Cecil J Sharp [editor] (1908) Folk-Songs from Dorset Collected by HED Hammond

 

PREFACE by Cecil J Sharp

 

A LARGE number of traditional songs have recently been recovered in England. Moreover, we believe them to be veritable folk-songs, i.e., songs which have been created or evolved by the common people. Taken in this sense, the folk-song must be definitely distinguished from the composition of the cultivated musician. It is the invention not of the individual, but of the community. Living only in the memories and on the lips of the singers, its existence has always been conditioned by its popularity, and by the accuracy with which it has reflected the ideals and taste of the common people. Consequently, the folk-song is stamped with the hall-mark of corporate approbation, and is the faithful expression in musical idiom of the qualities and characteristics of the nation to which it owes its origin.

 

In its folk-music every nation possesses a musical heritage of priceless worth, which for many reasons it should cherish and preserve. The educational uses to which the folk-song may advantageously be put are many and obvious. It should be remembered, too, that folk-music is the germ of art-music. Style in all the arts - music, literature, poetry, painting, or sculpture - ultimately becomes national; indeed, it would be difficult to cite a single instance of a distinctive school of music in Europe which has not been founded upon a basis of folk-song. In the recovery, therefore, and dissemination of our own country’s folk-music, the solution of the problem of a characteristic and national school of English music may possibly be found.

 

In past centuries the collectors of English folk-songs were accustomed to edit and alter their folk-tunes before publishing them. In thus attempting to transmute folk-music into art-music they committed what most musicians would now agree was a fatal blunder. It is, therefore, scarcely necessary to state that the tunes contained in the present volume have not been editorially “improved” in any way, and that no melody will find a place in this series except in the precise form in which it was noted down by a competent musician from the lips of some folk-singer.

 

The words, which form an integral part of the folk-song, should, strictly speaking, be treated with the same respect and be presented as accurately as the melody. Unfortunately, this is not always practicable. Owing to various causes - e.g., the dissemination among the country singers of corrupt and doggerel broadside-versions of their songs; lapses of memory on the part of the folk-singers themselves; the varying lengths of the corresponding lines of different verses of the same song; and the somewhat free and unconventional treatment of the themes of many of the ballads - the words of folk-songs can now rarely be printed without some emendation.

 

If, however, English folk-song is to be made popular, the words must be published in a singable form. Our guiding principle has been, therefore, to alter those phrases only to which objection might reasonably be made. No vocalist would sing words that are pointless, or ungrammatical. Nor could he, even if he would, sing accurately in dialect. Happily, however, dialect is not an essential of the folk-song. Every folk-singer uses his own native language, and consequently the words of the folk-song will be sung in as many different dialects as the districts in which each individual song is found.

 

The words, therefore, of many of the songs in this collection have been altered. Gaps have been filled up, verses omitted or softened, rhymes reconciled, redundant syllables pruned, bad grammar and dialect translated into King’s English. On the other hand, archaic words and expressions have, of course, been retained.

 

The extent and character of these word-alterations will, in some measure, be left to the discretion of the editor of each volume. In this particular number Mr. Hammond has retained certain common folk-forms of speech such as the double negative, “a” prefixed with various shades of meaning to nouns and verbs, the weak form of the imperfect tense, “for to” with the infinitive, “do” for “does,” “into” for “in,” &c.

 

It should perhaps be stated that the publishers intend to include in the present series the folk-songs of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, as well as those of England.