Harrigan and Hart: "The Babies on Our Block" / and notes on the children's songs "Little Sally Walker" and "Greeny Gravel" it quotes

"Babies on our Block" - by Edward "Ned" Harrigan the usual indispensible Mudcat Cafe thread ... Sheet music in the Lester S. Levy Collection at Johns Hopkins

From the discussion on Musicals 101.com ...

Harrigan and Braham's songs were in the popular style of their day, with lots of sentiment and street-smart humor. The lyrics were redolent with slang, ethnic accents and imperfect grammar, speech forms which had not been set to music before. New Yorkers adored these tunes, and every neighborhood in Manhattan rang with renditions of "Paddy Duffy's Cart" or "The Babies on Our Block" –

If you want for information
Or in need of merriment,
Come over with me socially
To Murphy's tenement.
He owns a row of houses
In the first ward, near the dock,
Where Ireland's represented
By the babies on our block.
There's the Phalens and the Whalens
From the sweet Dunochadee,
They are sitting on the railings
With their children on their knee,
All gossiping and talking
With their neighbors in a flock,
Singing "Little Sally Waters" *
With the babies on our block.

"Oh, little Sally Waters,
Sitting in the sun,
A-crying and weeping for a young man;
Oh rise, Sally, rise,
Wipe your eye out with your frock";

That's sung by the babies
A-living on our block.

- Lyric transcribed from sheet music

Also this on the Musicals101 website, summing up Harrigan's later career: "Harrigan continued to produce and star in musicals until 1893. George M. Cohan's jaunty 'H-A-double R-I-G-A-N spells Harrigan' was an affectionate tribute to this early giant of the American musical stage." I distinctly remember my grandfather singing "H-A-double-R-I-G-A-N" when I was a kid.

Lyrics at http://www.musicals101.com/lyharrigan.htm ... the music isn't exactly leaping off the World Wide Web at me, but the Library of Congress has "The Babies on Our Block Schottisch" (1880) by Dave Braham on its website Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music. A piano version in C. Also the original sheet music for voice and piano in the Johns Hopkins collection (?) ...( in A).

From Richard Sudhalter, liner notes to "DON’T GIVE THE NAME A BAD PLACE: Types and Stereotypes in American Musical Theater 1870-1900" [ New World Records 80265] PDF file online

Though Harrigan poked gentle fun at most groups, he clearly held a special affection for the Irish. When The Mulligan Guard Ball opened at the Theater Comique on January 13, 1879, one of its most popular songs was "The Babies on Our Block" (Track 1), a nostalgic look at the songs and games of Irish children on the Lower East Side. It contains references to the songs "Little Sally Waters" and "Green Gravel," brought to the United States with the immigrants from Ireland.

______________________

* "Little Sally Waters (Walker)" is an old, old children's song, apparently. And it has gone deep in African American culture, and from there to high school (or junior high school) cheerleading to judge by the array of clips on YouTube. Mudcat Cafe has the usual very knowledgeable thread especially on its African American variants. Including this by Azizi Powell, who maintains a website called Cocojams.com on children's games He taught it to children in an after-school program in Pittsburgh. He sang some of Leadbelly's version and:

Well anyhow, I'll tell you what else I told those children. I went waaay back and told them that ring games were used in slavery to teach SURVIVAL skills. Since you never knew when you'd be picked to go inside the circle, you had always to be ready. And then you had to move QUICK in the center of the ring and REAL FAST think up a different dance or motion from any other that had been done before. All this was happenin while the beat kept goin on and the other children kept singin on. But this fast thinkin is not just needed during slavery times. It's still needed now 'cause Black people still have to think quick and move fast when the spirit says move. You know what I'm talkin' bout?

But, wait a minute. Didn't I give those kids some more history!
I bet you didn't even know this. Little Sally Walkers' really WHITE. No, wait a minute. I'm not kiddin. Her real name was Sally Waters and she really came from Europe. How she got started was like this: way back when, a woman who was gettin married had to step over a saucer of water on her way to the wedding ceremony. I swear I'm not making this up. That's how those Little Sally sittin in a saucer words came about. It was a water purification thing. Ain't that somethin? We jumped over brooms, and they stepped over saucers. Anyway, who cares if Sally first came from White people - we made her Black with all those shake to the East let your back bone slip hip shakin motions. Not to mention that Black people are all mixed up with Black, White, Indian, Hispanic, and Asian blood…Anyhow, ole Sally Walker's all right by me. Wherever she came from, she's one of us now. And that's all I'm gonna say on that subject.

More on "Little Sally Waters" and "Green Gravel" (quoted in 2nd verse) in Alabama Folklife Association notes by John Bealle on Ala. children's songs collected in 1948 ... "Sally Walker" is No. 19 of ___ songs.

"Little Sally Walker" is a traditional marriage play extensively collected among British children. It is "Sally Water" in Gomme (2:149-179) and the Opies (#34, 1985:167-71). Gomme collected forty-eight versions of this game. In it, Sally will "choose to the east, choose to the west," and the game ends in marriage (p166). "In the Strixwould version [the oldest collected, in 1828], the child stands in the center holding in her hands something resembling a saucer; she then pretends to "knock it in a mortar," and gives the saucer to the one whom she chooses." At the beginning, Sally sometimes cries and wipes her eyes with a handkerchief (Gomme 2:167; Opie and Opie 1985:168). * * * The game is widely collected in both urban and rural settings in the U.S. and in the Caribbean. Jones and Hawes remark that the American "Little Sally Walker" became "a brief drama about the joys of release from shame" (1972:107). Concluding stanzas (e.g., "Shake it to the East") seem to be African American additions.

And this on "Green Gravel" (No.

Green Gravel is a widely dispersed but less popular game that usually appears as only a single four- or six-line verse. Its earliest collection was 1835 in Manchester, England (Opie and Opie 1985:240). There are obvious elements of dramatic structure, but only faint suggestions of meaning. As in Martha Drisdale's version, the chief dramatic element is the turning back, one-by-one, of the players.

Although this motif is common in European games, there is little indication what makes it so captivating for players. Thus much of the commentary by folklorists on this game has involved examining text fragments to determine their origin and meaning. As can be seen here, there is much disagreement and much speculation on this. * * * Vance Randolph posits a different explanation, suggesting Irish sources to account for the reference to freemasonry: ["]"Green Gravel" is an old Irish song, and I have been told that the first stanza is connected with the Irish Catholics' hatred of the Masonic fraternity. The Ozark natives know nothing of this, however, and do not connect "free meshin" with "freemason" at all. ["]

The John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection at Lyon College, Batesville, Arkansas has Almeda Riddle singing it and explaining the accompanying children's dance. And Digital Tradition has words and music.

* GIG 0910 * Vachel Lindsay -- fiddle tunes heard at sawmill camp near Jacksonville, Ill.

Thursday, May 30, 1912. From Tramping Across America (our ed., 1999): 15-16.

[in old boxcar set up on wagon wheels and shunted back and forth by a sawmill owner west of Jacksonville ... an "old gentleman [whom] I spied through the window stemming gooseberries and singing 'John Brown's Body'." ... It was a family operation, he and his sons were clearing land "of all but its walnut trees"]. Lindsay's account:

... My old host looked like his general, McClellan. He was eloquent on the sins of preachers, dry voters and pension reformers. He was full of reminiscences of the string band at Sherman's headquarters, in which he learned to perfect himself on his perfect fiddle. He said, "I can't play slow music. I've got to play dance tunes or die." He did not die. His son took a banjo from an old trunk and the two of them gave us every worth while tune on earth: Money Musk, Hell's Broke Loose in Georgia, The Year of Jubilee, Sailor's Hornpipe, Baby on the Block," Lady on the Lake, and The Irish Washerwoman, while I stemmed gooseberries, which they protested I did not need to do. Then I read my own unworthy verses to the romantic and violin-stirred company. And there was room for all of us to sleep in that one repentant and converted box-car" (14).

YouTube versions are available of all but one of the tunes:

Money Musk

Nils Fredland calls Money Musk at the Swallowtail 30th anniversary dance weekend [see post below, earlier today, for more]

"Hell's Broke Loose in Georgia"

Elizabeth Fitch and Rachel Eddy (fiddles), Kristian Herner (banjo), Kevin Fitch (banjo uke), and Ashley Carder (guitar) play Hell Broke Loose in Georgia at an old time jam at Ashley's camp at Clifftop 2009.





"Year of Jubilo"

Annie & Mac Old Time Music Moment ...

Sailors Hornpipe

[Copied and expanded on blog post Aug. 12}

... flatpicked on two guitars



Music avaialbe from O'Neill's on the freesheetmusic.net website - two versions No. 1577 and No. 1578 are both in D.

Kuntz has this in

SAILOR'S HORNPIPE [1]. AKA and see "College Hornpipe," “Duke William’s Hornpipe,” "Jack's the Lad [1]," "Lancashire Hornpipe [1]." English (originally), American; Reel, Hornpipe, or Breakdown. England, Northumberland. USA; New York, southwestern Pa., West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas. G Major (Most versions): D Major (Sweet): B Flat Major (Hardings, Seattle/Vickers). Standard tuning. AABB. Originally titled the "College Hornpipe" this melody became known as the "Sailor's Hornpipe" through its association with the performance of the hornpipe dance, typically performed on the stage in nautical costume (see notes for "College Hornpipe"). At the turn of the 18th century a sailor was a favorite character of the musical stage and the nautical theme became so associated with the dance that many hornpipes were generically labeled a 'sailor's hornpipe'. The dance itself features a distinctive 'side-cutting' step. The style retained its popularity throughout the century, and none‑less than J. Scott Skinner, the famous Scottish violinist who was also a dancing master, taught the dance at Elgin and other places to his pupils. George Emerson, in his article on the Hornpipe (Folk Music Journal, vol. 2, No. 1, 1970) finds an early reference:

***
”at Drury lane, May 1740, Yates ..is .. billed to perform a 'hornpipe in the character of Jacky Tar. There is no mention then or later of anyone performing 'the' or 'a' sailor's hornpipe. It is always a 'hornpipe in the character of a sailor'..”

***

As the "College Hornpipe" the tune was in print in 1797 or 1798 by J. Dale of London, and although the melody predates Dale's publication, the English antiquarian Chappell's editor dates it no earlier than the second half of the 18th century. Emerson suggests the comic ballet The Wapping Landlady (1767) was the source of the Sailor Hornpipe that was famously danced by the American dancer Durang for some twenty years at the end of the 18th century. The ballet featured the trials of Jack Tar ashore, and was choreographed by Arnold Fisher (of “Fisher’s Hornpipe” fame). See also note for “College Hornpipe” for more.

***

"Sailor's Hornpipe" was imported to North America where it entered traditional repertoire and became fairly widely known, still with its nautical connotations--so strong was the association, in fact, that it was selected as the theme song of a popular mid-20th century animated cartoon character, Popeye the Sailorman. Bronner (1987) reports the earliest known printing in the United States was in a publication by B. Carr entitled Evening Entertainments in the year 1796 (under the "College Hornpipe" title). Although the name "Sailor's Hornpipe" has been something of a floating title in the United States, it is probably the 'College' tune under this title which was cited as having commonly been played for country dances in Orange County, New York, in the 1930's (Lettie Osborn, New York Folklore Quarterly). Similarly in American tradition, it was played at a fiddle contest in Verbena, Alabama, in 1921 (as noted in the Union Banner of October 27, 1921), and also in another 1920's contest in Georgia by one R.L. Stephens of Camp Hill, Alabama (according to the Columbus (Ga.) Register of December 10‑12, 1926) {Cauthen, 1990}. The title also appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountain fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph

Baby on the Block

can't find it in YouTube or Google {but see post on Ned Harrigan above - and Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (280-81, 281 n. 17) }

Lady of the Lake

Festival Jammin at the '07 Minnesota Bluegrass and Old-time Music Association's Spring (June) "Kickoff." The players are Geoff Shannon on guitar, Karen Mueller on autoharp and mandolin, Debbie Sorensen-Boeh on Fiddle, Craig Evans on frailin banjo and Terry Sullivan on bass. Woo-hoo! "




Irish Washerwoman

Ian Walsh teaches the classic Irish Jig the Irish Washerwoman. In G. For fiddle players.

"Money Musk" - old contradance tune, mentioned by Lindsay and Masters

For Vachel Lindsay Home gig ...

Usually played in A major but also very often in G, according to Andrew Kuntz' Fiddler's Companion. But The Session has it in A major, and O'Neill's collection of Irish tunes does too. Interesting comments (as always), including this:

My dad, who was Glaswegian, used to thump this one out on the piano when I was a wee thing. He always played it with a lift and snap.

My father in law who plays English style, played it very differently, as I recall it was smoother.

Some very interesting comments by Alan Jabbour in Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection that I need to go back to: "Henry Reed recorded "Money Musk" four times; it was a project of sorts for him to get it assembled in all its possible parts. The tune--or at least its first two strains--is a Scottish reel from the end of the eighteenth century. [details omitted here] Henry Reed's version is a rarity in the Upper South, and it is all the more extraordinary for adding extra strains that turn the piece into a complex and challenging set piece. His first two strains are always the usual strains of "Money Musk," but following Upper South predilections he begins with the highest strain, and his second strain (the usual first strain) is distinctive in rising to the octave rather than descending to the lower tonic. His third and fourth strains (in this performance) are unique to his performance. ..." [This is really worth coming back to!] Sheet music at http://www.freesheetmusic.net/oneills15/TheMoneyMusk.pdf ... and http://www.8notes.com/scores/8881.asp ...

ABC notation website has it in G at http://abcnotation.com/tunePage?a=www.village-music-project.org.uk/abc/mittell/0018.

And here's the audio version to learn the song from: A very nice contradance version w/ clarinet and brass and piano joining the string band - Nils Fredland calls Money Musk at the Swallowtail 30th anniversary dance weekend. Backed by members of Swallowtail, Wild Asparagus and Elixir contradance bands in New England




Adds the YouTube blurb: "Money Musk is an older contra dance that was very popular in the time of Dudley Laufman, in the 60's and 70's. Nils is calling in the style of Dudley in this video." [He kind of sings, or intones, the calls.]

Better visual quality at http://vimeo.com/2310136.

Elixir has a CD out. Info on Elixir website plus address for ordering the CD by mail ... "Elixir blends driving fiddle and guitar with the rich texture and rhythmic excitement of a full horn section, deftly weaving brassy riffs and daring solos in and out of traditional Irish, French Canadian and New England tunes. Elixir plays for dances, festivals, camps, weddings and other events, with a repertoire that includes contra, English, swing, waltz, couples dance, and concert music." Personnel:

Nils Fredland, calling / trombone
Ethan Hazzard-Watkins, fiddle
Jesse Hazzard-Watkins, trumpet
Anna Patton, clarinet
Owen Morrison, guitar / feet

Another version, and more contradance lore. Fiddle and piano. Footage is from a dance party in Canterbury, NH on March 7, 2010, organized by Dudley and Jacqueline Laufman as part of International Money Musk Month. ...




Adds the YouTube description, by a participant in the dance: "(They are the first couple on the left at the start of the video; in the second clip, Dudley is visible in a lilac-colored shirt and Jacqueline in blue.) In all, we danced Money Musk-- Dudley would say "The Money Musk"-- three separate times in the course of the afternoon, along with half a dozen other older dances; these clips are from two of those times. The third time (not shown) we did it in four-couple longways sets, with the active couple dancing twice and then moving to the bottom of the set, for a total of eight times through the figures."

Yet another version on YouTube: "Money Musk" being danced in Norwich, Vermont, on March 14, 2009, as part of "Cracking Chestnuts," an entire evening's program devoted to older contra dances" ... part of International Money Musk Moment (see below) ...



Adds YouTube: "On that same night, dancers in numerous locations around the US and abroad were celebrating the International Money Musk Moment, with many of us doing that dance at about the same time.

"The tune for Money Musk originated in Scotland in 1776 and the first dance instructions appeared in 1785. By 1792, the tune and dance had made it to North America, and both spread rapidly. (Many of today's dancers first encountered the phrase Money Musk when they were children, reading Little House in the Big Woods; it was a tune that Laura's Pa played on his fiddle.)"


Fiddler's Companion has a detailed history of the tune, which it attributes to 18th-century Scots fiddler Daniel Dow ... says it is named for a Scottish estate and adds "...‘Moneymusk’ is the ‘Englished’ version of the Gaelic words Muine Muisc" which meant some kind of noxious weed).

“Money Musk” was a popular melody as well as a country dance in America by the 1790’s. American published versions of the music appear beginning in 1796 by B. Carr in Evening Amusements (Philadelphia), and both tune and dance were widely published after that, indicating enormous popularity in America in the last decade of the 18th century into the next. Manuscript versions are also numerous: one appears in Ann Winnington’s music manuscript book (No. 29), c. 1810—the frontispiece in the MS. indicates Winnington resided in New York (although she may have removed at some point to England). Elisabeth Crawford (Massachusetts) penned the dance figures in her 1794 commonplace book that contained the rules of grammar alongside 12 other country dance figures. Southington, Connecticut, musician Joel Allen copied “Money Musk” into his music copybook of around 1800, as did Thomas Cushing around 1805 and Silas Dickinson (Amherst, Massachusetts) around 1800. Onondaga, New York, fluter Daniel Henry Huntington copied it into his manuscript “Preceptor for the Flute” in 1817, as did Newburyport, Massachusetts, musician Samuel Morse in 1811. William Patten (Philadelphia, Pa.) noted it in his copybook from around 1800, as did Cherry Valley, New York, fiddler George White, around 1790. In fact, the country dance "Money Musk” has remained a New England staple for two centuries, although one phrase of the original music has been dropped, while the dance measures stayed the same (thus "cramming 32 measures of dance in to 24 measures of music" note Tony Parkes/Steve Woodruff). In some New England dance circles this dance was traditionally danced immediately after the break, where, for just one example, presumably this was so when it was danced in August, 1914, at the 150th anniversary celebration of the founding of the town of Lancaster, N.H. (it was listed on a playbill preserved in the town history). Peter Yarensky remembers that it used to be the first dance after the break for years at New Hampshire dances, and that “some people would line up for Money Musk before the break even began…” By the 1970’s the tune dance was considered a “chestnut” and it is rarely performed today in New England. ...

* * *

In America, in contrast to New England and the eastern seaboard, the tune is very rare in the Southern Appalachians (Jabbour, Krassen/1973), though not unknown. It was recorded as one of the tunes played by fiddler Ben Smith, a Georgian in the Twelfth Alabama Infantry in the Civil War (as listed by Robert Emory Park in Sketch of the Twelfth Alabama Infantry, 1906) {Cauthen, 1990}. Another Civil War reference is to be found in Bell Wiley’s The Life of Johnny Reb, where it is listed among the favorite fiddle tunes of Confederate musicians. ... In the Midwest “Moneymusk” was much more common and the title appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountain fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954. Missouri fiddlers still play the tune (it was known as a difficult piece and a “big tune” in Mo. fiddle contests up until the 1970's, according to Howard Marshall, though its popularity has waned in recent years), and “Money Musk” is one of ‘100 essential Missouri tunes’ listed by Missouri fiddler Charlie Walden. John Hartford (2001) recorded a three-part version in the key of ‘A’ he learned from Missouri fiddler Roy Wooliver (“the little cross-eyed snaggle-toothed drifter who drifted in an out of almost everything we played, who was a major influence on Gene Goforth when Gene was young, who in turn was a major influence on everybody else who heard him”), that Hartford and Goforth both recorded as “Wooliver’s Money Musk.” Interestingly, Marshall notes “Moneymusk” is known as an “Irish” tune, a thought perhaps derived from its transmission through Scots-Irish immigrants to the mid-South American highlands, and thence to the Mid-West. Early-recorded American versions include that by Jasper Bisbee (for Edison), who was born in 1843, Col. John Pattee (for Columbia), born in 1844, Henry Ford’s Orchestra, and North Carolina fiddler Dad Williams.

Nordiska Psalmodikonförbundet

http://www.npsalmodikonforbundet.se/

Home page links to a membership page. There's also this page at http://www.npsalmodikonforbundet.se/page2.html with a history in Swedish:

Förbundet startade upp 1986 i Västra Tunhem där den startade med en Bygg- och spelkurs. Konsert hölls på hembygdsgården där en gäst från Island, Anna Thorhallsdottir spelade på Langspil, från Norge kom gästerna Leif och Gunhild Løchen som spelade på Langeleik och Roveruds salmodikon. Flera svenskar medverkade också med spel. En teatergrupp framförde "Orgelträtan i Orsa" och Teol. Dr. Leif eeg Olofsson höll föredrag. En utställning hade arrangerats med Rodney Sjöbergs psalmodikon och till och med Sveriges television var där vilket gav några minuter i "rutan".

Followed by a detailed timeline down to the present.

May newsletter in PDF format - link doesn't work, but I Googled into it looking for the Nordiska Psalmodikonförbundet ...

[PDF] Tidskrift för NPsF – Nordiska Psalmodikonförbundet ... - [ Translate this page ]
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
26 jun 2010 ... Psalmodikon är en ensträngad stråkcittra med långsmal ljudlåda. Instrumentet lanserat i. Danmark på 1820-talet. Därefter spreds det i Norden ...

www.npsalmodikonforbundet.se/psalmodika/psalmodika-2010-1.pdf

misc. folklore, historiography references

American concept of tradition: Folklore in the discourse of traditional values, The
Western Folklore, Spring 2000 by Bronner, Simon J
[BNET]

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3732/is_200004/ai_n8889550/

* * *

THE SCHOLARLY PROBLEM OF TRADITION

The central problem of tradition is explaining the ways that people rely on one another, with reference to precedent, for their wisdom, their expression, their identity. The problem may not be immediately evident from the mechanical sounding definition of tradition in most dictionaries as the "handing down" of lore from generation to generation, especially by oral means. In common usage, tradition can refer to an item dependent on this process, such as a story or custom, or to a precedent given the force of repeated practice, or to knowledge whose official source cannot be verified but is held widely, or to a concept-"a mode of thought or behavior"characteristic of people generally.2 As one goes down the list, more authority is ascribed to tradition. The suggestion of reverence due tradition means that people "follow" it, willingly or not, and may define themselves through its presence. Tradition in its most authoritarian sense is a "natural" way of doing things, which goes unchallenged because it is a basis of social life.

An emotional or even spiritual connotation to tradition exists that may belie objective chronologies or social inventories. To claim tradition, after all, is to bring into play the force, and guilt, of countless generations of ancestors, and perhaps the gaze of present-day neighbors. In political usage, it allows for a natural state; it refers to the givens of public practice, and suggests, problematically, that the longstanding character of a practice is justification for its continuation. For religion, to follow tradition may be construed as keeping the faith; to break it a risk of apostasy. Hence, a vibrant legacy of writing on tradition exists from the view of how religion draws its meaning from continuities of shared ritual and belief and how individual expressions of art and literature respond to socially inherited aesthetics, symbols, and themes. That is not to say that attempts to clinically objectify tradition do not exist, particularly in folkloristics which above all other disciplines has claimed it for its sense of being. Tradition can be calculatedly viewed as a biological specimen and given the look of a genealogical chart. It may be stolidly recorded as a series of motions and minutely analyzed frame by frame. Traditions can be alternatively "collected" as empirical evidence of everyday practice or in the singular described as some conceptual, almost mystical whole, often outside the awareness of individuals. In both directions, scientific and humanistic, the problem of tradition questions the sources from which people draw the basis of actions and attitudes.

* * *

{Also wrote Old-Time Music Makers of New York State (York State Book) by Simon J. Bronner (Hardcover - Dec. 1987) - available through Amazon.com for $7.45 and online in Google books}

---------

AHA Presidential Addresses
Everyman His Own Historian
By Carl Becker,
President of the American Historical Association, 1931

Annual address of the president of the American Historical Association, delivered at Minneapolis, December 29, 1931. From the American Historical Review, vol. 37, no. 2, p. 221–36

http://www.historians.org/info/aha_history/clbecker.htm

* * *

... I have tried to reduce history to its lowest terms, first by defining it as the memory of things said and done, second by showing concretely how the memory of things said and done is essential to the performance of the simplest acts of daily life. ...

* * *

Stewball/Skewball/Skewbald including lyrics and music for Memphis Slim's version in D (for dulcimer?)

An old ballad about a famous horse race in 18th-century Ireland that made it (big!) into the African American tradition ...

Background on Wikipedia and Old Town School of Folk Music websites ... and a thorough discussion of Skewbald the horse and several sets of the ballad lyrics - both British and American - on the Thoroughbred Heritage website.

Memphis Slim & Willie Dixon -




Leadbelly - in a call-and-response style




Lehto and Wright, a Jethro Tull-ish sounding folk rock band of Minneapolis, sing the British version




Lyrics:

Memphis Slim's and Willie Dixon's version - lyrics and music (in D!) available in Digital Tradition collection

Also: baby-boomer folk revival versions by

• Woody Guthrie
  
• Peter, Paul and Mary (probably the canonical version that everybody remembers)
  
• Greenbrier Boys
  
• Joan Baez

link to psalmodikon thread on everythingdulcimer.com

http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=17937

including discussion of Swedish colony on the Delaware River by "razyn" including this dated Thu Apr 09, 2009 about Caspersson and "some hypothetical double-bouted hummel or Moraharpa of the 17th century New Sweden colony.:

...records of that colony, in English, Swedish, Dutch, Latin, German, or whatever. Those documents (and they are abundant) record the use, in New Sweden on the Delaware, of drums, "pipes" (keyless flutes, not bagpipes), at least one trumpet, and by 1702 a small church organ. There were several hymn writers among the ministers who served the colonists (and several generations of their descendants); I have translated and published some of their hymns. I've read papers about this in various academic settings, including a Moravian one in Bethlehem, PA. (Where, as you may recall from Banjimer's thread in 2007, there is documentation of the use of the zitter in several settings.) There is zero evidence of this instrument among the Swedish (and Finnish) colonists -- though we know about the games they played, food they ate, songs they sang, and a world of other minutiae, down to how much they paid for their Icelandic wool socks.

But he also says:

I prefer to believe what the evidence suggests; and that is that it's the German form of the instrument that took root, spread, and evolved (along several different paths, but they were all evolutionary) in the US. I agree with him more (now) than I did in Oct. 2007, about the specific example of the Tennessee Music Box (as being indebted in several ways to the psalmodikon). And I've said so, in some detail, on this forum ...

Links to a detailed discussion of a Minnesota cavalry unit posted to Middle Tennessee in 1862 and 1863 ...

Appalachian Heritage - literary magazine - writer's guidelines and dulcimer poems

Published by Berea College. Subtitle: A Literary Quarterly of the Appalachian South. Submission guidelines at http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/guidelines.html ...

Appalachian Heritage is abjectly dependent upon unsolicited literary manuscripts and visual art, and we are enormously grateful to those who send us the fruits of their literary and artistic labors.

Our publication is a quarterly literary magazine of the Southern Appalachians. As such, we limit ourselves to material about our region or universal material by writers with strong connections to our region. Work may be historical or contemporary in nature.

Sure, we are Appalachian Heritage and we do appreciate the past, but we are a forward-looking contemporary literary quarterly, and, frankly, we receive too many nostalgic submissions.

"Mountain Modes: Seven Dulcimer Poems" by Jeff Mann - in Appalachian Heritage [Berea, Ky.], Summer 2006. In the same issue, this material about Mann:

• "And They Thought He was Quare" - poetry by Parks Lanier
  
• "Mountain Mann" - biographical sketch by Cynthia Burack

That's got to be the same Parks Lanier I knew in grad school at Tennessee. Last I knew he got a job out of grad school somewhere up in southwest Virginia.

Song on Clare.fm

Really nice bouncy little thing in 6/8 time, but by whom? at 1:11:35 to 1:14:39 on "West Winds" broadcast Thursday, 29th July - archived at http://clare.fm/music/ClareFM%20trad%20archive ...

'Hallelujah' - 2 Sacred Harp singings and a bluegrass gospel quartet

"Hallelujah" (#146), sung by the 1982 Holly Springs Sacred Harp Convention; led by Lucy Marie Heidorn. Shot by Alan Lomax and crew using four quad-split cameras, Holly Springs, Georgia, June 1982.




Singers from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas shared in the blessings of the third annual Central Louisiana Sacred Harp Singing on Sept. 5, 2009. The singing in Ringgold, La., is held on the Saturday before the first Sunday in September. Singers use both the "Cooper" and "1991 [Denson]" Sacred Harp songbooks.



Cross Ties Band performing "Hallelujah" from the Sacred Harp songbook. Johnny Wright-treble vocal and pennywhistle; Randy Ellis-tenor vocal; Randy Garrett-alto and bass vocal and bowed bass fiddle; Bret Mulcay-bass vocal and guitar. Recorded at Burning Bush Baptist Church, Ringgold, Ga., 7-19-09.

'Hallelujah' / video on Sacred Harp in Hoboken, Ga.

... leads with William Walker's Hallelujah in background ... by WaterTowerFilms |... "An Emmy Award-winning look at a small Southeastern town and the music that has served as its soundtrack for 150 years."

Notes on strumming - jig, 6/8 time

Taken at workshops led by Stephen Seifert and Lois Hornbostel at Indiana Dulcimer Festival in Woodburn, Ind., July 17-18 ... and uploaded to the blog because I lose notebooks all the time but so far (knock on wood!) haven't managed to lose a computer even in the clutter on my desk. So I know I'll have the notes to refer to when I need 'em.

I don't know what "RF" stands for. Right _____? Maybe the "f" ought to be a "t." I make up my own abbreviations, and it doesn't always work.

Stephen (in another workshop, on chording): "I think if a musician doesn't play scales from the heart, they're practically useless ..." - SS fingerpicks scales [demonstrates, with feeling] - "To me it's real music."

Compare this with what an actor told the tourists in a Dublin pub crawl, as reported in a recent feature story headlined "Between the Jigs and Reels" in The Irish Times:

... the Ha’penny Bridge Inn assumes the air of a cosy speakeasy (albeit one bathed in evening sunlight). Here Trish [one of the two actors narrating the show] advises us to distinguish a reel from a jig by testing the rhythm to see if it mirrors the three-syllable “butterfly” (a jig in 6/8 time) or the four-syllable “caterpillar” (a reel in 4/4 time). A veteran of Lord of the Dance , Trish is a fiddler with a colourful history and deliciously gossipy tales of life on the road with the Flatley entourage.

"Miss McDermott" - harp, guitar, guitar-lute - 2 from Germany, 1 from France

yooliah1981 ... also known as Princess Royal. Another tune by Turlough O'Carolan.
Arr. Dominig Bouchaud

Harmonisation&arr. Pascal Bournet, éditions musicales Transatlantiques.

Princess Royal Turlough O`Carolan - Gitarrenlaute

'Sweet Potato' song - some links and leads

Nancy Raven, a children's singer-songwriter (?) in California, has lyrics on a 1987 CD titled The House We Live In, Vol. I ... attributes the song to the West Indies ...

Soon's we all cook sweet potatoes,
Sweet Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes,
Soon's we all cook sweet potatoes,
Eat 'em right up.

Soon's supper's et, momma hollers,
Momma hollers, momma hollers,
Soon's suppers et, momma hollers,
"Time to go to bed!"

Several verses more ...

Amazon.com has a 30-second clip of "Soon As We All Cook Sweet Potatoes" from the album Pete Seeger At The Village Gate With Memphis Slim And Willie Dixon ... sounds right, same chorus judging by the clip

"Song: A Guide To Art Song Style And Literature" [Paperback], by Carol Kimball

"Song: A Guide To Art Song Style And Literature" [Paperback], by Carol Kimball

Amazon.com

2-part series on Emma Bell Miles in Smoky Mountain News

http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/06_02/06_12_02/back_then.html
Emma Bell Miles, author of The Spirit of the Mountains (1905) and Our Southern Birds (1919), was one of the most competent non-fiction writers ever produced in the Southern Appalachians. Miles was also a better than average short story writer and poet. Her excellent drawings and paintings were used to illustrate her own books and graced the pages of numerous national publications. Her knowledge of the plant and animal life of her portion of the southern highlands was exceptional. She was a feminist in a world that hardly comprehended the concept. And she lived, at times, one of the most heartbreaking lives any writer has conducted — so much so that her early death at 39 came almost as a relief. Still, she was a writer, and her writing lives on.


http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/06_02/06_19_02/back_then.html
"Capturing the beauty of common things" ... The Spirit of the Mountains, one of the most significant books ever written about and from within the southern mountains.


by George Ellison of Bryson City, N.C.

Around the world w/ "Galway Piper" ["Rakes of Mallow"] - and to England with Parson Brown's sheep

Two versions with notes [verbatim] from YouTube

Halle, Germany. Der Song Galway Piper von Seldom Sober Company am 31. 10. 2009 [Halloween] in Halle am Bahnhof! Super Band! Super Song! check it out: http://www.seldomsober.de/



Taipai, Taiwan. Taiwanese oboist Wanchen Hsieh (謝宛臻) plays Galway Piper with 徐錫隆老師,王般若老師,陳瑞賢老師,萬靜伶老師, live recording, in Taipei recital hall, Oct. 2007



Also:

http://www.contemplator.com/ireland/galpipr.html http://www.contemplator.com/ireland/galpipr.html it "is a well-known Irish drinking tune because of another version of the lyrics, The Rakes of Mallow.

The Session http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/1699 cites The Galway Piper/The Sligo Polka: Matt Molloy

Fiddler's Companion refers to http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/RAK_RAN.htm#RAKES_OF_MALOW http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/RAK_RAN.htm#RAKES_OF_MALOW "Rakes of Malow"

Easy piano version in D at http://www.makingmusicfun.net/htm/f_printit_free_printable_sheet_music/the-galway-piper.htm http://www.makingmusicfun.net/htm/f_printit_free_printable_sheet_music/the-galway-piper.htm

Harmonica tab at http://www.volcano.net/~jackmearl/songs/gsongs/galway_piper.html http://www.volcano.net/~jackmearl/songs/gsongs/galway_piper.html


Mudcat Cafe http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=7592#2626908 http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=7592#2626908
Lyr Req: Rakes of Mallow (other lyrics to tune?)


http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=78296#1407795 http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=78296#1407795 Subject line: Lyr Req: how I cheated old parson brown out of a [dress and half a crown] ...

PARSON BROWN'S SHEEP
William Pratt, Printer, 82, Digbeth, Birmingham [c. 1850]

SPOKEN: They were very hard times for poor folks! Faider had lost his work cause he was getting old and couldn't do much; so I went to Parson Brown's and asked him for some broken wittles; but he wouldn't gi' me ony, but sot the dog at me, and sent me beeak broken hearted. When I came beeak, who should there be [but] faider wi' one o' Parson Brown's fat wether sheep. There, said the old man, that's the first time I ever robbed in my life; but they won't let me work, and I can't starve. Egad! I was nation pleased to see the old sheep; I ran and kissed mother, father, and the old sheep and all, and ran up and down, singing—

CHORUS: Faider stole the parson's sheep
And we shall have both pudding and meat,
And a merry Christmas we shall keep,
But I mayn't say aught about it.

--

As I was in the field one day,
I saw our parson very gay,
Romping Molly on the hay,
And turn her upside down, sir.
And for fear it shouldn't be known,
A suit of clothes and half-a-crown,
Were all given me by Mr. Brown,
For I to come and tell about it.

SPOKEN: He! He! He! I thought parson would have gone ramping mad. He stamped and swore it was the biggest lie that ever was told; but the folks wouldn't believe him. They all run out of church and cried shame of parson. He sent a big book at me, but it hit an old lady on the head. Down she went and parson plump on top of her. I ran off, singing—

CHORUS: I have done old Parson Brown
Of a suit of clothes and half-a-crown,
For telling all the folk around
What he had done to Molly.

In Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads/ballads.htm http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads/ballads.htm ...

Misc. links - Irish dance tunes

http://www.diochra.com/jumpstart/faqclrg.php#1-3 Beginner’s FAQ, An Coimisiún in America - An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG) Defines light jig, single jig, treble jig, reel, slip jig, hornpipe, treble jig, etc., with rules for CLRG competitions, dance schools.

http://www.diochra.com/music/set-dance-names.php - Irish Solo Set Dances—Behind the Names - contains this gem:

Better known in the American South and among modern American fiddlers as "Mississippi Sawyer," the melody was called "The Downfall of Paris" in Europe and this title was at one time retained in parts of Tennessee and the Ozarks. It was played early in the 19th century when the allies entered Paris after the battle of Waterloo, but "on that occasion (the British commander) Wellington sharply put a stop to it, and the offending Royal Regiment played instead 'Croppies Lie Down.' Apart from being played by military bands on every conceivable occasion, its 'one tormenting strum, strum, strum' was the delight of amateur pianists throughout Britain" (Winstock, 1970; pg. 105).

One way to tell the difference between a jig and a reel

In an Irish Times review Friday, July 16, of the Traditional Irish Music Pub Crawl in Dublin by Siobhán Long:

Onwards we amble to the Ha’penny Bridge Inn, the first of two family owned pubs which offer punters a decent taste of native Dublin drinking houses, though neither have a particular reputation for traditional music. The upstairs room in the Ha’penny Bridge Inn assumes the air of a cosy speakeasy (albeit one bathed in evening sunlight). Here Trish [one of the two actors narrating the show] advises us to distinguish a reel from a jig by testing the rhythm to see if it mirrors the three-syllable “butterfly” (a jig in 6/8 time) or the four-syllable “caterpillar” (a reel in 4/4 time). A veteran of Lord of the Dance , Trish is a fiddler with a colourful history and deliciously gossipy tales of life on the road with the Flatley entourage.

Headline: "Between the jigs and reels." Looks like the copydesk liked it, too.

"The Kerry Dance" - John McCormack and others on YouTube, and two (possibly) dulcimer-friendly arrangements

... but if you want to hear the trombone duet, you'll have to find it on YouTube yourself!

The standard by which all others are measured (with what looks like a very nice landscape from Co. Kerry in the video clip, no less), the old 78 by John McCormack - Kerry Dance. Irish music:



French jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli and traditional Irish fiddler Frankie Gavin perform a jam session on a very old Irish Melody:



The Kerry Dance - Atar Trio & Yeela Avital. An Irish song performed in a live concert in Tel Aviv, June 2009. "Scottish fantasy" - special concert with Atar Piano Trio and Soprano Yeela Avital. Ofer Shelley - piano, Tanya Beltser - violin, Marina Kats - cello, Yeela Avital - Sopran.



Background on "The Kerry Dance," James T. Molloy and tab for a diatonic dulcimer tuned D-F#-A arranged by Merv Rowley at http://www.mountaindulcimer-1-3-5.com/Archive-KerryDance.htm looks like a very nice arrangement in 6/8 time

Free Sheet Music, Kerry Dance for Easy Celtic Piano Solo in G in 3/4 time - demo on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9SGjIvsJOM Links to PDF file at http://makingmusicfun.net/pdf/sheet_music/kerry-dance.pdf

The basics on forms and modes at http://www.irishtune.info/

Linked to FAQ directory:

http://www.irishtune.info/

Swedes on Cumberland Gap?

[Nils R. Caspersson, "Diatonisk and the Dulcimer" Voices: Journal of New York Folklore 34 (2008)]

No time to sort this out now so I'll just post links for the time being and come back to it later ...

In his article "Diatonisk and the Dulcimer" in Voices: Journal of New York Folklore 34 (Fall-winter 2008), available on line at http://www.nyfolklore.org/pubs/voic34-3-4/dulcimer.html, Nils R. Caspersson says the following:

James E. Thomas (c. 1850–1933) was the earliest documented and most prolific dulcimer maker. This farmer from Bath in southeastern Kentucky is credited with the dulcimer’s distinctive hourglass form with heart-shaped sound holes. While there is no known record of how or from whom Thomas learned to make dulcimers or how he developed his distinctive design, there is evidence of Swedish Lutheran immigrants in the Cumberland Gap, the area where western Virginia, southeastern Kentucky, and northern Tennessee meet. Adam S. Johnston, a soldier in the 79th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteer Infantry Regiment, kept a diary (now held in the Library of Congress) from September 14, 1861, to October 2, 1864. On June 4, 1862, Johnston wrote, “Left Cowen’s Station and marched over the Cumberland mountains to Cumberland Gap or Sweden Valley,” continuing, “June 5. Left Sweden Cove Valley camp and marched through Jaspertown.”

Thomas could certainly have seen and heard a Swedish psalmodikon in the Cumberland Gap region. ...

That sounded kind of goofy to me, since I'm familiar with the Cumberland Gap area, at least around Harrogate on the Tennessee side, and I didn't recognize the geographical names. Nor do I remember a Swedish community there. So while I was checking references for another article, I went looking for Sweden Cove Valley.

Couldn't find it around Cumberland Gap.

But I did find one northwest of Chattanooga. It's called Sweden's Cove, and it leads from the edge of the Cumberland Plateau down a cove, or mountain valley, to Battle Creek and the Tennessee River valley near Jasper, Tenn. (Russ Manning's book 40 Hikes in Tennessee's South Cumberland has a good description.) "Cowen's Station" would be Cowan, on the northwest side of Sewanee Mountain, and "Jaspertown" would be Jasper on the southeast side. As near as I can tell, the Yankee army would have crossed the mountain not far from where I-24 does now at Monteagle ... and followed the cove down to Battle Creek and Jasper.

So Casperson has the wrong gap. He's off by 200 miles.

In the late spring of 1862, the 79th Pennsylvania was of the 4th Brigade of a federal army commanded by Gen. James Scott Negley, based in Shelbyville, Tenn. In the first two weeks of June, it took part in a feint against the Confederate strongpoint at Chattanooga to force another Confederate army to withdraw from Cumberland Gap 200 miles to the northwest. Here's what a regimental history says about the campaign:

Negley's Expedition to Chattanooga May 28-June 17.
Jasper, Sweeden's Cove, June 4.
Chattanooga June 7-8.

* * *

On the 29th of May, General Negley was ordered to proceed with an independent force consisting of infantry, cavalry, and artillery across the monutains to Chattanooga. Colonel Hambright was now in command of the brigade which formed part of the force, and Major Mellinger of the regiment. The enemy's pickets were first encountered at Waldon Ridge. They fell back, as Negley advanced, upon their main body under command of General Adams, drawn up in line of battle ready to dispute the passage of Sweden's Cove. Three companies of the Seventy-ninth, under Captain Klein, were thrown forward as skirmishers, which scoured the hills and brought in a few prisoners.

The cavalry was held under cover in the timber, and the artillery, which had been brought up and advantageously posted, opened fire. A few shells sent the enemy flying in confusion, when the cavalry emerging from the woods, gave chase. Two miles out he was overtaken when a spirited skirmish ensued in which his loss was considerable.

Without further opposition the command advanced, and arrived in front of Chattanooga on the 7th of June. The enemy was found on the opposite side of the river, well intrenched, close to the bank, and on the summit of the hill overlooking the stream, and prepared with artillery to dispute the crossing. ...By mid-June Negley's brigade was back in camp at Shelbyville, "having been absent but fourteen days, had two engagements with the enemy, and performed a toilsome march of two hundred and eighty-four miles.

No mention of any psalmodikons, though. And it sounds like the Yankees were too busy to go looking for any.

But ... could the exchange have gone the other way? Could a psalmodikon-totin' Swedish Lutheran of the 79th Pennsylvania have met up with a "damsel with a dulcimer" between skirmishes and compared musical notes?

It's not beyond the realm of possiblity, although I don't think it's very likely. The 79th Pennsylvania was recruited in Lancaster County, in Pennsylvania Dutch country, and its muster rolls show what appear to German, English and Scots-Irish names in about the proportion you'd expect in eastern Pennsylvania. I didn't spot any Swedish names, but I'm sure there were some Lutherans among the Pennsylvania Germans. Would they have carried a Swedish musical instrument, though?

Besides, I don't think the folks in Sweden's Cove Valley were Swedes.

When I did a Google search on Sweden's Cove, Tennessee, I found this in a RootsWeb listserv under subject line: Re: [TNMARION] SWEETEN/SWEDEN COVE :

> Don't get me in the middle of this. LOL Yes there is some evidence that it
> was originally Sweetons Cove but it will always be Sweden's Cove to me. As
> long as I was living in that area that's what everybody called it. The
> Marion county soil survey published by the USDA in the 1950's labels it
> Swedens. Earlier maps go back and forth between Sweetens, Sweetons and
> Swedens. It was officially changed by the USGS to Sweetens first in 1991
> and
> then reaffirmed in 2002.

And it was in response to this post:

> > Just going to add my 2 cents in here on this. I know we have had this
> > conversation many times on the list with no clear conclusion. I think
> Bill
> > McConnell did find some evidence at one time that the cove was actually
> > Sweeten's Cove on official records. My Dad's family lived in the Cove
> and
> > he has always callled it Sweeten's Cove. He grew up there in the 30's &
> > 40's. I can remember thinking when I was kid, what an odd name for a
> > place. When I asked about it, Daddy said the Cove was named like so many
> of
> > the others in the area -- after the Sweeton/Sweeten family -- e.g.
> Mitchell
> > Cove, Hargis Cove, Ladd's Cove, Dove, Martin Springs, etc.
> >
> > Moses Sweeton & John Sweeton were in Marion Co. in 1830 and there were
> > several others there through 1860.
> >
> > As others have said, I think it all just depends on who you talk to -- how
> > they prounounce it and how they spelled it. :)

So it's pretty clear the Swedes weren't necessarily Swedes, they were Sweetons.

Sweeton is an English name, according to Ancestery.com, a Variant of English Sweeting, which means "from a medieval personal name, originally an Old English patronymic from Swet(a) (see Sweet) ... from Middle English sweting ‘darling’, ‘sweetheart’, hence a nickname for a popular and attractive person, or for somebody who habitually addressed people with the term." A distribution map shows occurrences of the name in the north of England and western Scottish lowlands.

So my best guess is the Sweetons were from the same parts of England and Scotland as the vast majority of other settlers in the southern Appalachians. And there's no reason why any other them would have been familiar with a musical instrument that was just beginning to be used halfway across the world in Scandinavia in 1830 when they settled in Marion County, Tenn.

Absence of evidence, of course, isn't necessarily evidence of absence. But in this case, I think it comes as close as you can possibly get.

Some Kilkenny cats, plus a cat and a cow from the James Joyce Centre in Dublin

So what's a blog without cat pictures?

Besides, I'm beginning to realize I'm never going to get back to blogging our trip to Ireland last m ..., uh let's make that month before last. So I'd better start piecemealing them into the blog one by one.

Starting with the Kilkenny cats ... which, both the proverbial fighting cats and the hurling and Gaelic football teams fielded by the Kilkenny County Board of the Gaelic Athletic Association ... the Kilkenny GAA (logo at right) for short ... As Americans it was patiently explained to us that: (1) hurling is not about throwing up, unless perhaps if your team loses, but an ancient Irish sport that sounds like a cross between soccer and Cherokee Indian stickball; and (2) Gaelic football is more like rugby than American football. Hurling is considered the dominant sport in Kilkenny.

At any rate, Kilkenny's athletic cats are named for the proverbial cats, and our tour guide Jonathan told us the stories of the fighting cats. The parts about Lord Cromwell's army and German mercenaries in the English army of King George III are probably apocrophal, but the story is a point of pride in Kilkenny. And the athletic teams pattern their colors, black and amber, after those of what we'd call an orange tomcat in the United States. We even spotted a black-and-amber bar (two doors down from an oriental restaurant) on Parliament Street in Kilkenny.



We found another cat in Kilkenny, this one on the sign for Kyteler's Inn, a pub on that dates back to the 14th century. At least the stories do. Its website relates:

The original owner of this Inn was Dame Alice le Kyteler who was born in Kilkenny in the year 1263. In her time she gained much notoriety not least because she acquired four husbands and a considerable fortune. Her enemies eventually conspired to accuse her of witchcraft and have her burned at the stake. It is now generally accepted that the charges against Dame Alice and her associates were trumped up but what is on record as been certainly true is that Kyteler's Inn was "a place of merrymaking and good cheer".

Across the top of the website is a fine representation of what must be Dame Alice's black cat.

And there's another black cat on the pub sign at 27 Saint Kierans St. Here, for all the cat lovers , is a closeup.

My other Irish cat picture is from a mural in a little cafe in the James Joyce Centre at 35 North Great Georges St. in Dublin. It wasn't serving when we visited, on a midweek morning before the tourist season really gets going, but the mural was quite nice - sort of a montage of scenes from "Ulysses."



There's not only a cat, there's also a cow. At first I thought of Cows on Parade in Chicago, but a placard explained it the idea came from a public art installation project in Zurich, which is also where Chicago got its inspiration.

"Musical fairytale" by a "post-folk band" from Latvia: I don't know what the video is all about, but I like the music

The photography, too ...

English title "Once Upon A Time." Musical fairytale by Dace Micane Zalite, Ilga Reizniece un Gatis Gaujenieks.




The blurb on YouTube is some help:

Now released also on DVD. An alarming run by two children through the center of Riga towards the Latvian Statue of Liberty. What is driving these children to run so early in the morning? What has happened?

In the meadow of Laima, the Goddess of Fate, flowers and medicinal plants combine their natural healing herbs in a communal tea to heal the injured Janis and Laima.

So I guess it's whatever you want to make of it.

The band is Iļģi ... which describes itself as a "Latvian post-folk band" ... started out as straight folk before independence, banned by the USSR ... more rock and world music orientation now ... here they are live at a club in Riga ...

Psalmodikon - "an instrument for the mediocre musician"

Several YouTube clips from Sweden, including Psalmodikon Études no. 1 and 2, by Vidar Lundbaeck ... No. 1, below, as played by the group "Psalmodikonisterna" in Hallaryd, Smalandia, Sweden



In his notes on Étude no. 2, below, Lundbaeck says, "My psalmodikon is homemade and the model is "invented" by pastor Dillner around 1820. The melodystring is made of sheepguts, also hommade. The fingerboard have numbers from 1-8. and the music is written by numbers. I have 7 resonating strings in order to make more sound. They say this is an instrument for the mediocre musician. :=)"



Other links:

Psalmodikonisterna - in Hallaryd, Sweden ...

PSALMODIKONISTERNA - Verksamheten startade med en bygg och spelkurs i Göteryd 9 - 11 mars 2007. Vi började bygga på fredagen kl 17, byggde klart och övade på lördagen och spelade i Högmässan på söndagen kl 11 !!
Ett härligt gäng med tummen på rätt ställe deltog i en helgkurs under ledning av Rodney Sjöberg från Trollhättan, ordförande i Nordiska Psalmodikonförbundet och en av Sveriges främsta psalmodikonbyggare.

Also a blurb on Musikfamiljen Lundbäcks Program page - under Vidar Lundbäcks soloprogram -

"Den ljusa dag framgången är"
om psalmsång genom tiderna. Vi följer bl.a. SvPs 501 från 1695 års koralbok fram till 1987, inklusive en folklig koralvariant från södra Småland. Publiken deltar aktivt genom att pröva på att sjunga psalmer från olika tidsepoker, i några fall ackompanjerat av psalmodikon.

With pix of Lundbäck playing seated at a table. Vidar and Ingegerd Lundbeck reported on their group in Hallyard in the Spring 2009 issue of Nordic-American Psalmodikonforbundet.

Kultuurilaegas (Culture Chest), a website on Estonian folk culture, has this ...

Psalmodikon
Psalmodikon (in Estonian moldpill ‘trough instrument') is a relatively new instrument, dating from 1829 in Sweden, constructed on the basis of monochord and hummel. It has the shape of an overturned small trough, there is only one string with fingerboard and note marks underneath, and it is played with a bow. The instrument spread widely in Lutheran regions to accompany spiritual music, including also Estonian peasants. It was easy to make and was used to teach and accompany choral singing at home, and in smaller schools and church congregations who could not afford other instruments. Because of its primitive design, the instrument is mistakenly often considered rather ancient.

"Det finns djup i Herrens godhet"

Sifferskrift by Kathy Pedersen, 2006. Text by Britt G. Hallqvist. Tune: Paderborn 1765.

Det finns djup i Herrens godhet. Ingmar Johansson soloist. YouTube says: "Det finns djup i Herrens godhet från den stora tittarsuccén "Minns du sången" (the swedish version of Gaither homecoming) som sändes under tre säsonger (1998-2000) med totalt 25 program och 182 andliga sånger på svenska." And links to the page for a DVD.



No. 285 in the 1986 psalmbook. Recorded on December 31, 2009 in the church of Östra Ryd (Österåker), Sweden.



http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britt_G._Hallqvist

Hallkvist was a poet, translator (J.R.R. Tolkein among others including Goethe and Shakespeare) and a prolific hymn writer. http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britt_G._Hallqvist ...


Text in a group of psalms and songs on memorial page for a young girl in Sweden:

Det finns djup i Herrens godhet,
och dess gränser ingen ser.
Det finns värme i hans domslut,
mer än någon frihet ger.
Det finns underbar förlossning
i det blod som göts en gång.
Det finns glädje bortom graven
och en framtid full av sång.

Det finns nåd för nya världar,
mycket större än den här,
nya skapelser och tider,
nåd för allt som blir och är.
Det finns underbar förlossning
i det blod som göts en gång.
Det finns glädje bortom graven
och en framtid full av sång.

Gud, för uppbrott och förvandling
lär oss glömma bort vårt jag.
Driv oss ut att bygga broar
till en okänd morgondag.
Det finns underbar förlossning
i det blod som göts en gång.
Det finns glädje bortom graven
och en framtid full av sång.

Wikipedia article on "Det finns djup i Herrens godhet" at in Swedish and in English.

The tune Paderborn w/ MIDI file is in "an Alphabetical list of the tunes from the UK Methodist hymn book - Hymns & Psalms - on the Family Friendly Churches website in the U.K. Identified as a "German folk melody adapted in Paderborn Gesangbuch (1765)." HP598.

Their MIDI file is a nice gospel-y (well, as gospel-y as you can get in MIDI format), and the PowerPoint slide (available at No. 598 in this diectory gives this text by Charles Wesley:

Because thou hast said:
'Do this for my sake'.
The mystical bread
We gladly partake;
We thirst for the Spirit
That flows from above,
And long to inherit
Thy fullness of love.

A second verse, too.

"De nære ting"

Norwegian pop song of the 1940s. Lyrics by Arne Paasche Aasen, performed by Kurt Foss and Reidar Bøe ...

Blurb on YouTube: Kurt Foss (01.01.1925--17.10.1991) og Reidar Bøe (25.05.1925--08.08.1969), sangere (duo), komponister og revyartister, begge fra Bergen.
Kurt Foss var gift med ►Torhild Lindal fra 1958. De var to av de som regel ni kjuaguttene som ble landskjente i 1938--1942 som Bergens Munnspillorkester.
Foss og Bøe gikk i samme klasse på Dragefjellet skole, og oppdaget fort at stemmene deres kledde hverandre. Bøe sang melodistemmen, Foss over- og annenstemme. Like etter krigen begynte de å arbeide profesjonelt som duo, og platedebuterte 1947 med «Grønlandsvisa»/«Paitepu».



And this information on another YouTube clip: Her synger "Radiofantomene" Kurt Foss & Reidar Bøe sin klassiske og eviggrønne vise om "De Nære Ting"! Teksten er opprinnelig ett dikt av Arne Paasche Aasen og det er originalinnspillingen fra 1951 vi hører. Melodien har de skrevet selv!



Wikipedia has info in a bio on Kurt Foss in English (!): 'together with Reidar Bøe[,] Kurt Foss created the hugely popular duo "Radiofantomene" ("The Radio Phantoms") that was active throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s. ... [in list of popular songs] and also "De nære ting" ("The Things Near") in 1951, that song was also with lyrics by Arne Paasche Aasen.'

Norwegian text at http://home.online.no/~arnlaugh/adikt03.htm ...

Ditt sinn monne flyve så vide omkring,

det er som du glemmer de nære ting,

det er som du aldri en time har fred,

du lengter bestandig et annet sted.



Du syns dine dager er usle og grå,

hva er det du søker, hva venter du på?

Når aldri du unner deg rast eller ro,

kan ingen ting vokse og intet gro.



Gå inn i din stue, hvor liten den er,

så rommer den noe ditt hjerte har kjær.

På ropet i skogen skal ingen få svar,

finn veien tilbake til det du har.



Den lykken du søker bak blående fjell,

kan hende du alltid har eiet den selv.

Du skal ikke jage i hvileløs ring,

men lær deg å elske de nære ting.

Tekst: Arne Paasche Aasen. Tone: Kurt Foss og Reidar Bøe.

Which Babelfishes (is Babelfish a verb? is now) as follows:

Your mind fly make a difference so wide around,

det er som du glemmer de nære ting, it is that you forget the close thing,

det er som du aldri en time har fred, it is that you never have one hour of peace,

du lengter bestandig et annet sted. you yearn always somewhere else.


Du syns dine dager er usle og grå, You think your days are miserable and gray,

hva er det du søker, hva venter du på? what are you looking for, what are you waiting for?

Når aldri du unner deg rast eller ro, When you wish you never break or rest,

kan ingen ting vokse og intet gro. nothing can grow and nothing grows.


Gå inn i din stue, hvor liten den er, Go into your room, how small it is,

så rommer den noe ditt hjerte har kjær. it can accommodate the slightly your heart loved.

På ropet i skogen skal ingen få svar, The cry in the forest will not be answered,

finn veien tilbake til det du har. find your way back to what you have.


Den lykken du søker bak blående fjell, The happiness you are looking behind blående mountains,

kan hende du alltid har eiet den selv. You may have always owned it ourselves.

Du skal ikke jage i hvileløs ring, You should not chase the restless ring

men lær deg å elske de nære ting. but learn to love the close stuff.

Babelfish's stuff is close enough, I guess.

Online edn. of New Grove Dictionary

On the Hemingways Studio website at http://hemingways-studio.org/main.html ... Canadian ... I don't know much about it, but it looks they've managed to get the whole dictionary (link to TOC here) up on their website. This morning I Googled into the article on Norway ... surfed around after I printed it out, checked the article on the Cittern. Which saves me a trip up to school. Overview as follows:

Cittern [cithren, cittharn, citharen]
(Fr. cistre; Ger. Cither, Cythar, Zister, Zitter; It. cetra, cetera, cetara; Sp. citara, cithara, citola).

A plucked instrument with wire strings that achieved its greatest importance in the 16th and 17th centuries. Although it was regarded as a classical revival of the ancient GreekKithara (from which its name derives) in Italian Renaissance humanist culture, its direct precursor was the medieval Citole.

The whole article would come to nine pages printed out.

Notes on 'Lovsynger Gud den Vældige, den Vise'

Can't track it down. But I found a Danish psalmbook (1819 edn. of the 1797 psalmbook of N.H. Balle, see below) called Evangelisk-kristelig Psalmebog: til Brug ved Kirke- og Huus-Andagt that checks out, i.e. has the song. In Google Books on a search for keywords "evangelisk kristelig psalmebog 446" ... this is the same hymn as No. 111 in the Norwegian chorale book I copied at St. Olaf ... "Lovsynger Gud den Vældig den Vise" ... text of No. 446 at pages 366ff. It has its own melody ("Egen Melodie"), according to the headnote in the Danish psalmbook.

Text (my transcription - I'm especially suspicious of my capital "U's" ... they may be A's ... and I had a hard time with the old-fashioned German letters anyway):

1. Lovsynger Gud, den Vældige, den Vise, Sovsynger Herrens Miskunhed! Hans Storhed alle Himlens Uander / prise Fra Evighed til Evighed. Men us han ogsaa er en Fader. Paa ham sign Mennesket saa trygt forlader. Saa vidner hver henrundet Aar, hver Morgensoel, som skisn [skiøn?] fremgaaer.

2. Vi sade for os et Leveaar hensvinde: O takker Gud, some gav os det! Fra ham kom hver en Dag, vi saae oprinde, Fra ham etnvert vort Uandedræt. Alt hvad vi ere, hvad vi hare, hver Trost, hvert Haab, hver Fryd var Herrens Save. End naar os kummer trykte ned, Vor Frelse var hans Øiemed.

Two more verses ... oh @#$%! why bother? They take up the rest of page 367, and I can find it online if I need it ...

I can't find this text in the Danske Salmebog online, suspect it's a new hymn in the 1819 book that didn't catch on with congregations.

Google has this info on the book:

Evangelisk-kristelig Psalmebog: til Brug ved Kirke- og Huus-Andagt
Danske folkekirke
0 Reviews
Trykt udi det Kongl. Vaisenhuses Bogtrykkerie og paa dets Forlag, 1819 - Reference - 672 pages
"Collecter, Epistler og Evangelier ..., " p. [483]-672.

1797 salmebog - N.H. Balle brought out a revision of Thomas Kingo's Danske Salmebog, according to Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics (Volume 7), ed. James Hastings, John Alexander Selbie and Louis Herbert Gray. Their account of the book (p. 31) cites Pontoppidan's 1740 revision of Kingo, adds:

Another attempt in the same direction was made by N.H. Balle, bishop of Seeland, who in 1797 produced a revision of Kingo's book under the title Evangelisk-Kristelig Salmebog ('Evangelical Christian Hymn-book'). The attempt failed, however, because of the feebleness of the verse; and more than half a century passed before any real improvement was effected. This at length was brouhgt about, mainly through the influence of Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783-1872) ...

What I take from all of this: The hymn didn't catch on and was quite forgotten after Grundtvig's hymns in Denmark and Ludvig Lindeman's in Norway changed the course of Dano-Norwegian hymnody. The survey of Danish hymnody in the companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship just says the 1797 psalmbook was unsuccessful.

Introductory overview of Irish ballads

By Rick Ring, special collections librarian, a brief intro to "Irish Ballads" for the Notes for Bibliophiles website of the Providence (R.I.) public library on March 17, 2009.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! In honor of the day, I offer here a short history of Irish ballads, taken from various sources. We have almost 1,100 of these in the Potter & Williams Irish collection, and I'm digitizing them when I find the time.

Street singers were known all over Europe. For centuries in Germany, Italy, France, and other countries they sold broadsheets dealing with the same topics popular today—love, crime, geniuses and freaks, disasters, famous outlaws, and politics. The trade flourished in England since the sixteenth century, and it was imported to the English-speaking eastern towns of Ireland in the late seventeenth century. Before printing their own ballads, the Anglo-Irish sang British ones. In the early part of the nineteenth century the broadside ballads became popular in the Irish countryside. In the poorest houses they might be pasted on the walls, under the effigy of a saint or a portrait of Napoleon or some national hero.
* * *Who wrote them? Some of the best ballads were taken from a traditional fund of anonymous ballads, often modified to address the moment. The topical songs were generally written by a staffer (some would say a hack poet) in the print shop, for pay. Some of the better writers like Oliver Goldsmith apparently wrote ballads in their youth anonymously. Some ballads were simply contributed by people who had something to say—rather like a blog is used today—a short burst from a personal platforrm, widely circulated and often soon forgotten. A number of them were written by teachers in small towns and villages, sometimes called “hedge schoolmasters,” in memory of the Penal Days when Catholic schools were forbidden, and had to be kept secretly in remote places. Often these teachers were, next to the landlord and the priest, the most important people in the parish.

Other writers of ballads were amateur poets, who like today’s vanity or self-publishers, would pay to have their own texts printed and circulated. They could easily afford copies of their own work—the average ballad went for 10 pence per dozen in the 1860s, or a halfpenny apiece. In fact, it was a lucrative source of revenue for printers, and some of them lived entirely on ballad production in cities like Dublin, Cork, and Belfast. Most of the ballads in our collection were gathered in Cork & Belfast in the mid-1860s, and sent to the donor of the collection, Alfred Williams, in 1879.

There's more, altho' not much. Still a very good starting place.

Mary Black sings 'Mo Ghile Mear'

More information and other clips at http://www.youtube.com/user/maryblacknet. DVD available from The Scottish and Irish Music Store at ALL CELTIC MUSIC website. £11.26. Also a used copy on Amazon.com.

Prairieland Dulcimer Strings in 2008

Found while sorting papers in the basement, this picture taken at the Sangamon County Historical Society's "Cemetery Walk," Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, October 2008.

Quote: 'magically harmonic [Russian Orthodox] tunes that seemed like a combination of Mozart sonatas and Appalachian folk melodies'

From Bruce Feiler, Where God Was Born: A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion (New York: William Morrow-HarperCollins, 2005). In the middle of a detailed account of the Russian Orthodox Compound of St. Mary Magdeline in Jerusalem, "a two-story white sandstone church built in 1888 by Czar Alexander III with seven gilded, bulbous domes that look like a bouquet of giant garlic cloves" (365), this description of an evening service:

The only other people in the church were about a dozen nuns in black habits and head scarves, as well as a bishop who emerged from behind the screen [iconostasis] waving an incense holder, giving the room the mesmerizing smell of allspice and cinnamon. The service was conducted by a nun chanting in Slavonic, the ancient Slavic liturgical language that sounds Russian, only sweeter. The sweetness was enhanced by three sisters standing behind her, singing magically harmonic tunes that seemed like a combination of Mozart sonatas and Appalachian folk melodies. Their voices were plaintive, as if coming through a grammophone. (366)