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A Recent Theory of Ballad-Making
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Professor Gordon Hall Gerould's article entitled “The Making of Ballads” is an attractive essay, written in the fluent and polished manner that we are accustomed to expect from this scholar. It has charm of style, and its positions, taken as a whole, may be termed accepted positions. Because of its literary quality, because it brings together in one paper what has hitherto been stressed in scattered places, and because of its appreciation of the poetical quality of those English and Scottish ballads sought out by the notable collectors of the earlier nineteenth century and made available in the volumes of Professor Child, the paper has real value for the student. That “The Making of Ballads” is a research article, the product of painstaking investigation, Professor Gerould would not, I think, himself maintain. He is a literary theorist in the realm of traditional song, rather than an experienced field worker or a practical folk-lorist. He brings forward little that has novelty for the special scholar. This circumstance would call for no particular comment except for the fact that the paper has been announced as new and subversive—as something independent of old theories. It has been referred to by several scholars as “The Gerould Theory of Ballad Origins.” The author himself leads us to expect something revolutionary when he asks us to—
dismiss from our minds, for the time being, our preconceived and well-buttressed theories as to the narrative lyrics we call ballads; forget, if we can, our arguments; and . . . . look at certain . . . . indisputable phenomena of the ballad. Oddly enough, though they are perfectly well known, they have been much neglected. Very rarely has their existence been noticed in writings on the ballads, while never, I believe, has their true significance been fully recognized.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929
References
Note 1 in page 622 Mod. Phil. XXI, 15 ff.
Note 2 in page 623 See works like Jamaican Song and Story, edited by Walter Jekyl, 1907, Old World songs preserved among the Southwestern cowboys, white songs among the Negroes, etc. An example of an originally “good” piece bequeathing good elements to its progeny is “O Bury Me not in the Deep Deep Sea,” from which come the many attractive texts of “O Bury Me not on the Lone Prairie.”
Note 3 in page 625 Kunstlied und Volkslied in Deutschland, Halle, 1906, pp. 12-26, especially p. 14. This work is a reprint, according to its preface, of articles that appeared in 1898.
Note 4 in page 625 “An American Homiletic Ballad,” Modern Language Notes, 1913; “The Origin of Folk Melodies,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1910; “The Transmission of Folk-Song,” ibid., 1914; “William Carter,” ibid., 1912, etc.
Note 5 in page 626 “The Term: ‘Communal,‘” PMLA, XXXIX (1924), 440-454.
Note 6 in page 626 Compare my “To most lovers of traditional verse, the source of a song seems a negligible matter. The problem of its origin is of little interest except to the specialist. The fact of popular transmission and the circumstance that generations of singers have contributed to its modification, curtailment, or expansion, lend it attraction.” American Ballads and Songs, 1922, p. xxiii.
Note 7 in page 627 Introduction of Gavin Greig's Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and Ballad Airs. (Publications of the University of Aberdeen, 1925).
Note 8 in page 629 Folk-Song of Nebraska and the Central West: a Syllabus. Publications of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences. 1915.