It has, naturally, been difficult at times to decide whether certain stanzas should be counted as couplets, or as quatrains half as long. In such cases, the air, or tune, and other data, often rather subtle, have been employed in making [decisions]. The quatrain form has in uncertain instances been given the benefit of the doubt. Even thus, certain minor inconsistencies will perhaps be noted. It is hardly necessary to add that assonance freely occurs in the place of rime, and as such it is considered throughout.
All attempt to indicate the prevailing metrical unit, or foot, within the line has been frankly given over. Iambs, dactyls, and their ilk receive scant courtesy from the composer of folk-song, who without qualm or quaver will stretch one syllable, or even an utter silence (caesura), into the time of a complete bar; while in the next breath he will with equal equanimity huddle a dozen syllables into the same period. Consequently, this item, even if it could be indicated, would have scant descriptive value.
It is a pleasant duty to acknowledge gratefully the assistance of those who have transmitted to our hands many of the songs: Mesdames J. W. Combs, W. T. Phillips, Jennie L. Combs, Richard Smith, Martha Smith, Ruth Hackney, W. F. Hays, Ollie Huff, Robin Cornett, Lucy Banks, Sarah Burton, Kittie Jordan, and Ruby Martin; Misses Martha Jent, Maud Dean, Virginia Jordan, Jessie Green, Lizzie Cody, Margaret Combs, Barbara Smith, Helena E. Rose, Sarah Burton, Sarah Hillman, Cordia Bramblett, Nannie S. Graham, Myrtle Wheeler, Melissa Holbrook, Rosetta Wheeler, Ruth Hackney, Ora McDavid, Jeannette McDavid; Messrs. Wm. W. Berry, Chas. Hackney, S. B. Wheeler, R. L. Morgan, Enoch Wheeler, Thos. H. Hackney, James Goodman, W. S. Wheeler, Harry M. Morgan, Henry Lester, T. G. Wheeler, C. F. Bishop, and John C. Jones.
Especially helpful as collaborators have been Messrs. Winfred Cox, Emory E. Wheeler, Roud Shaw, A. B. Johnston, C. E. Phillips, and H. Williamson.
Kind words or letters of appreciation and, in some cases, of suggestion, from the following have encouraged the preparation of this syllabus: Professors Alexander S. Mackenzie, of the Kentucky State University; Clarence C. Freeman, of Transylvania University; John A. Lomax, of the University of Texas; Albert H. Tolman, of the University of Chicago; John M. McBride, Jr., of the University of the South; George Lyman Kittredge, of Harvard University; Henry M. Belden, of the University of Missouri; and Katherine Jackson, formerly of Bryn Mawr College, who has most generously given the use of her manuscript collection. None of the shortcomings of this brochure, however, can be imputed to them in the slightest degree.
SYLLABUS
I.
The songs in this group are the survivors of English and Scottish originals, found for the most part in the Child collection. Certain of those given in sections II to XVIII below could doubtless, with due effort, be identified in like manner.
The King's Daughter (Six Pretty Fair Maids, Pretty Polly), iv, 4a3b4c3b, 9ca: Variants of Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, Child, No. 4. By a stratagem she drowns the lover just as he is about to drown her.