minstrel: Looking for a tune

[Myra Hope Bobbitt]

(embarassed)  I'm familiar with several Child ballads and should have delved 
there to begin with -- this is a trove, thank you!  I'd like to stay period 
so will hit Greg's page and dig for the Chappell next.

Thanks again!
-Leceabh


p.s. "Now this is the tale of a country maid, who dwelled on a desert 
isle..."  wait...




>From: "Lisa and Ken Theriot" <lnktheriot at cox.net>
>To: <minstrel at pbm.com>
>Subject: Re: minstrel: Looking for a tune
>Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 15:08:39 -0400
>
>[I am a well-born country maid,
>  my home the valley gay]
>
>That's what I expected.  That's a pretty typical "ballad" meter
>(alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter for the meter junkies), so
>you could basically set it to any ballad tune.  Do you know the joke
>about singing "Amazing Grace" to the tune of "Gilligan's Island" and
>vice versa?  They'll both work for your lyric as well (and now I hope
>you can put that out of your mind forever, sorry!).
>
>Where you go for a tune depends on whether you're looking for a period
>tune or not.  Check the material on Greg's Ballads page (some of the
>dance tunes will work as well, and they were quite popular for period
>contrafact), and check your library or ILL for:
>
>Chappell, William, Old English Popular Music (a new edition, with a
>preface and notes and the earlier examples entirely revised by H. Ellis
>Wooldridge), New York, 1961.
>
>Also:
>
>Bronson, Bertrand H., The Singing Tradition of Child's Popular Ballads,
>1959-1972, and/or
>
>Bronson, Bertrand H., The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, Vols.
>I-IV (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1959).  The first is an
>abridgement of the four-volume version.
>
>On the less-likely to be period front, any recorded ballad collection
>(Joan Baez, Burl Ives, Ewan McColl, etc) will give you plenty of fodder.
>Just make sure the tune is marked "traditional" because there are an
>awful lot of modern (copyright protected) songs out there masquerading
>as traditional, like "The Gypsy Rover Came Over the Hill", etc.
>
>I don't know how much music theory you have, but if you pick a
>well-known tune, you'd probably be happier inverting a line here or
>there, because then your listeners won't immediately say, "Oh, this is
>X" as soon as you start.  If you'd like more details about how to do
>this, write me offlist.
>
>
>Adelaide
>
>
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