"Burl Ives Presents
America's Musical Heritage"
114 Best Loved Songs & Ballads for Listening, Singing and Reading
A Treasury of American Folk Songs & Ballads
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Tales for Singing: Our English Heritage
Introduction
The ballad is one of the most effective forms of story-telling. It uses vivid images and the most simple statements to express the highlights of a tale, supplementing these with rhythm and music. The most potent of these stories are of unknown authorship, originating at a time when they were not written down. Considering that they were preserved by memory, handed down from generation to generation, it is noteworthy that they not only kept intact their power as stories, but also the phrases by which the stories carried their punch. This was due to the fact that they were a great source of professional entertainment (through the professional minstrel) as well as of self-entertainment at home gatherings and in the taverns. These tales were a part of the singing heritage brought to the New World by the English, Scotch, Irish and Welsh.
Many of these songs were rediscovered in our own Southern Appalachian Mountains by the English folklorist, Cecil Sharpe, almost forty years ago. Our own Library of Congress sent out its collectors and they found many versions of the same songs. Harvard and other universities, and individual collectors like the Lomaxes, have added to this treasury of song. In those parts of the nation where the old Scottish, Irish, Welsh or English songs were not pushed out of singing existence by popular music, these collectors found ten, twenty, and even thirty versions of the same ballad - sometimes with a different tune, sometimes with a different or changed story, but always recognizable and always originating in the same old song. In a few isolated places the ballads were still in existence in what is probably the same for as was sung in colonial days.
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Side One:
The Gallows Tree
There are versions of this tale in Sicilian, Spanish, Slav, Nordic, as well as English. Some are about a man about to be hanged, some the story of a young woman in the hands of bandits. In all cases the gold needed for ransom is not forthcoming from relative and friends, but is finally paid by a "true" love.
The Keys of Canterbury
This is the story of a courtship sung as a dialogue. Dialogue, question-and-answer or "riddling" songs were familiar in England from the Middle Ages. This, one of the oldest extant, ends as do most such songs in the triumph of true love.
Billy Boy
My Boy Willie
Another dialogue. This time the scene is a one-act play, and there are two versions, one Irish and one English, of this exchange between a young man who wants to get married, and his mother. Note that the Irish Billy Boy is very much like an Irish jig tune, the English version is closer kin to the question-and-answer courtship song. In the British Isles songs often traveled from one area to another and in each received a different treatment which made it particularly Irish, Scotch or Welsh as the case may be.
The Wee Cooper o' Fife
In 1745 with the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie a great many of the Scots were given a choice between jail and settling on a grant of land situated in the American colonies. Several thousand came over, and with them their songs. In the first half of the 19th Century numerous Scotsmen came over for economic reasons based upon crop failure. Among the songs they brought with them was the story of the marital troubles of a cooper from Fife.
Three Crows
(Scottish)
Another song to exhibit the wry, dry humor of the Scottish people.
Barb'ry Allen
A version of this song is found wherever the English language is spoken. There are innumerable version in broadsides and songsbooks, from time time it is first mentioned in Pepys' Diary where it is called a Scottish ballad. It is the most popular classical story ballad of western Europe, and both its melody and story are found from Italy to the Scandinavian countries.
When the British people came to America they brought their respective versions. From these different versions the local American areas made their own variants. It is in this way that we find almost three hundred versions of "Barb'ry Allen" current in the United States.
Sweet Kitty Klover
Although many folk songs are anonymous, the melody or story of many a song known as "folk" has originated either on the stage or from a well-known composer. It acquires the name of fold by its popularity and by the fact that over the years singers add or subtract with freedom from the original. The words to this humorous folk story still sung in England and parts of the United States were written by Edward Kean, the great Shakespearian actor, who put the words to a traditional English melody.
Mr. Froggie Went A-Courtin'
One of the oldest and most popular narrative animal songs for children in the English language. The first time it appeared was in a Scottish broadside in 1549 as "The Frog Came to the Myl Dur."
Side Two:
Edward
This story of fratricide is given to us with utmost dramatic force. The story-teller "pulls" the story out of the murderer by a question-and-answer technique. As in all the great narrative ballads, it is not only the story but the revelation and style that are so perfect.
Like many other such, "Edward" survived unchanged in the isolated souther Appalachian Mountains of the United States from the time of its arrival, until the radio supplanted it with popular and hillbilly music.
Waly, Waly
(Cockle Shells)
This ancient Scottish ballad tells the story of Lady Barbara Douglas who was banished from her husband's court because of "malignant scandal spread by a former and disappointed lover." The ballad is a long, sad tale from which is derived this exquisite complaint on the effect time has on beauty and love.
Gypsy's Wedding Day
In the 16th Century, Gypsies were still called "Egyptians" in England. It was during that century of highway danger and suspicion that an attempt was made to expel the gypsies from England. The gypsy men were regarded as strong and immoral, the women as beautiful ... and it is as such we find them reflected in this love story.
Lily Munro
The wars that England waged on the Continent in the 17th and 18th Centuries, especially with the French, led to the loss of many of her young men. This ballad puts a woman in buskin and hose of the period, and sends her across the channel to find her lover's body on the battlefield.
Widdicomb Fair
The best known and most popular of Devonshire ballads. The original Tam Pearce and Uncle "Tom Cobleigh" are said to have lived near Yeoford Junction in Devonshire. Seldom has a story of a haunted man been so classically recorded. From the very beginning, you feel with poor Tam Pearce who lost his grey mare.
How Happy The Soldier
The conditions of soldiering have changed but little since the sentiments of this song were expressed in the 16th century. No matter what the horrors and dangers of battle, a bright uniform to catch a girl's eye, a clear day for swagger ... these are still typical rewards. This song was a favorite of the British soldiers long before the Revolutionary War. It was sung by British and Americans alike in that war and in the War of 1812 ... and is just as meaningful now.
One Morning In May
The song, often known as "The Nightingale Song," is evocative of springtime, a green glade and making love. The male nightingale, a night-singing member of the thrush family, utters a beautiful song that often stands for beauty, life and the presence of love in English poetry and song. The soldier of this story, like many a philandering warrior far from home, has, one fears, deceived his lady-love.
Two Maidens Went Milking
The setting of this early 18th Century British ballad is reputed to be the outskirts of London. The teasing interplay, the attitudes of male and female, are delightfully suggested.
