Appalachian Ballads: Old Songs in the Mountains

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The national origin of most traditional ballads cannot be firmly established, and many circulated in both England and Scotland. Claims that Appalachian people were "pure" Scottish or Elizabethan survivals are romantic exaggerations.

Songs that crossed the ocean

established Traditional narrative ballads were sung across Britain and Ireland for centuries. Emigrants carried them to America, where they were passed down orally in families. In the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia, relatively isolated communities kept many of them alive into the twentieth century.

Cecil Sharp's discovery

established Cecil Sharp, an English folk-song collector, went to the Appalachians in 1916 with his assistant Maud Karpeles, encouraged by Olive Dame Campbell, who had been collecting songs there. Over three trips between 1916 and 1918 they recorded hundreds of songs, many of them versions of ballads in Child's collection. Sharp was struck that singing remained a part of everyday life.

Scottish roots

shared Many of the ballads have Scottish or Border connections. "The Gypsy Laddie", which became "Gypsy Davy" in America, is linked in Scottish tradition to the Earl of Cassilis. "Lord Randal" exists in Scottish versions, and Border ballads such as "The Daemon Lover" were collected by Walter Scott. "Barbara Allen" was known in both England and Scotland; Pepys heard it in London in 1666. Most of these songs cannot be assigned to a single nation, and the Appalachian tradition is best described as British and Irish rather than purely Scottish.

"Love songs about murder": an early witness

shared The historian David Hackett Fischer, in Albion's Seed (1989), notes that the backcountry was poor in written literature but rich in ballads and folk tales. He quotes Samuel Kercheval's History of the Valley of Virginia (first published 1833), which remembered the singing of the frontier years: "Robin Hood furnished a number of our songs; the balance were mostly tragical, and were denominated 'love songs about murder.'" Kercheval's chapters on frontier manners draw heavily on Joseph Doddridge's Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars (1824), so the recollection may be Doddridge's, and it describes the western Virginia and Pennsylvania frontier of the later eighteenth century. Either way, it is good evidence that murder ballads were part of backcountry life more than a century before the collectors arrived. It also shows the mix: Robin Hood is an English hero.

shared Fischer also uses Cecil Sharp as a witness for his wider argument that the backcountry was settled mainly from the Anglo-Scottish Border, Ulster and northern England. Sharp wrote, in a letter later printed by John C. Campbell in The Southern Highlander and His Homeland (1921), that the singers' songs and dances suggested their ancestors came from "probably the North of England, or the Border country between Scotland and England." That was Sharp's impression, not a demonstration: he published his collection as English folk songs, and the ballads he found circulated widely across England, Scotland and Ireland. Fischer's broader "borderland" thesis is itself contested.

Influence

established Ballad singing, along with fiddle music and hymnody, fed into the music of the American South. Singers such as Jean Ritchie from Kentucky brought Appalachian ballads to a national audience in the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, and the stories and melodies influenced country music, bluegrass and later folk and rock musicians.

A caution

shared Early collectors sometimes presented mountain people as living relics of an "Elizabethan" or "Anglo-Saxon" past, ignoring African American, Native American and other influences on Appalachian culture. Modern scholars stress that Appalachian music was a living, changing tradition shaped by many peoples.

• Samuel Pepys heard "Barbary Allen" in 1666.
• Cecil Sharp collected songs in the Appalachians from 1916 to 1918.
• "Gypsy Davy" comes from the Scottish ballad "The Gypsy Laddie".
• Many Appalachian ballads are in Child's collection.
• Appalachian ballads influenced country and bluegrass music.
• Frontier Virginians called their tragic ballads "love songs about murder".
• Robin Hood songs, English in origin, were among the favourites of the eighteenth-century backcountry.

• Myth: The Appalachian ballad tradition is purely Scottish. Some of the ballads are of Scottish or Border origin, but others are English and many existed on both sides of the border. The tradition is best described as British and Irish.
• Myth: Appalachian people were unchanged Elizabethan or Scottish survivals. Early collectors sometimes presented mountain people as living relics, ignoring African American, Native American and other influences. Modern scholars stress that Appalachian music was a living, changing tradition shaped by many peoples.
• Disputed: Where the singers' ancestors came from. Cecil Sharp guessed the north of England or the Anglo-Scottish Border, but that was an impression, not a demonstration. He published his collection as English folk songs, and Fischer's wider "borderland" thesis is itself contested.