SOME PROBLEMS OF BALLAD
PUBLICATION

By ARTHUR KYLE DAVIS, Jr.

FOR the past twenty-five years lovers of the ballad have
been conducting a very spectacular rescue of the ancient
songs still surviving in America. In the several ballad
regions of the country, the work of collecting is now nearly com-
plete, and those responsible for the collections are proceeding
to publish their material. Several books of ballads and folk-songs
have already appeared. Others are to appear shortly. At such
a time many problems are arising to vex the ballad-editor and to
interest followers of the ballad-quest the country over. It is
fitting that some of these problems should be here discussed.

I propose, then, to write brief notes on each of five problems
of ballad publication that promise interesting discussion, and to
examine recent editorial practice in solving these problems,
which are

(1)  the problem of music publication,

(2)  the problem of ribaldry,

(3)  the problem of artificial geography,

(4)  the problem of patriotism, and

(5)  the problem of academic versus popular interest.

These are, of course, only a few of the problems which confront
the ballad-editor, and there is no claim that the ensuing discussions
shall exhaust even these.

The Problem of Music Publication

One of the most troublesome problems of ballad publication
is presented by the music. The trouble arises not only from
the printer, who, whatever the music in his soul, is appalled at
the idea of putting it in print. (And, be it said in his defence,
few things can be more arduous and technically complicated for
the average printer than the printing of music.) Nor does the
trouble arise merely from the fact that most ballad-editors are
specialists in the literary side of the ballad, not in its musical
aspect, so that they must find assistance, competent assistance,

283

284                       The Musical Quarterly

to deal with the music for them. These difficulties are real enough,
but they are not the whole story.

The essential difficulty lies in the nature of the ballad itself—
that it is both a literary and a musical form ("a story told in
song," or "a song that tells a story"), and that the audience to
whom in its published form it would appeal, varies all the way
from musical experts to musical ignoramuses, from folk-lore spe-
cialists to that tyrannical antithesis to specialists of all sorts, the
general reader.

It was doubtless with an eye on this general reader (or per-
haps to accord with the standard of price adopted for the Modern
Student's Library) that Miss Louise Pound ignores the music of
the ballad in her American Ballads and Songs.¹ Perhaps for
similar reasons (or because of a preoccupation with sociology)
Messrs. Odum and Johnson in The Negro and His Songs² give us
not a single melody. And even Professor Mackenzie's The Quest
of the Ballad³ excludes all ballad-tunes—a lack for which not all
his grace of style or charm of treatment can quite compensate.
With the tunes omitted, one finds not songs, only song-words,
not ballads, only ballad-words.

No lover of the ballad will regard the total suppression of
its music (necessary or wise as such suppression may have been
in a given instance) as the ideal of ballad publication. The late
Cecil J. Sharp declares that "it is greatly to be deplored that the
literature of the ballad has, in the past, attracted so much more
attention than the music. Properly speaking, the two elements
should never be dissociated; the music and the text are one and
indivisible, and to sever the one from the other is to remove the
gem from its setting."⁴ And the late C. Alphonso Smith con-
cludes his article on Ballads Surviving in the United States⁵ with
these words:

The truth is that the ballad heritage of the English-speaking race
has been studied as poetry but not as song. Yet it is as song that the
ballad was born and it is as song that it survives.

And Miss Pound herself declares that

the salvage of melodies is desirable; for folk-music, like folk-literature,
has its interest and its distinctive ways. Generally the melody and the

Charles Scribner's Sons. New York, 1922.
²University of North Carolina Press. Chapel Hill, 1925.
³Princeton University Press. Princeton, 1919.

⁴English Folk-Songs from the Southern Appalachians. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1917
Introduction, p. xii.

⁵The Musical Quarterly, January, 1916.

Some Problems of Ballad Publication            285

words are so associated in the minds of the singers that the one cannot
be recalled without the other. The song is the life of the words; the
two are not to be separated. ... In America, at least, pieces do not
seem to be continued in tradition through recital or chanting. They
persist because they are sung. It is the music, however it fluctuates,
which keeps them alive.¹

Yet when one sees this doctrine put into practice, as in the
publication of English Folk-Songs from the Southern Appalachians,
by Mrs. Campbell and Cecil J. Sharp, the result is by no means
entirely gratifying. It is essentially a book of music, though the
words of songs are also given. No text is printed except as music,
the words interwoven with the music. For the musician this is
admirable enough, but it is hard to imagine a reader without
musical education being undismayed by the hieroglyphic obscurity
of musical symbols and persevering through the verbal inter-
lineations. He would almost certainly pick up another book.

So the problem is how to give the whole ballad—words and
music—without scaring off the non-musical reader, who is de-
serving of some consideration as a ballad-appreciator even if he
did not also represent so large a proportion of potential readers.

Wisdom with respect to the publication of ballad music
seems to consist, then, as in many other matters, in a compromise
between the total suppression of the melodies on the one hand,
and on the other, allowing the tunes to determine the form of the
book and thus endanger the interest of all readers not musicians.
Professor Cox's Folk-Songs of the South² is an example of such a
compromise. Here some tunes are given, but they are relegated
to the back of the book and their number in relation to the total
number of folk-songs printed (29 to 178) is appallingly low.
Professor Reed Smith's The Traditional Ballad and its South
Carolina Survivals³ shows an interesting variation in the handling
of ballad music. A simple notation of the air, without interwoven
words, appears at the head of each ballad and on the same page
with it. This emphasizes the inseparability of words and music
and at the same time relieves the unmusical reader of ocular
gymnastics over staves, bars and notes. Miss Dorothy Scar-
borough's On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs⁴ introduces a further
refinement in music publication. Airs and interwoven words are
boldly interpolated in her running narrative and commentary.

¹American Ballads and Songs. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922. Introduction,
pp. xxvi-xxvii.

²Harvard University Press. Cambridge, 1925.

³Bulletin of the University of South Carolina, No. 162, May 1, 1925.

⁴Harvard University Press. Cambridge, 1925.

286                       The Musical Quarterly

Since there is abundance of reading matter between them, these
musical interludes are not apt to alienate the general reader, and
their appositeness is sure to charm the musical reader. But this
method is applicable only where there is accompanying discussion
as an allurement to the reader. Mr. Rickaby¹ interweaves words
and music of the first stanza at the head of each ballad and song
of the Shanty-Boy, then repeats the first stanza without music
along with the rest of the song. In this way the music may be
skipped without loss of the words, or the two may be united, as
the reader prefers.

A further departure in music-presentation is found in that
already large group of publications which, in addition to the
texts and tunes of the songs, furnish pianoforte or other accom-
paniment. This accompaniment, of course, is no part of the
folk-song, but is rather an embellishment designed to make the
song available in convenient form to a larger public, in the musical
home or on the concert-stage. Cecil J. Sharp before his death
in 1924 published with musical accompaniment twelve of his
American-English Folk-Songs² and intended to continue the series
with other publications. This and other like collections³ are
valuable in diffusing knowledge and appreciation of folk-songs,
but it must be remembered that in such publications the musician
has added something which does not strictly belong to the folk-
song. His purpose, a legitimate and useful one, is populariza-
tion, and his work must not be confused with that of the more
"scientific" collector and editor.

The solution of the musical problem lies, of course, in the
intention of the editor or publisher and in the audience to whom
he would appeal. If an editor like Miss Pound wishes to ignore
the music of her songs in the interest of a wider reading public,
she has, of course, a perfect right to do so. And if editors like
Loraine Wyman and Howard Brockway⁴ wish to make a musical
appeal, that, too, is entirely proper. But the ideal of ballad
publication would seem to lie somewhere between these two

¹Franz Rickaby: Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy. Harvard University
Press, 1926.

²American-English Folk-Songs Collected in the Southern Appalachians and Ar-
ranged with Pianoforte Accompaniment by Cecil J. Sharp. First Series. G. Schirmer,
Inc. (and G. P. Putnam's Sons), New York, 1918.

³To this category of collections with musicianly accompaniment belong Mountain
Songs of North Carolina by Susannah Wetmore and Marshall Bartholomew, Bayou
Ballads by Mina Monroe and Kurt Schindler, and Songs from the Hills of Vermont by
Edith B. Sturgis and Robert Hughes, all published by G. Schirmer, Inc., New York;
and Eight Negro Songs (from Bedford Co., Virginia) by Francis H. Abbot and Alfred J.
Swan, published by Enoch & Sons, New York.

⁴Lonesome Tunes, Folk-Songs from the Kentucky Mountains. New York, 1916.

Some Problems of Ballad Publication             287

extremes, as recognized in varying degrees by Mr. Cox, Miss
Scarborough, Mr. Smith, Mr. Rickaby, and others.

The Problem of Ribaldry

I know that in bringing this matter forward I tread upon
delicate ground. But it seems to me to be a problem which the
editors of ballads must sooner or later face, and perhaps their
answer may be different from the present usage.

The reader of most recent ballad-collections is reminded of
Sidney Lanier's words: "I know that he who walks in the way
these following ballads point will be manful in necessary fight,
fair in trade, loyal in love, generous to the poor, tender in the
household, prudent in living, plain in speech, merry upon occa-
sion, simple in behavior, and honest in all things." True as this
may have been of Lanier's ballads, it is not true of the ballad in
general. Neither human nature nor the ballad-form has experi-
enced a complete change of heart since Elizabethan days when
ballad and drinking-house enjoyed a sort of comradeship and
when enemies were balladed in terms no delicate ear should hear.
Writes Massinger in the Parliament of Love:

I will have thee

Pictur'd as thou art now, and thy whole story
Sung to some villainous tune in a lewd ballad,
And make thee so notorious in the world,
That boys in the street shall hoot at thee.

Not always has the ballad been so immaculate a form, and in the
change from Elizabethan outspokenness to modern hypocrisy,
the ballad is one of the last strongholds of ribaldry.

This no one would suspect from recent publications. And
the explanation must be either (1) that editors have suppressed
all material which savours of indelicacy; or (2) that on the ap-
proach of the collector the ballad-singer has highly resolved that
no indecency shall pass his lips.

The editors of The Negro and His Songs have this to say
on the subject of filth and vulgarity:

It is to be regretted that a great mass of material cannot be pub-
lished because of its vulgar and indecent content. These songs tell of
every phase of immorality and vice and filth; they represent the super-
lative of the repulsive. Ordinarily the imagination can picture condi-
tions worse than they are, but in the negro songs the pictures go far
beyond the conception of the real. The prevailing theme is that of
sexual relations, and there is no restraint in expression. In comparison

288                       The Musical Quarterly

with the indecency that has come to light in the vulgar songs of other
peoples, those of the negro stand out undoubtedly in a class of their own.
They are sung in groups of boys and girls, men and women. Children
of ten or twelve know scores of them, varying in all degrees of suggestive-
ness. Often these songs are the favorites; and many of the songs in
this volume have been shortened by the omission of stanzas unfit for
publication.¹

Now the omission of any "great mass of material" which belongs
to the subject is always to be regretted, but it is particularly
unfortunate in this case, where the songs of the negro are pre-
sented as a sociological study and where the omission of essential
material may invalidate any conclusions that may be drawn.
If conclusions are to be true, they must be based upon all the facts,
and some facts are withheld. And, apart from sociology, the
ballad suffers from incompleteness.

But the editorial suppression of material in hand is no more
responsible for this incompleteness than the ballad-singer's quite
natural unwillingness to sing bawdy songs to collectors, who
are generally strangers to him and who not infrequently are
women. If Miss Scarborough prints all the versions of "Frankie
and Johnnie" she has heard, she has been the victim of this type
of suppression. And surely the lusty mid-western lumberman
was not such a Sunday-school fellow as Mr. Rickaby's Ballads
and Songs of the Shanty-Boy (all highly moral) would have us
believe. A reviewer² for the Saturday Review of Literature puts
the matter neatly:

The western he-man differentiated clearly between the 'good girl'
and the 'bad girl': when he was officially in love with the good girl
he felt it necessary to moon like a sick puppy, but when he merely
took a night off with the bad girl he was a lusty roaring blade, a regular
devil of a fellow who bore his singing mood back to camp next day.

And the reviewer goes on to make the general point about
editorial suppression:

As long as the devotees of American folk-lore fight shy of the ribald
element to be found in it nearly everywhere, one may well question their
sincerity. Especially since in this way they are likely to miss the finest
parts. There is more true sentiment and literary value in one stanza
of the bawdy barrel-house song, 'Frankie and Johnnie,' than in all of
Professor Rickaby's painstaking collection of lily-mouthed lyrics.

True, and yet in the present state of polite literature, what
is a poor harassed editor to do? Let him but shear one lock of
propriety, and the Philistines will be upon him with all their

¹Odum and Johnson: The Negro and His Songs, p. 166.
²Mr. Ernest Sutherland Bates, in the issue of July 10, 1926.

Some Problems of Ballad Publication            289

machinery of suppression and damnation—which, happily, some-
times amounts to—advertising! Sanctimonious intolerance still
dominates, all the way from certain secret clans to that eminent
university which offers a certain prize not for the best novel, but
for that "which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of
American life and the highest standard of American manners and
manhood." The watch-dogs of public morals speak, or perhaps
growl, the awful words of Southey's "Satanic School" preface:

The publication of a lascivious book is one of the worst offences
that can be committed against the well-being of society. It is a sin, to
the consequences of which no limits can be assigned, and these conse-
quences no after repentance in the writer can counteract. Whatever
remorse of conscience he may feel when his hour comes (and come it
must!) will be of no avail. The poignancy of a death-bed repentance
cannot cancel one copy of the thousands which are sent abroad; and
as long as it continues to be read, so long is he the pandar of posterity,
and so long is he heaping up guilt upon his soul in perpetual accumulation.

Under this pronouncement, suppression societies may be
viewed as procurers of ease to the souls of sinful authors. Is it
to be wondered, then, that ballad-editors, looking perhaps to
their own immortality, perhaps to the more terrestrial survival
of their books, have bowdlerized and beatified balladry?

But it would seem that scholarship should enjoy some immu-
nity. And I should like to see some ballad-editor courageous
enough to print what he thinks worth printing irrespective of
ribaldry. Might he not with far more justice than Chaucer plead
Chaucer's excuse?

But first, I pray yow of youre curteisye,
That ye narette it nat my vileynye,
Thogh that I pleynly speke in this mateere
To telle yow hir wordes and hir cheere,
Ne thogh I speke hir wordes proprely;
For this ye knowen al-so wel as I,
Whoso shal telle a tale after a man,
He moote reherce, as ny as ever he kan,
Everich a word, if it be in his charge,
Al speke he never so rudelich or large;
Or ellis he moot telle his tale untrewe,
Or feyne thyng, or fynde wordes newe.
He may not spare, althogh he were his brother;
He moot as wel seye o word as another.
Crist spak hymself ful brode in hooly writ,
And wel ye woot no vileynye is it.
Eek Plato seith, whoso that kan him rede,
'The wordes moote be cosyn to the dede.'¹

¹The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Ill. 725-742.

290                       The Musical Quarterly

But it is an old problem, I know, and one not lightly to be
settled. And even editors have a certain modesty and squeamish-
ness. I seem to remember that some of Lord Rochester's manu-
script plays are still languishing in the Bodleian for lack of an
editor; and the much-bruited Oxford Booh of Obscene Verse con-
tinues to be a myth. Nevertheless the problem of ribaldry is one
which forces itself upon those responsible for the publication
of ballads.

Perhaps the most intelligent solution would be this:—In the
case of questionable material, for the editor to prepare an appendix
containing all the plain unvarnished ballads of offence, to be
included in all volumes sent to reputable libraries and serious
students of the ballad, while the more immaculate and Com-
stockian volume should go to the general reader. This, again,
would be a compromise, but the editor whose scholarly conscience
suffers at the thought of suppression but who cannot flout the
power of convention, could at least do this much.¹

The Problem of Artificial Geography

It is a matter of regret to some ballad-lovers that so often
in America the collection of ballads has been undertaken with
the state as the territorial unit. This is particularly true, and
particularly lamentable, of the South, which has thus far proved
the richest field for the American collector. Separate collections
have been brought together in Kentucky, in West Virginia, in
North Carolina, in South Carolina, and in Virginia, the fact that
all these states belong in the same ballad territory having been
ignored. As a matter of fact, the state is not a ballad-unit at all;
ballads, like coal deposits, are to be found chiefly in the mountain
area of each state, and the Southern Appalachian mountain
region running through a part of Virginia, West Virginia, Ken-
tucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and
Alabama is a district far more homogeneous and far more significant
in balladry than any state division. The Southern Appalachian
collection, then, has been split up, dismembered into state com-
partments. The old doctrine of state sovereignty, whatever its
political standing to-day, has no reference to the ballad.

But this artificial line of demarcation has not been totally
without its compensations. It gained for Southern ballad-
collecting the impetus of state pride and the esprit de corps of a

¹For this suggestion, or for one resembling it, I am indebted to Mr. Phillips Barry's
friendly discussion of my paper at Cambridge, Mass., December 81, 1926.—A. K. D., Jr.

Some Problems of Ballad Publication            291

political division which in the South at least still has some mean-
ing. It has resulted in the tapping of certain ballad-localities
which under any other plan would almost certainly have remained
untapped. And it enabled C. Alphonso Smith in Virginia to
conduct an interesting experiment as to the state-wide distribution
of the ballad. He found that ballads or fragments of ballads were
to be found in every one of the one hundred counties of Virginia—
in the Tidewater and Piedmont as well as the Mountain and
Valley sections of the state. The yield from the non-mountainous
counties was comparatively small, but it was worth harvesting,
and under any other than a state organization like the Virginia
Folk-Lore Society this yield would doubtless have been lost and
some interesting data about the territorial distribution of ballads
would still be lacking.

But, for better or for worse, the state collecting has been
done. How, then, is the problem of publication which arises from
it to be solved? The most obvious solution would be to have
neighboring states pool their collections and collaborate in pub-
lication. Long ago Mr. H. M. Belden, as President of the Amer-
ican Folk-Lore Society, made some such suggestion, and the
result of such a policy may be seen in the work of a noted British
visitor, Cecil J. Sharp, whose Folk-Songs of the Southern Appa-
lachians are the harvest of the region circumscribed by the 1000-
foot contour line of the Southern Appalachians and including
portions of half-a-dozen states. But any such amalgamation of
the interests of various state folk-lore societies, if it was not
already rendered impossible by human nature and by state rival-
ries, is now out of the question because some states like West
Virginia and South Carolina have already published their material
independently, and Virginia is soon to do likewise. Nor is it a
solution of the problem for one state to appropriate for its col-
lection a title like "Songs and Ballads of the South"—though the
title may be partly justified in the sense that the balladry it repre-
sents, though found in one state, would really be the heritage of
similar regions throughout the South, and, to a lesser extent, the
whole country. Neighbor collections are deserving of some con-
sideration. It would seem that under the circumstances a state
collection must be content to appear as a state collection.

A final solution to the problem created by compartmental
collection will probably not be found until all the state collections
have been published and from them as source-volumes shall be
compiled a collection more truly and fully representative of the
whole region—either the South or the nation.

292                       The Musical Quarterly

The Problem of Patriotism

This problem applies chiefly to versions of the English and
Scottish popular ballads found in America, but it applies also
to American balladry in general; for, as Miss Pound says, "Amer-
ican folk-song as a whole has been imported from the old World."¹
And the problem is not so much one to be solved by the ballad-
editor as it is a situation of the existence of which he should be
aware.

One has in mind the feelings of the one hundred per cent.
American as he picks up a book of English, Scottish or Irish
survivals compiled in America. The question at once occurs to
him,—perhaps naturally, perhaps naively—why so much effort
to collect folk-lore of European origin rather than native American
folk-lore? The answer is, clearly enough, that the nearest approach
to an American body of folk-lore is the folk-lore of European
origin transplanted and adapted in America—unless, forsooth,
we should prefer to regard as representatively American the tribal
and ceremonial songs of the Red Indian, which are American in
no sense except the geographical, or the folk-songs of the negro,
which are obviously the heritage of the "Homo Africanus" trans-
planted in America, not the possession of our white majority.
Try as we may, we cannot if we would—and there are those who
would not if they could—controvert the historical fact that the
American stock is European in origin. Hence it follows that the
English and Scottish popular ballads (which are English or Scot-
tish in language but Western European in culture, for their
counterparts are to be found in most European literatures) are
as American as any thing of tradition can be. By long adoption,
by adaptation, sometimes by almost complete re-creation, they
have been made as truly American as anything old that is not
Red Indian. I remember an enthusiastic remark made by the
late C. Alphonso Smith a few years ago, that "the search for
the ballad is now the most interesting phase of American litera-
ture." The remark is significant here, though we question the
superlative.

Just what the ballad-editor is to do about this, unless he
undertake an extensive campaign of education on this point or
attempt the eradication of nationalistic sentiment from the
human make-up, it is hard to tell.

¹ American Ballads and Songs. Introduction, p. xxvi.

Some Problems of Ballad Publication            293

The Problem of Academic Versus Popular Interest

This, it seems to me, is the most essential and pressing prob-
lem of ballad publication, and the problem most difficult of solu-
tion. Succinctly stated, the problem is this:—should those
responsible for the publication of ballads regard the ballad as a
subject for academic study and scholarly specialization, or rather
as a subject of popular interest and widespread appeal?

There is no doubt that thus far in America the ballad has
been in the hands of the academics. Fortunately, it has rarely
fallen among pedants, but it has become so generally recognized
as a field of scholarly research under the auspices of the universi-
ties that one is apt to forget that the ballad is, first of all, a form
of popular poetry. Now I hasten to make it known that I do
not associate myself with the vulgar belief, so prevalent among
certain popular reviewers, that all things academic are to be
despised and that no literary good can come out of a university.
That, of course, is sheer stupidity. But is it not well to remember
—what would possibly not be impressed upon one by the history
of balladry in America—that the ballad is, or was, at once the
poetry and the music of the people, and that it is still something
more than an accretion to folk-lore, or a study in "folk-etymology,"
or a mass of sociological data, or a problem in comparative liter-
ature?

The reproaches that are brought against American balladry
by the unacademic critic may be gathered from occasional articles
and reviews of ballad publications. A very strong article thor-
oughly representative of the unacademic point of view is one
which recently appeared in The New Republic, from the pen of
Mr. Edmund Wilson.¹ I shall use it as a text in presenting the
indictment against the academic tendency of ballad publication.

It is maintained, then, that "ballads are no longer literature
but 'folk-lore'; and 'folk-lore' has become a science—running to
the same narrow specialization and the same unintelligent amass-
ment of data as the other sciences." In other words, "an indiffer-
ence to aesthetic values" is charged. Further, it is declared that
ballad-collectors have been "so exclusively possessed by the idea
of surprising pure 'folk' on the lips of the illiterate" that they
have neglected other valuable and legitimate sources of material.
(A strange charge to be made against the academic! For, what-
ever his faults, a lack of thoroughness is usually not one of them.)
Of the several sources to which collectors might go, all of them

¹See The New Republic for June 30, 1926, p. 168.

294                       The Musical Quarterly

now "scorned by the folk-lorists," are mentioned (1) the old song-
books of the colleges, (2) the educated people in every community
who have a private local reputation for singing entertaining songs,
who "like the illiterate, transmit songs orally from generation to
generation" and "usually remember them better," and (3) "the
professional ballad-singers of the bars and cabarets who are
to be found in every large city, and are sometimes composers of
considerable gifts, in some instances the original creators of
ballads which have afterwards become 'folk-songs,' and in others,
the authors of particularly admired new versions of old ones."
The reviewer goes on amusingly to claim that compilers have
"diligently cross-examined negro servants, crept up on railroad
laborers while they were singing at their work and taken phono-
graph records of lullabies by old ladies on lonely farms. But
none ever seems to have thought of making the rounds of the
night resorts of Harlem, New Orleans or Memphis, and only one
"has taken the trouble to look up Mr. W. C. Handy, the well-
known Blues composer of the latter city, who is probably one of
the people in the United States who knows most about Negro
ballads." And the reviewer continues, "One disadvantage of
this preoccupation with folk-lore, from the ordinary reader's point
of view, is the fact that it tends to make the collectors shy of such
particularly witty or coherent versions of their ballads as can
be found in print and almost religiously respectful toward any
combination of words, no matter how blurred or garbled, which
has been derived from a source sufficiently humble to be con-
sidered authentically 'folk' . . . The tendency of the folk-lore
scholar is to attach most importance to the versions which are
best known to the ordinary man and, therefore, most common-
place. He forgets that the ordinary man usually wishes he could
remember some more amusing or more elaborate version which
he has at some time heard somebody sing; and that it is still the
literary art which distinguishes it that causes him to value the
song." Moreover, ballad scholars are accused of a "lack of a
general interest in their subject—that of popular songs—as a
whole." And in a word, it is declared of ballad and folk-song
that "the material as a whole has never had justice done it."

I shall not attempt to answer this indictment in detail.
Much of it the ballad-student has doubtless answered for himself,
some of it does not need to be answered, and some of it, perhaps,
is unanswerable.

That most of the American anthologies have been compiled
on the scientific tradition of Professor Child will be admitted by

Some Problems of Ballad Publication             295

most compilers. But it must be remembered that "a ballad is
not one text, but many texts" and that to print only one text is to
ignore a large part of the ballad. Indeed, the service of the
American collector has been thus far in the adding of new versions
or variants, not in the supplying of new ballads. He has un-
earthed no hitherto lost ballad of tradition, but new versions are
almost as valuable as new ballads, and through his efforts at
least eighty-eight ballad-cycles have been rendered more com-
plete. Since the time of Professor Child, a stream of new material
from the purest traditional sources has been pouring in to enrich
and refresh the ballad-heritage of the English-speaking peoples—
a stream which but for the efforts of recent American collectors
might have been cut off forever with this generation; for ballad-
singing is in a phase of lingering disappearance.

As to the reviewer's preference for the more superficially
clever "vaudeville versions" to what really belongs to folk-
tradition, that is merely a question of taste and of what one is
interested in. That the judgment of literary critics is not always
in favor of the more epigrammatic version, one might prove by
quoting Spectator papers No. 70 and 74, where Addison corrects
the "wrong taste" of certain eighteenth-century wits with respect
to ballads. But the reviewer has a perfect right to be more inter-
ested in vaudeville than in folk-tradition, and it would seem
that he should be willing to allow others their predilection for
folk-tradition over vaudeville and over individual emenders.

I should be inclined to admit that this scientific method and
this predilection for pure 'folk' means at least a temporary sub-
ordination of literary and aesthetic standards. That literary
and aesthetic standards need not be, and in all probability will
not be, permanently subordinated, seems equally apparent. The
scientific source volumes, as complete and accurate as they can be
made, should come first; but there is no reason to suppose that
the artistic anthologies will not follow, and every reason to hope
that they will follow. The fact that American balladry has thus
far lived upon the Child tradition of scientific scholarship is no
indication that it will never (and it is to be hoped without the
taking of certain liberties with its material) follow the example of
such British compilers as Bishop Percy, Sir Walter Scott, William
Allingham, and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in presenting to the
public volumes less academic and scientific and more tasty to the
popular palate. Miss Pound's anthology is already a step in this
direction, and most recent publications like Miss Scarborough's
On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, Professor Mackenzie's The

296                       The Musical Quarterly

Quest of the Ballad, and Professor Rickaby's Ballads and Songs of
the Shanty-Boy show distinct concessions to popular interest.
Perhaps, particularly as far as the English and Scottish ballads
are concerned, it might be well to wait until all the source volumes
have appeared and until all the material is available before com-
piling the more readable volumes which will appeal to popular
favor. It would be a pity to have the break in the scholarly
tradition of American balladry come too soon, whatever the
clamor of popular reviewers and whatever the present indifference
of the public.