The Flowering Thorn. Thomas Mckean. Published by Utah State University Press. For additional information about this book

Transcription

1 The Flowering Thorn Thomas Mckean Published by Utah State University Press Mckean, Thomas. The Flowering Thorn: International Ballad Studies. Logan: Utah State University Press, Project MUSE., For additional information about this book No institutional affiliation (23 Dec :26 GMT)

2 169 Re capturing the J ourne y: Cruxes of Context, Version, and Transmission

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4 171 Re capturing the J ourne y: Cruxes of Context, Version, and Transmission Historical investigation is one of the classic ways of reading between the lines of ballad texts. Outside the contexts of performance and the text itself, a wealth of detail can be gained about the composers, their milieu, and, through interpolation, about the audience as well. Narrative songs, like any other cultural artifact, are products of their own time and place. Sheila Douglas s essay on Rosie Anderson draws us into this world in this case, a scandalous eighteenthcentury divorce and shows how emotion, cultural ethos, and popular opinion combine to create not just the ballad text itself but an evocative, sometimesexplosive means of cultural communication. The communicative power of ballads means that they have always adapted to changing circumstances; indeed, songs from closely related languages have crossed boundaries quite easily (Nigra [1888] 1957: 262; Nygard 1958: 13; also see Shields 1994: ). For this and other reasons, a generic connection has often been assumed between songs that may, upon close inspection in their respective languages, have only a few common cognate features, for example, names, or one or two features of plot development (Nicolaisen 1992). There are difficulties in finding equivalents not only internationally but within single language groups as well, bringing into question the tacitly supposed internationality of the European ballad tradition (Nicolaisen 1991). The creation of the well-known type indexes (for example, Grundtvig, Child, Aarne, Christiansen, and Jonsson) prompted this circular problem: The types are defined with reference to the fixed set of available data; any subsequent data, then, must be inserted into these categories. Often enough, this similitude has been so superficial that it did not even indicate a real analogy (von Sydow 1977: 44). Certainly, songs do cross culture and language barriers but usually between languages that are linguistically or geographically very close (Shields 2000), perhaps even spoken by a single singer (von Sydow 1977: 22). This natural, common type of metamorphosis is turned on its head when a writer sets out methodically to translate a ballad tradition, as did Alexander Gray. In Larry Syndergaard s essay, the languages involved Danish and Scots while related, are not close, and the translator must take an overt linguistic, and consequently cultural, position with interesting repercussions for the inherent meanings explored by textualists. David Atkinson s George Collins in Hampshire addresses problems raised by postulated genetic relationships among ballad types. Of more use, he suggests, 171

5 172 Context, Version, and Transmission are examinations of denotative, metaphorical, connotative, and textual detail to build up a picture of a song in its native environment, where it is at its most meaningful and resonant. But what of a song that has journeyed across time and space, from France to Brazil via Germany and Portugal? While the variants of George Collins are geographically tightly focused, we now move outward to look at the way a narrative song, A Filha do Rei da Espanha, moves, breathes, adapts and survives in the world at large (J. J. Dias Marques). To follow the wildlife analogy a little further, we see how a song makes a home for itself as it moves, acquiring features specific to each environment, in some senses native to all and none of them. Finally, we explore The White Fisher, a rare ballad that touches the delicate edges of society s moral code, dealing with an illegitimate birth and its attendant difficulties. The song is only found in eastern Aberdeenshire in Scotland; could this also be the ultimate regional source for it? Julia C. Bishop s analysis of the few remaining examples yields layers of meaning and explores the subtle variations in text, even within the versions of closely related singers. Perhaps the overarching theme of this section may be described as change and adaptation: how a flexible, multiform tradition adapts itself to differing environments sometimes social subsets of its native territory to ensure its own survival. References Aarne, Antti The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography. Translated and enlarged by Stith Thompson. 2d rev. ed. FF Communications, vol. 75, no Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia / Academia Scientarum Fennica. Child, Francis James, ed The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 5 vols. Reprint, New York: Folklore Press, ; New York: Dover, Corrected edition prepared by Mark and Laura Heiman. Northfield, Minn.: Loomis House Press, Digital edition, with gazetteer, maps and audio CD. New York: ESPB Publishing, Christiansen, Reidar Th The Migratory Legends: A Proposed List of Types with a Systematic Catalogue of Norwegian Variants. FF Communications, vol. 71, no Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. Grundtvig, Svend, Axel Olrik, H. Grüner-Nielsen, Erik Dal et al., eds Danmarks gamle Folkeviser. 12 vols. [in 13]. København: Samfundet til den danske Literaturs Fremme and Universitets-Jubilæets danske Samfund. Jonsson, Bengt R., Svale Solheim, Eva Danielson et al The Types of the Scandinavian Ballad. Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø: Universitetsforlaget. Nicolaisen, W. F. H On the Internationality of Ballads. In Gender and Print Culture: New Perspectives on International Ballad Studies, edited by Maria Herrera- Sobek, [Irvine, Ca.]: Kommission für Volksdichtung of the Société Internationale d Ethnologie et de Folklore.

6 Context, Version, and Transmission Onomastic Aspects of Clerk Colvill. In ARV: Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore 48, Also published as The Stockholm Ballad Conference 1991: Proceedings of the 21st International Ballad Conference, August 1991, edited by Bengt R. Jonsson, Skrifter utgivna av Svenskt Visarkiv, no. 12. Stockholm: Svenskt Visarkiv, Nigra, Costantino. [1888] Canti Popolari del Piemonte. Reprint, Torino: Einaudi, Nygard, H. O The Ballad of Heer Halewijn. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Shields, Hugh La traduction littéraire dans l oralité: Réflexions sur des versions occitanes, et autres, de quelques chansons narratives traditionelles. In Actes du IV Congrès International de l association internationale d études occitanes, edited by Ricardo Cierbide and Emiliana Ramos, Vitoria: AIEO Ballads in Oral Translation between Distantly Related Languages: English and Irish. In Bridging the Cultural Divide: Our Common Ballad Heritage/Kulturelle Brücken: Gemeinsame Balladentradition, edited by Sigrid Rieuwerts and Helga Stein, Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Olms. v[on] Sydow, C[arl] [W]ilhelm Selected Papers on Folklore, Published on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday. (A selection of papers written from ) Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1977 (page references are to reprint edition).

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