for example, there are some plot points that I always keep in, some plot points that I never put in, and some that come and go. I always sing about the bells tolling, but I don't always put in the part about Barbara Allen's mother dying. I don't ever sing the bit where she asks to look at his dead body, however: I just don't like that part.
I really treat singing ballads the same way I treat telling stories. I repeat some of the same phrases, but not all of them, every time. I like ballads with repeating lines: they're good mnemonics, and if you're lucky you can get people to sing along with them. But I don't sing them the same way, and I don't set out to sing them the same way. I don't learn ballads by rote. I learn them the way I learn stories, by motif and plotline, and then I just kind of let them take care of themselves.
Jean Ritchie says everybody in her family would find their own way to sing a song, even when many elements remained the same. When I first read that, it made me think about a class I had in Edinburgh years ago, a class that centred around storytelling with the harp.
Now, every storyteller will tell you that the key to telling a good story is not to memorise it exactly, not to tell it the same way exactly. Because if you try to memorise it, it will come out as if by rote, and your story won't be as interesting as it could be. I read somewhere once that harper William Jackson says his way of mastering a tune arrangement is not to have an arrangement. Total immersion in the subject, the song, the story, the tune, knowing it in your bones, that's the way I tell stories, it's the way I play the harp-- and it's the way I sing.
Sure, songs, rhyming songs, short songs, they're made to be remembered exactly. But what about big, long ballads? Like a story, every ballad has important elements that need to appear in each iteration of the ballad. Just like the line in Goldilocks and the Three Bears where Papa Bear's porridge is too hot, Mama Bear's porridge is too cold, and Baby Bear's porridge is just right, there are lines in ballads as in stories that listeners are waiting for. Sometimes these show up as repeated lines that they can sing along with you ("Oh, the wind and the rain," for example, or perhaps "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme," for another), and sometimes they show up as plot elements, like the fact that the elf queen's horse's mane must have a number of silver bells hanging from it, or the idea that in their journey to Fair Elfland, True Thomas and the elfin lady have to go over a river of tears and a river of blood, and they have to pass through an orchard of cursed apples and come to an intersection with four roads: the one they came from, the road to righteousness (heaven), the road to folly (hell), and the road to Elfinland. These are all story elements, and it might be easier to remember them in a particular order, but is it important that it all be the same, all the time, every time?
When I sing Barbara Allen, for example, there are some plot points that I always keep in, some plot points that I never put in, and some that come and go. I always sing about the bells tolling, but I don't always put in the part about Barbara Allen's mother dying. I don't ever sing the bit where she asks to look at his dead body, however: I just don't like that part.
I really treat singing ballads the same way I treat telling stories. I repeat some of the same phrases, but not all of them, every time. I like ballads with repeating lines: they're good mnemonics, and if you're lucky you can get people to sing along with them. But I don't sing them the same way, and I don't set out to sing them the same way. I don't learn ballads by rote. I learn them the way I learn stories, by motif and plotline, and then I just kind of let them take care of themselves.
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