Singers and Storytellers Page: 31
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THE SINGER OR THE SONG
that, no matter what others may do, ballad scholars would
never settle ballad problems by popular vote-however difficult
they become.
The bibliography of the ballad, recently completed for the
revised edition of Wells's Manual of Middle English Literature,
contains some 2,500 entries, each representing an article or a
book. Assuming the average length to be twenty-five pages,
we arrive at the astonishing figure of 62,500 pages written
about the ballad from c. 1750 to 1955. Surely in those 62,500
pages we should find the answers. But even so we do not, and
largely, it seems to me, because the early ballad scholars did
not ask the right questions or did not ask their questions at
the right time. They asked questions, for example, about the
origin of the ballad long before the ballad as a genre of
literature was established, and they asked questions about the
date of the ballad before they asked questions about the
history of individual ballads. And even today one finds scholars
referring with evident approval to Kittredge's theory of origins;
and, today, many anthologists still put "Barbara Allan" and
Percy's "Edward" in the fifteenth century.
Nevertheless, the present generation of scholars have
thrown much light where it is needed first: namely, on the
texts of the ballads themselves. Many such studies of individual
ballads handled expertly by the historical-geographical method
have been made: Erich Pohl's study of "The Hangsman";
Archer Taylor's study of "Edward"; Brewster's "The Two
Sisters"; Chappell's "John Henry" and Johnson's "John Henry";
Gilchrist's "Lamkin"; Christophersen's "Sir Aldingar." And now
Bernard Bronson's great book on Tunes and Texts of Child
Ballads. Out of such concrete data valid generalizations
should come.
But there is evidence that ballad scholarship may be
developing tangentially instead of hewing to the center. I
refer specifically to the influence of cultural anthropology on
folksong scholarship. Books like Lloyd's The Singing English-31
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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/m1/37/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.