The Agincourt Carol I have spent the past week exploring military history in Western Europe. Time constraints have made it a superficial exploration in many ways. In some places, I was well prepared to understand what I was seeing. In others places, I have at … Read more
Last Friday morning I stood before a very large group of exuberant teachers to tout the priceless value of folk songs. I had been invited to give the keynote address to the Phoenix-area network of Great Hearts Classical Schools. This one-day symposium was serving as … Read more
It was good to get out to a festival. True, last fall we enjoyed Bethania’s Walnut Festival, held in an historical Moravian village next to our neighborhood. Also, we rejoiced in a traditional, low-tech fall carnival up in King, North Carolina, filled with old-fashioned rides, … Read more
Down in the River to Pray The origin of this well-known song is not clear. It has been described as a Spiritual, a Gospel hymn, and an Appalachian folk song. Musically it seems to have elements of all of those genres. Perhaps its popularity comes … Read more
Wellerman The Sea Shanty craze may have died down a bit. But that provides an excuse for a site like ours, focused on music history, to take up the topic. Of course, sea shanty history didn’t begin with Nathan Evans’ TikTok recording, but he did … Read more
Anonymous, Auld Lang Syne I realized a little late—but not too late—that this performance of Auld Lang Syne was available to mark the New Year. Tradition dictates its singing at the stroke of midnight as a way of bidding farewell to the old year. We … Read more
In the popular culture, the best place to find interesting “new” material can be in the past. Were that not the case, bell bottoms, avocado-green furniture, and shag carpet would still be hiding in the sands of time. But these have reemerged, and proudly I … Read more
The Foggy Dew I have a fair amount of Irish ancestry (the Belfast variety). My mother, a first-generation American, taught me a few things about St. Patrick’s Day, but as Protestants, we didn’t make a big deal out of any saint’s day. Still, St. Patrick’s … Read more
Edward, Child Ballad 13 Francis James Child (1825-1896), a Harvard professor, catalogued 305 folk songs and published his collection in five volumes. Because there are many versions of folk songs that have been spread through oral transmission in many countries, the Child Ballad numbers are … Read more
Barbara Allen We have made numerous references to musicologists who have gone out into the countryside to record folk music. Bartók and Kodály in Hungary, Kolberg in Poland, Janáček in Moravia, John and Alan Lomax in America, for example. And we’ve often noted how folk music … Read more