Singers and Storytellers Page: 34
v, 298 p. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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SINGERS AND STORYTELLERS
of the "Three Ravens" has meant little to the folk in the last
two hundred years:
Down there comes a fallow doe
As great with young as she might go
She lift up his bloody head
And kist his wounds that were so red
There is a world of difference, too, in how the folk and the
folksinger interpret a ballad and what a socio-historian may
read into it. Mr. Nettel thinks that "The Foggy, Foggy Dew"
reflects the sad plight of the weavers in nineteenth-century
England. "John Henry" is frequently presented as a song of
social, racial, and economic protest, though there is no evidence
for this in the earliest folk texts of "John Henry."
The ballad of "Johny Cock" illustrates most of these points:
it is a nineteenth-century ballad, yet it contains bespelled dogs,
second sight, poaching in the king's forest, medieval terms of
venery, reference to putting off the king's scarlet garb for the
Lincoln green of the outlaw, eating raw liver and tongue of
the slain deer and drinking its blood, boots of American leather,
the hero fighting on his stumps, the epic formula address to
the weapons, the sister's son as messenger or a talking bird
as messenger, reference to the innate chivalry of animals like
wolves. Here in one ballad is a mixture of the very ancient
and the modern, all cunningly articulated into a stirring song
story. It illustrates perfectly the nature of ballad story that
knows no place nor time, but is like a traveler from long ago
and from far-off places with luggage full of mementoes.
Theories like the socio-historical fail too, I think, because
they neglect to take into account the basic nature of the ballad,
its primary meaning to the folk who made it and sing it. The
very indefiniteness and many-sided nature of the ballad has
brought about this proliferation of theories about it. It has
survived among others antiquarianism, primitivism, senti-
mentality-all imposed on the ballad from without. And the34
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Singers and Storytellers (Book)
Collection of popular folklore of Texas, including personal anecdotes about storytellers and singers, as well as folk songs, myths, and ghost stories. The index begins on page 295.
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Boatright, Mody C. Singers and Storytellers, book, 1961; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67655/m1/40/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.