This Dover edition, first published in 1964, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the work first published by J. J. Augustin, Publisher, New York City, in 1937.
The publisher is grateful to the University of Virginia Library for furnishing a copy of the book for purposes of reproduction.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-8268
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TO THE MEMORY
OF MY WIFE
INEZ EMELINE WRIGHT JACKSON
Preface
The ancestors of the bearers of the Southern tradition of folk-music began in very ancient times the practice of singing religious songs to folk-tunes. Nor must one think that this custom showed a lack of respect for religion. On the contrary, it rather emphasized the respect and love of the folk for their traditional music. As their most loved and treasured possession, they brought this noble musical heritage and laid it on the altar of their worship. There is a strong probability that this practice has continued unbroken for at least thirteen centuries. William of Malmsbury, writing in the twelfth century, gives an anecdote of St. Aldhelm, the Anglo-Saxon abbot of Malmsbury during the seventh century, which he took from the notebook of King Alfred the Great, which was extant at that time. According to this story, the Saint would station himself on a bridge in the guise of a gleeman and would collect an audience by singing popular songs. He would then gradually insert into his entertainment the words of the holy scriptures and so lead his hearers to salvation. The chronicler also states that one of the popular songs made by St. Aldhelm and mentioned by King Alfred was still being sung by the folk at the time of his writing, almost five hundred years later.
Chappell, in his Popular Music of the Olden Time, says: “We may date the custom of singing hymns to secular tunes from this time [The Norman Conquest] if, indeed, it may not be carried back to the time of St. Aldhelm. William of Malmesbury records of Thomas, Archbishop of York (created in 1070), that ‘whenever he heard any new secular song or ballad sung by the minstrels, he immediately composed parodies on the words to be sung to the same tune.’
“In a contribution to Notes and Queries, Mr. James Graves gives a curious list of eight songs similarly parodied in The Red Book of Ossory, a manuscript of the fourteenth century, which is preserved in the archives of that see. Six of the songs are English (there are two parodies on one of them), and the remaining two are Anglo-Norman. The Latin hymns seem to have been written by Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory from 1318 to 1360. The names of the six English songs are as follows: