Talk:Child Ballads

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A lot more of these deserve links and articles. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:38, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

You're probably right, though I'd do the articles, then the links (huge lists of redlinks are rarely a good thing), in most cases. I linked a few beyond what there were articles for, thinking or (or maybe someone else) would be writing articles for them before long. Haven't got around to a bunch of them yet. If there are a few glaring oversights, go ahead and link them. I don't think there are any unlinked that are of the caliber of Barbara Allen or anything; I think Geordie is probably the most significant ballad lacking an article as of now. Any you had in mind particularly? -R. fiend 11:57, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Coming at this as a musician rather than a musicologist, it is possible that I don't always correctly know some of these ballads from the titles as given by Child, but several that I think would have article potential are "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" (possibly together with "Riddles Wisely Expounded", they are closely related), "Sheath and Knife", "King Henry" (I assume that is the one about "bring more meat to me..."?), "Allison Gross", "Willie MacIntosh" (I assume this is "The Burning of Auchindown", a magnificent short ballad, and tied into significant historic events), and "The Gypsy Laddie" (a.k.a. "The Raggle Taggle Gypsies", "Gypsy Davey", etc.: very interesting as an example of a romanticized view of gypsy life, sometimes crossed with the "Gypsy" of the title revealing his identity as a Lord). That was at a quick skim; I'm sure there are many others. About half of these I don't know, or at least not by these titles. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:07, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm guessing you have at least one Steeleye Span album in your collection. But, yes, I think you made some pretty good choices there. One of my main criteria when I made links and articles was that I personally knew of more than one recording of the song in question, giving some verification that the song is somewhat widely known, and that I wasn't basing my decision on what one band happened to record (though in a case or two I may have violated this). "Riddles Wisely Expounded" was one I probably should have linked, though the others I personally knew of only one recording by (not that I can say I did a search, this is mostly just from the music I happen to own). "False Knight" I could only think of the Steeleye Span version, likewise "King Henry", and "Allison Gross" (those two particularly it seems to me Span made their own through their unconventional arrangements), "Sheath and Knife" I know the Ewan MacColl version. Until you mentioned it, I hadn't realized that "Willie MacIntosh" was "The Burning of Auchendoun"; you were quite right, and again I only know MacColl's. "Raggle Taggle Gypsy" is certainly derived from "The Gypsie Laddie", but I'm not 100% I'd call them the same song. Skimming through Child, I don't see any mention of "raggle taggle gypsy" in any of the versions. Much like "The Gypsy Rover" which has some similarities, it might be different enough to be considered separate (like "The Elfin Knight" and "Scarborough Fair"). Then again, they could probably be covered in the same article, even though those two examples aren't (maybe they should be? Admittedly I did briefly cover "Our Gudeman" in "Seven Drunken Nights"). Certainly with every teenybop flavor of the week single getting an article that just mentions its position on every conceivable chart, I would not oppose an article on any Child Ballad. Some are certainly more deserving than others though. If you're familiar with anything close to half of them, I'm very impressed; the vast majority of them I don't know at all. But to make a long rambling short: write some articles on any of these songs. I'll likely add to them, I've got quite a few good sources. -R. fiend 23:45, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
On another note, was that typo "Widely" there from the beginning? I can't believe I never caught that myself. (And I noticed I did it again above, and had to fix it). -R. fiend 23:47, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I have pretty much every Steeleye Span album in my collection (and, yes, "Allison Gross" and "King Henry" I know only through their arrangements; ditto "Lamkin"), though I knew a lot of this music before they were around. I learned some of these (mostly in American variants) from my father, who grew up in Popular Front culture, so not the most "authentic" line of transmission (basically, via Alan Lomax and Pete Seeger), but not the least, either. I studied under Jean Redpath, so I have a very legitimate lineage for the Scottish ballads and street songs. In the 1970s I spent a lot of afternoons at Cecil Sharpe house looking for good ballads that were not already well known. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the general picture. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:42, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, I went and did it. It was too annoying to add links every time I added an article, so it's now a mass of red-links. Then, I did it so I could refer to the plots from various articles where they were convenient instances, and therefore the articles are stubs. Goldfritha 16:23, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Roud numbers"

There is a new major search engine for traditional songs here:

http://library.efdss.org/cgi-bin/query.cgi?cross=off&index_roud=on

The compiler, Steve Roud, has assigned "Roud numbers" to thousands of songs (over 143,000 references from books and records). More and more scholars using Round numbers rather than Child numbers. There are cross references to child numbers, Sharp numbers, Hammond, Gardiner etc. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.82.16.42 (talk • contribs) 17 May 2006.

Perhaps. But even on the "currentist" Internet, a google for "'Child numbers' + folk" gets ten times the hits of "'Roud numbers' + folk", and "'Child Ballads' + folk" adds another factor of 100. (roughly 30 vs. 300 vs. 30,000) - Jmabel | Talk 00:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Counterparts in other languages

I'm going to add a section with references to similar collections in other languages. This will be somewhat 'stubby', and I do hope others will add more information. There are a couple of rationales for this:

(1) Both the 1900 century pioneers (e.g. Child and Grundtvig actually, mainly his son S. H. Grundtvig) and the modern researchers inspired and inspire each others, and quote each others' work.

(2) There are numerous instances when these ballad very tangible have crossed language barriers. For instance, Child 10, The twa sisters, corresponds to one of the most well-known Scandinavian medieval ballads. Some Danish variants were collected by Grundtvig, who gave them the number 95 in his collection Danmarks gamle Folkeviser (which he started publishing in 1853). Thus, and similarly, comparing English, Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Swedish classifications, we find that essentially

Child 10 = DgF 95 = CCF 136 = NMB 18 = SMB 13

In fact, there is a classification of types of Scandinavian medieval ballads, in which the type "The two sisters" is TSB A38. You may view the summary description of this type here (the boldface quotation in English in the middle of the article); and compare with The_Twa_Sisters#Synopsis; and you'll immediately recognise the parallel. (Child indeed noticed this, as his comments to The Twa Sisters show.)

I have been told that there are parallels also in other European languages, but I don't know much about old ballads outside the Scandinavian or English languages. I do expect others to know, though. JoergenB 18:00, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Humm. The problem with putting them under "Child ballads" is it makes it seem that the Child ballads are 1. the source and 2. the really important ones.
I tried to make it clear that Child was not first, but rather inspired by the earlier collections. A few sentences like this, more or less stating that his work was 'part of a pattern', is suitable here (I think)... together with a reference to the "Major ballad collections" you suggest.
I think what the ballads could really use:
  1. Articles, even stubs, for these collections
  2. A list of "Major ballad collections", as soon as we have two or three
  3. Amendments to any Child ballads with non-English ballads. Possibly opening with something like "XYZ is a widespread Northern European (or suitable region) ballad. Child collected several English variants and A. Non-English Collector collected three Ruritanian ones." If the chronology is known, we should do our best to put it in, but we are, after all, doing folk lore.
  4. Articles for other language notable ballads. Combat systemic bias!!!!
Or does the section you added properly belong under the ballads article? Humm. Goldfritha 21:22, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
  1. Agreed. I'll get around to it for the Swedish one(s); for the others, I'd prefer people from the respective language areas to do it in the first place. But, yes, stubs would be useful.
  2. Possibly as a stub already now?
  3. Hmm. I've seen good, printed and bound lists, used by professional ballad researchers. The lists paired e.g. Child numbers with TSB or SMB numbers. I asked about this, and the lists seem to be produced by ballad researchers for ballad researchers, and never intended for large circulation. However, this is exactly what we'd need; the experts already made this work, and I'd feel stupid trying to repeat it (probably with much worse results). Besides, Svenskt Visarkiv (where I saw it) is a state institution, and therefore the lists are available for inspection by the public - but they need not be public domain. This seems to motivate some negotiation.
  4. I agree completely. Unhappily, I know very little of ballad collections outside the Scandinavian languages and English, except that comparison with e.g. French ballads exist.
I don't know; but this seems to cover also ballads in more modern meaning. Possible Popular ballads; but today popular isn't associated with folk lore in the first place, is it? JoergenB 18:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

On 2: I think we need to have at least two entries to even qualify as a stub. On 4: Maybe if we have two, others will be inspired to add more 0:) Goldfritha 23:22, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

On 2: Well, I did write a very short stub for Sveriges Medeltida Ballader (SMB), and I'll make an Engish DgF stub rather soon. However, I'd prefer some others to make larger articles about DgF and CCF - and I do not exclude that there is some article about CCF on fo:WP, which I just couldn't find. I put a question about these things on the Danish wiki to the guy writing most of the Hammershaimb article, and hope to know more soon. I could write a little on the pioneer Swedish collection, too, since I do have an old Swedish text on my home page about it. So, assuming this done...? JoergenB 15:20, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
There's a folksong stub. Perhaps we need a folksong collection stub. But I will split out into a list. Goldfritha 00:01, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Separated list

I've created a separate List of the Child Ballads as a separate item, and moved the list of the 305 items there. I tried out this kind of organisation for sv:Sveriges Medeltida Ballader, and I think it makes the articles easier to view. Now, there is no ínformation within the proper article text coming after the long list; i.e., if you use standard set-up only the category membership information is to be found there; while you with no problem may survey the entire main article (including Child Ballads in modern popular culture).--JoergenB 14:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 10:46, 10 November 2007 (UTC)