Re: Willie O' Winsbury
Thanks for that, Dave. As you may know, Child's collection of ballads didn't contain tunes, which were very hard to collect in his day, before recording equipment. Only a few highly skilled, musical scholars, such as Cecil Sharp who came after Child, have the ability to write tunes by hearing them in a one on one setting. Furthermore, Francis James Child was a scholar of English and German, and not of music. Another American, Bertrand Harris Bronson, later compiled a collection of traditional American tunes to the Child ballads. However, many folk singers interested in the Child ballads did not have tunes for them, so they took traditional tunes for other folk songs or instrumental music and used them when they agreed with the structure, meter, and mood of the songs themselves. This is quite an old practice, made evident by how many times the same folk song is sung to different tunes, and also by how many different folk songs are sung to one tune, e.g., many ballads are sung to the melodies of "Sweet Betsy from Pike," and "Dives and Lazarus." I'd be loathe to call "Willie of Winsbury" sung to this tune an "error." There are many versions of "Willie of Winsbury," with different titles, and different melodies, but the same story.
Robert Johnson's mother, describing blues musicians:
"I never did have no trouble with him until he got big enough to be round with bigger boys and off from home. Then he used to follow all these harp blowers, mandoleen (sic) and guitar players."
Lomax, Alan, The Land where The Blues Began, NY: Pantheon, 1993, p.14.
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