minstrel: Ash Grove?

[Heather Rose Jones]

At 8:55 AM -0400 9/4/03, Seabrook, Richard wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From:	Heather Rose Jones [mailto:hrjones at socrates.Berkeley.EDU]
>Sent:	Thu 9/4/2003 1:27 AM
>To:	minstrel at pbm.com
>Cc:
>Subject:	Re: minstrel: Ash Grove?
>At 8:53 PM -0700 9/3/03, toni seales wrote:
>>A friend asked if the song The Ash Grove is early; and
>>if the lyrics that are common now are historically
>>with that melody
>
>Depends on what you mean by "early".  In a clearly unmistakable form,
>the tune first appears in 1802 in Edward Jones' collection "The
>Bardic Museum".  I've run into the opinion that one of the tunes
>appearing in the early 18th c. "Beggar's Opera" is a precursor to the
>tune.  I'm not sure that I'd go farther than noting that the two
>tunes have compatible harmonic structures (and the fact that I'm
>skimming through my copy of the Beggar's Opera right now and not
>recognizing which tune it's supposed to be points out that the
>resemblance isn't very strong).

<snip>

>====================================================================
>The tune is an old Welsh air named Llwyn On which was the name of
>a stately home in Wales owned by a Mr. Jones, according to Chappell,
>p.665 where he states that it is not unlikely to have been composed
>by a welsh bard who stayed there as a guest.  The English words are
>newer, as mentioned above.

Kind of hard to do research on the basis of "not unlikely", though. 
(Especially given that attributing popular folk-tunes to "ancient 
bards" was an extremely common trope in the 19th century, and many 
nameless tunes, when collected, were assigned tunes based on the 
place the publisher found them.)  One of the sources that Gail Gurman 
quotes points out that, metrically, the tune is in the  minuet 
family, so if there _were_ an earlier precursor, it would be a 
significantly different version of the tune.  Hypothesizing, if it's 
true that the tune in the Beggar's Opera is a precursor, then both 
the melodic _and_ metrical structure would have been different before 
the 18th century ... at which point, it's hard to figure out on what 
basis it would be called the same tune.

_Most_ folk-tunes collected during the mania for folk-music 
collection in the 19th and to a lesser degree in the 18th century 
show clear reflections of the musical era in which they were 
collected -- even in the rare cases where earlier versions of the 
tune are known.  This isn't at all surprising -- popular music will 
always naturally reflect contemporary culture and take in 
trickle-down influences from "high" culture.  (Just trace the spread 
of many popular dance-tune genres from the court down.)  It isn't a 
"slur" on a piece of folk music if it doesn't happen to have medieval 
or renaissance roots.

Tanwystyl
-- 
*****
Heather Rose Jones
hrjones at socrates.berkeley.edu
*****