This is right up there with the "Spearmint" debacle. Are there other diabolical "alternate spellings" to the famous nag's name, and is the database just crawling with inaccessible variant lyrics? Hadn't there ought to be some way of finding all the songs related to a particular event, without having to learn the secret password? How hard would this be? Can I help? Oh, fiddle-dee-dee!

Petulantly,

Shula

What's a folkie to do?(Those classical people have it MUCH easier with their 'Opus 23,#47' stuff!)

In a text in 'The Vocal Library', London, 1818, Skewball belongs to Squire Mervin, and Miss Sportly belongs to Sir Ralph Gore. Other versions sometimes give other owners. [Even at this early date the text is a bit corrupted. Text supplied on request]

Although the song is Irish, the only Irish traditional text I've seen is a relatively recently collected one in Hugh Shields' 'Old Dublin Songs', 1988. In the table of contents Sheilds puts the date at 1752, but never later mentions that or any other version of the song!

Where does "Griselda" come from?

This is from the back of The Chad Mitchell Trio, "Slightly Irreverent" album:

"The participants were renamed Stewball and Griselda, when the song eventually came to America, and the ballad itself changed form to become a sturdy chain-gang chant in the South." (by Robert Sherman)

Hope this is useful. Wish I could tell you where Sherman got his information, but maybe this is enough of a hint, about when and where the name change occurred, to enable someone else to find a more scholarly source. Alas, Mr. Sherman did not use footnotes.

Thanks, as always, Bruce, for the annotation.

Shula

There are some attempts to alleviate the situation:the most powerful is the phrase search. You could also look for names with wildcards: *bal* will get you an ungodly number of hits, but would include Skewball, Stewball, Scubal, Scewbal and most other combinations. AND, you can reduce the number of hits by asking for the wildcarded title and some other word or phrase (which can also be wildcarded.) Prevalent songs are numbered; Laws numbered ballads are so identified. Do you want us to take ALL the fun out of searches?

With the keywords in a note one doesn't have to have a box labeled 'keywords'.

This really a terrible problem at times. Gaelic tune titles were usually given in phonetic English, of which there can be many variations. There were also two main areas of different pronunciation of Gaelic in Ireland, the net result is that it is rather rare to find the same tune in two different works with the titles spelled the same. The tunes tend to be lost among the cross references.

Alternative versions often have filenames that begin the same. SO, if you found Stewball, with a filename of STWBALL, you could do a search for STWBA* and get a couple of others. Searching is an acquired skill--ask any librarian.

Cheers,
Alan

Thanks for the suggestions. As a net neophyte (less than a month out here in no-man's land, so far), I suppose I've not yet adapted to computer search methods, though I am giving it considerable effort. Since, long ago, in grad. school, I was a reasonably competent researcher, I intend to get up to speed on this as well -- eventually. However, not everyone is as determined as I, nor, ( I am addressing Bruce, here), should they have to be.

You fancy a challenge? You like your sources of information obscure to all but the cognoscenti? Poppycock! Most folks will be put off by frustration, and give up in disgust, ne'er to return. I should like to think that the whole idea of preserving and playing folk music is that it has the egalitarian appeal of universal accessibility, that it "belongs" to everyone, dilletante, scholar, and shower-singer alike. Therefore, while I am frequently indebted to your able scholarship, and I certainly have no wish to increase the onus on our benefactors at the Mudcat, I maintain, that the casual user, stopping by for that first idle search for the popular version of "Stewball", is far more likely to return with an increased thirst for "the real stuff" if he actually FINDS a few CROSS REFERENCES.

Shula