A SONG CATCHER IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS
By Dorothy Scarborough The work of the late Cecil Sharp has familiarised us with the idea that in the Appalachians the inhabitants have pre- served many of the songs and ballads of their ancestors. Indefatigable collectors have been over the ground, and the late Professor Scarborough, with her " Speak- 0-Phone," was both industrious and fortunate in her raids into this territory. This posthumous work (Columbia Uni- versity Press : Milford, 22S. 6d.) is of interest to the student of folklore, of folk-music and of American social his- tory, as well as to the student of the problems of the transit of culture. The songs and ballads collected here, when they suffered a sea change, seldom were changed for the better, but the story of how the songs and ballads were collected has its own charm. What origin could be more American than that of Mrs. McCurry, who came from " Worley's Deadenin' between the Forks of Sandy Mush in Buncombe County " ? The use of Knoxville as a standard location for the ballads reminds us that this region is now the centre of the work of the T.V.A. It is to be hoped that the economic rehabilitation of the region will not kill the songs. The language of the ballad of the " Lass of Roch Royal " shows that she was not Highland (p. 126), and, on the authority of Juno and the Paycock," the " Cruel Wife " is well known in Ireland. But it was not in a vague " our town," but in Carlow (according to Mrs. Madigan) that the wife did dwell. The example of parental severity given from the Paston Letters was surely superfluous, at any rate for a Virginian audience en- lightened by a recent cause célèbre, illu- minating the relations between father and daughter in the mountains .
Previous page
