Thomas D’Urfey edited six volumes of Wit and Mirth or Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719–1720), containing over one thousand verses of ballads and poems, drawn mostly from various published collections, broadsides, books of poetry, and his own compositions. While the majority were not gathered from oral traditions, some could be considered folk songs, while most were initially popular songs. A few years later (1723–1725) A Collection of Old Ballads appeared in three volumes, again based mostly on published broadsides and earlier collections. Later in the century Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) helped initiate the ballad revival. Joseph Ritson published A Select Collection of English Songs in Three Volumes (1783), also composed mainly of published poems and songs, found in broadsides or manuscript collections, including both words and music. Simultaneously, various collections of ballads appeared in Scotland, including the songs and poems of Robert Burns, for example in George Thomson’s The Scots Musical Museum (1771).
Of perhaps greaterimportance was Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802– 1803), mostly drawn from manuscript collections. Publishing ballad and folksong collections increased throughout the nineteenth century. Again, most were drawn from published broadside and manuscript collections, although there was a gradual increase in field collecting. William Chappell published a variety of influential collections, particularly Popular Music of the Olden Time (1858–1859), a massive two-volume compilation, which included “Greensleeves” and various tunes drawn from Shakespeare’s plays, as well as the anonymous “Barbara Allen,” which he seems to have drawn from oral tradition. Chronologically arranged, and including both words and music, beginning with Anglo-Saxon melodies, Chappell’s work drew upon an array of manuscript and published collections, as well as scores of broadside and Robin Hood ballads. While he found a few in oral tradition, the vast majority of the selections had not been passed down to the mid-nineteenth century; that is, they were not currently performed. But Popular Music of the Olden Time served as a valuable reference work for later scholars. By century’s end, there were also a myriad of cheap popular songsters, containing a rich array of tunes, including Scottish vernacular songs such as “Green Grow the Rashes O” and “Annie Laurie,” and even a few from the United States, such as Stephen Foster’s “The Old Folks at Home.”
Ballad and folk song collecting accelerated through the end of the nineteenth century. On the regional level, Davison Ingledew’s The Ballads and Songs of Yorkshire (1860), John Harland’s Ballads and Songs of Lancashire (1865), and Thomas Allan’s Tyneside Songs (1891) added significantly to an awareness of local traditions. They were joined by William Allingham’s The Ballad Book (1864) bringing together English and Scottish traditional ballads. W. H. Logan and Joseph Ebsworth reprinted numerous ballads and other older songs, including Logan’s A Pedlar’s Pack of Ballads and Songs (1869), and the extensive work of William Chappell. Carl Engel’s The Literature of National Music (1879) stimulated field collecting of folk songs; Charlotte Burne, for example, discovered numerous contemporary singers in the West Midlands, Shropshire Folk-Lore (1883–1886). Sabine Baring-Gould, a parson in Devon, collected and published songsfrom numeroussingers. Otherlate Victorian field collectors found far fewer sources; Lucy Broadwood, for example, collected from about 35 individuals, while Frank Kidson had even fewer informants. Broadwood, along with J. A. Fuller Maitland, published English Country Songs, Words and Music (1893), while Kidson issued Traditional Tunes: A Collection of Ballad Airs, Chiefly Obtained in Yorkshire and the South of Scotland (1891). The Percy Society early in the century, and the Ballad Society by the mid-late Victorian era, assisted in promoting a broader interest in traditional ballads and songs, leading to the founding of the English Folk Song Society in 1898.
Folk Songs, Folk Spirit and Folk Ways of Life
