Singers and Storytellers Page: 41
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THE SINGER OR THE SONG
Late, late yestereen I saw the new moon
With the old moon in her arm
And I feir, I feir, my dear master
That we shall come to harm.
But the old moon with the new moon in her arms belongs
to "Sir Patrick Spens" only through the skill of integration, for
it is widely used in folk speech, and this is true likewise of ballad
formulas like "turn to clay," "as brave as ever sailed the sea,"
"before cock crow," "a little bird told me," "pale and wan,"
"white as milk," "brown as mead," "between the long ribs and
the short," "he swore by the moon and the stars," "lie there till
the meat drips off your bones."s
No quality is more characteristic of folk expression than the
concrete, whether in tale, in drama, in song, or in everyday
speech. Seldom is a generic word for seal used in Newfound-
land, but twenty-six words naming concrete aspects of seals
are found: a beater is a three-year-old seal swimming north;
a quinter is a young migrating seal; and a little fat seal is a far.
Ballad diction is equally concrete: "tirled at the pin," "whey-
white face." And so concrete are ballad episodes that they are
immediately transferable to pictorial art:
The red that is in my love's cheek
Is like blood spilt among the snow
The white that is on her breast bone
Is like the down on the white sea mew.
Or-
Yell sit on his white hause bane
And I'll pike out his bonny blue een
Wi ae lock of his gowden hair
We'll theek our next when it grows bare.
Moreover, the ballad as it develops in time moves ever
toward concreteness. Consider, for example, the evolution of
those ballads that are derived from tales, such as "The Hangs-
man." This ballad is based on a detailed and circumstantial41
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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/m1/47/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.