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Transcriber's note


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     Transylvania University Studies in English

     II




     A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs

     By

     HUBERT G. SHEARIN, A. M. Ph. D.
     Professor of English Philology in Transylvania University

     and

     JOSIAH H. COMBS, A. B.
     Editor of The Transylvanian

     Transylvania Printing Company
     Lexington, Kentucky
     1911




     TO

     R. M. S.




INTRODUCTION


This syllabus, or finding-list, is offered to lovers of folk-literature
in the hope that it may not be without interest and value to them for
purposes of comparison and identification. It includes 333 items,
exclusive of 114 variants, and embraces all popular songs that have so
far come to hand as having been "learned by ear instead of by eye," as
existing through oral transmission--song-ballads, love-songs,
number-songs, dance-songs, play-songs, child-songs, counting-out rimes,
lullabies, jigs, nonsense rimes, ditties, etc.

There is every reason to believe that many more such await the
collector; in fact, their number is constantly being increased even
today by the creation of new ones, by adaptation of the old, and even by
the absorption and consequent metamorphosis, of literary,
quasi-literary, or pseudo-literary types into the current of oral
tradition.

This collection, then, is by no means complete: means have not been
available for a systematic and scientific search for these folk-songs,
which have been gathered very casually during the past five years
through occasional travel, acquaintanceship, and correspondence in only
the twenty-one following counties: Fayette, Madison, Rowan, Elliott,
Carter, Boyd, Lawrence, Morgan, Johnson, Pike, Knott, Breathitt, Clay,
Laurel, Rockcastle, Garrard, Boyle, Anderson, Shelby, Henry, and
Owen--all lying in Central and Eastern Kentucky.

All of the material listed has thus been collected in this State, though
a variant of The Jew's Daughter, page 8, has come by chance from
Michigan, and another of The Pretty Mohee, page 12, was sent from
Georgia. The Cumberland Mountain region, in the eastern part of the
State, has naturally furnished the larger half of the material, because
of local conditions favorable to the propagation of folk-song. However,
sections of Kentucky lying farther to the westward are almost equally
prolific. The wide extension of the same ballad throughout the State
argues convincingly for the unity of the Kentucky stock--a fact which
may be confirmed in more ways than one.

The arrangement is as follows: The material in hand is loosely grouped
in eighteen sections, according to origin, chronology, content, or form.
Though logically at fault, because of the cross-division thus inevitably
entailed, this plan has seemed to be the best. No real confusion will
result to the user in consequence. In fact, no matter what system be
adopted, certain songs will belong equally well to two or more different
categories.

Under each of these eighteen main divisions the treatment of the
individual song-ballad is in general as follows: First, stands the
title, with variant titles in parentheses. Should this be unknown, a
caption coined by the editors is placed in brackets. Secondly, a Roman
numeral immediately follows the above to denote the number of versions,
if variants have been found. Thirdly, the prosodical character of the
song is roughly indicated by a combination of letters and numerals. Each
letter indicates a line; the variation in the letters indicates, in the
usual fashion, the rime-scheme of the stanza. Each numeral indicates the
number of stresses in the line (or lines) denoted by the letter (or
letters) immediately succeeding it. When a chorus, burden, or refrain is
present, the metrical scheme of this stands immediately after an "and,"
as, for example, in The Blue and the Gray, page 14. In the case of the
refrain, the letters used are independent of those immediately preceding
the "and," and denoting the rime-scheme of the stanza proper. Fourthly,
an Arabic numeral follows to indicate the number of stanzas in the song,
exclusive of the refrain, should one be present. If the number of
stanzas in a ballad is indeterminable, because its form is fragmentary,
or because its variant versions differ in length, this fact is indicated
by an appended ca (_circa_). Sixth, and last, is a synopsis, or other