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The Adventurous Story Of Poor
I. "One Of Them Old Southern Mountain Ballads..."
"All right, we're gonna try something new tonight. Don't know how it's gonna come off, but we'll try it anyway. A lot of people ask me, they want to know about old songs, and new songs and stuff like that. This is a song I used to sing before I even wrote any songs. But this is a real old song, as old as I know. This here is called an autoharp. So this is how I guess you call one of them old folk songs, I used to sing. I used to sing a lot of these things. Well, I hope it brings you back, I know it brings me back. This is Mary And The Wild Moor. I guess it's about 200 years old" (San Francisco, 12.11.1980) "Now we're gonna play an older song now. This is now, this is a real old song. Could be written about 500 years ago. I think we used to sing this, we used to sit around years ago and sing this one. Before we even wrote any songs. Before anybody knew how. So this one is called Mary On The Wild Moor". (San Francisco, 21.11.1980) "People are always asking me about old songs and new songs. Anyway, this is a real old song. I used to sing this before I even wrote any songs. One of them old Southern Mountain ballads, I guess everybody used to do them. Last time we played, I think it was in Tucson, there was a review in the newspapers that I'd like to get straight. The man that came to the show and reviewed it, didn't know where all the songs came from. Anyway this one here he said was about Jesus being born in the manger. Well that's not entirely true about this Dylan of course had known this song already in the early 60s - there is an handwritten transcription of the text available - but he plays only very small part in the history of this song that can be traced back unto the 1820s and is performed until today. The allmusic guide lists versions ranging from the classic recordings by the Blue Sky Boys (1940) and the Louvin Brothers (1956) to contemporary attempts by David Pajo (2005) and Sara Evans (2001), the latter from the soundtrack to "Songcatcher", a movie based very loosely on the life of Folk song collector Dorothy Scarborough. Also singers like Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Porter Waggoner and Mac Wiseman have recorded "Mary". It is a Bluegrass standard and it can be found in "Folk song"-collections still in print today. But the song’s story most likely started on a stage in London around the year 1829.
II. “This Is A Real Old Song...” The earliest surviving evidence of "Mary Of The Moor" is most likely a broadside, a so-called "Long song-sheet" with the caption The St. James Looking Glass, printed by James Catnach in "The long-song sellers did depend on the veritable cheapness and novel form in which they vended popular songs, printed on paper, three songs abreast, and the paper was about a yard long, which constituted the three yards of song. Sometimes three slips were pasted together. The vendors paraded the streets with their three yards of new and popular songs for a penny. The songs are, or were, generally fixed to the top of a long pole, and the vendor cried the different titles as he went along". (Henry Mayhew, London Labour And The London Poor, 1861, p. 221) There are two versions of this broadside, one with 12 songs, obviously the original (Harding B36(15), not available online at the moment) and one with only nine songs, an abbreviated edition sold in Reading (Johnson Ballads, fol. 27). In the Bodleian Library's allegro Catalogue of Ballads these sheets are dated as printed between 1813 and 1838. This is not of much help, these were simply the years Catnach was in business. But thankfully there is also an entry in the catalogue of the British Library for "The St. James's Looking Glass. [Songs.], London: Catnach" (Microfilm PB.Mic.47699) with the date given as "1829?". Interestingly the British Library's files include another edition of "The St. James's Looking Glass", also printed by Catnach and dated "1829?": "A series of cuts, followed by a song and monologue written by David Roach, all satirising various personalities of the time". This dating is supported by Catnach's Catalogue of Songs from 1832 that includes a reference to "Mary Of The Moor" (Roud id S154202). The St. James's Looking Glass and "Mary" are also listed in a catalogue of Newcastle printers W & T Fordyce dated as ca. 1828 - 1837 (Roud id S154204). But St. James surely refers to London and this might simply be a reprint of Catnach's song sheet. All other prints of "Mary" seem to be of a later date, as for example one by Durham printer Walker (1835?) where this song was already named "Mary Of The Wild Moor". The only exception may be a Catnach broadside in the catalog of the NLS dated 1813 - 1835, where "Mary Of The Moor" could be bought with the "The Waterman", a song that was printed at least since the early 20s. But it was common practice of the printers to combine older and more current songs so it doesn't prove anything. Catnach’s rival William Pitts was responsible for a couple of prints of this song, too. He called it “Poor Mary Of The Moor” (for example Harding B 11 (2789)). These are dated 1819 - 1844, but that were Pitt’s business years so they are of no help neither. The other songs on The St. James's Looking Glass also don't help that much with the dating of "Mary". Some seem to be from roughly the same time period, some of them had already been printed in the early 20s and some - like Thomas Campbell's "The Mariner's Of England" - are of an older date The dating of broadsides is difficult and most dates given should be taken with big grain of salt. All evidence known to me seems to place "Mary Of The Moor" into the late 20s or maybe a little earlier, but it surely isn't much older. There is also a good possibility that Catnach's "The St. James's Looking Glass" was in fact the first ever printing of this song and this might also help to determine when it was written. The original lyrics are these: 'Twas one cold night when the wind Why did I ever leave this dear cot, But now think what the father he felt, Now the father in grief pined away, The original melody of “Mary Of The Moor” is not definitely known. Only one undated broadside sheet printed by Pitts (Harding B 25 (1538)) names as the tune “The Robin’s Petition”. Judging from the many prints “The Robin’s Petition” is thematically related to “Mary Of The Moor” as it is about a robin searching for shelter from the cold winter and a couple of ideas obviously have found their way into the lyrics of “Mary”: When the leaves had forsaken the trees, And it was of course common practice to use well known melodies for new songs. So there is a good chance that “Mary” was originally performed with Mr. Whitaker’s melody. But this assignation could also be a later addition, I have seen it on no other broadside. Maybe the lyrics were originally only recited on the stage. That was not unusual at that time. Mayhew (p. 226) reported for the 1840s that "songs which are the most popular are - as is the case at many of the concert-rooms - sometimes 'spoken' as well as sung".
III. Broadsides And Popular Songs According to Country Music historian Bill Malone (p. 23) "Mary Of The Wild Moor" “came to America with professional British entertainers who toured the United States". So the original milieu of this song most likely may have been the world of public entertainment and stage shows in 1820s London. The major function of broadside song sheets was to offer the lyrics of those songs popular at the moment to the prospective customers who had heard these songs in performance. "Three yards a penny! Three yards a penny! Beautiful songs! Newest songs! Popular Songs! Three yards a penny! Song, song, songs!" (Mayhew, p. 221) the sellers used to shout to advertise their long song sheets. There was a wealth of professional public entertainment with a great repertoire of songs old and new: from the poor or not so poor street singer to theatres like the Adelphi, from the pub houses to the pleasure gardens. The theater wasn't yet an exclusive domain of the higher and more educated classes. Performers of the highest ranks like Luzia Vestris, John Braham, John Liston - the inventor of the Paul Pry-persona - or Maria Theresa Bland in the 20s were popular among all Londoners and they used to perform all kinds of songs. The terms "broadside ballad" or "street literature" are a little misleading. They are surely appropriate for the topical broadsides, the "Ballads on a Subject" like the gallows literature that was the very lucrative main business of printers like Catnach. These "murder sheets" (see Shepard, p. 80) were sold in great amounts, some of them even in a million copies. But songs on broadsides usually didn't originate on the streets but from professional entertainment. "[...] whatever was popular singing material was also very soon appropriated and sold on the streets" (Joy, p. 9). This was in no way a new phenomena of the 19th century. Already "in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries [...] many [songs that were later called 'Folk Songs'] came from professional entertainers and writers for special occasions". And it should not be forgotten that Samuel Pepys in 1666 heard 'Barbara Allen's Cruelty' from a stage actress, his beloved Mrs. Knipp, "and it may have made its debut on that occasion" (Pound, Nebraska Folklore, p. 236/7). Since the late 18th century with "the institution of Pleasure Gardens, like Vauxhall, Marylebone and Ranelagh, where music was a regular attraction" street broadsides show an "increased preoccupation with professional performers and shows" (Shepard, p. 71/73). Now printers like Catnach and Pitts were busy bringing "standard and popular song within the reach of all" (Brown, quoted from Hindley). In the 1840s Henry Mayhew (p. 280) was told that "all those sort of songs come now to the streets [...] from the concert rooms". For the printers it was an easy job. There was no copyright, they didn't have to pay a writer but could simply "steal" the songs and sell them cheaply on the streets. "They come to the printer, for nothing, from the concert-room" (Mayhew, p. 278) or they could be copied from popular songbooks by the major song publishers, for example from a book like Paul Pry's Budget Of Harmony For 1828: "A careful Selection of all the Prying, Whimsical, Funny, Comical, Eccentric, and Serious Songs, Glees, and Catches, That have been Sung at The Theatres Royal, Minors, And Vauxhall Gardens; Collected expressly for the Amusement of Paul Pry's Vocal Friends and Patrons, And Intended to enliven the Festive Board". In fact there was no need to pay a writer to create a new song. They were enough songs around already performed and promoted by popular singers. The only exception was when the printers needed parodies of current hits. Also it wasn't necessary to include the music or at least name the tune used for a set of lyrics - although it was occasionally added -, the prospective buyers were familiar with the melody because they had already heard it in performance. Or they didn't need the music because the song had not been sung but recited by the performers.
Like all those collections The St. James's Looking Glass is most likely a document of popular songs of that era, of songs that were popular through performances and then printed and performed again because the people liked them. Sadly there is to my knowledge no literature that tries to correlate broadside ballads with the professional entertainment scene of that time. This would be a worthwhile project that might help to to find those songs' original context. Unfortunately it is at the moment not possible to do this for "Mary Of The Moor". I don't know which performers used this song and if it was part of the repertoire of the most popular singers of that time like Ms. Bland or Mme. Vestris - but the latter in fact did tour the USA in the mid-1830s - and the broadside sheet itself isn't of much help. The songs could have been taken from a particular venue or performer or - more likely - they were simply a random collection of popular "hits" of the day maybe together with some old stuff lying around in the printer's office. The writer of "Mary Of The Moor" remains anonymous, he isn't credited. But that was standard practice of all printers and happened even to songwriters of the higher ranks like Joseph A. Wade. His "Meet Me By The Moonlight Alone" (1826) was among the most popular songs of the 19th century and widely reprinted on broadsides in Britain. This song can also be found on "Long song-sheets" from the 20s like the Life In London Songster or Blossoms Of Spring (both by Catnach) and The Harvest Concert (Pitts) but his name is never mentioned. Usually only well known poets and writers dead or alive like Burns, Clare, Campbell - responsible for two songs on The St. James's Looking Glass -, White or John Howard Payne, the author of the great hit "Home Sweet Home", were credited. But that might have helped more selling the broadsides than supporting the poets themselves or their heirs who surely weren't paid anything. So for the most part of the 19th century in many cases we don't know who actually wrote the songs.
"The first song I ever sold was to a concert-room manager. The next I sold had great success. It was called the `Demon of the Sea,' and was to the tune of `The Brave Old Oak.' [...] That song was written for a concert-room, but it was soon in the streets, and ran a whole winter. I got only 1s. for it. Then I wrote the `Pirate of the Isles,' [New York ca. 1860s] and other ballads of that sort. The concert-rooms pay no better than the printers for the streets. Perhaps the best thing I ever wrote was the 'Husband's Dream.' [New York ca 1860] [...] I dare say I've written a thousand in my time, and most of them were printed. I believe 10,000 were sold of the `Husband's Dream.' [...]" It seems that songwriter wasn't a well-respected job at that time nor was it a profession to get rich with. But these poets surely were educated and very experienced professionals.
IV. Sad Tales Of Betrayed Mothers And Poor Orphans "Mary Of The Moor" reworks a topic well known from literature and song: the girl with child - sometimes illegitimate - is betrayed and left by her husband or lover, she wants to return home but her father despises her and in the end she and the child will die. German readers may be aware for example of Gottfried August Bürger's Des Pfarrers Tochter von Taubenhain (1778), where this topic is combined with that of the desperate mother murdering the child. But it isn't necessary to go that far, the British balladry from the broadside collections offers enough possible precursors and parallels. There is for example a song called "Winter's Evening, or: The deploring damsel", printed in London between 1780 and 1812 (Harding B 17 (342a)), also in Newcastle between 1774 and 1825 as "The Winter's Night" (Harding B 25(2058)), and then reprinted in Britain at least until the 1850s. In the 20th century it was collected by Folklorists in Britain, Ireland, Canada and the USA as "The Fatal Snowstorm" or "The Forsaken Mother And Child" (Roud # 175): Twas one winter's evening when first came down the snow, This song alone could easily have served as a model and inspiration for the lyrics of "Mary Of The Moor". It is surely one of the saddest songs I've ever seen and it has an obvious theatrical quality. I can actually imagine it performed by an actress on stage. But there is one major difference in motives: this song has the cruel father who had "shut the door" on the girl while in "Mary" he was only "deaf to her cries" because he wasn't able to hear her voice: the wind "blew loudly 'cross the wild moor". This different dramartugy allows the sorrowful father's death at the end of the song and makes the whole narrative even more tragic than "Winter's Evening". The other major difference is that "Mary" lacks most of the background of the girl's story. It is never explained - as in "Winter's Evening" - why she returns home with her child in a dark and stormy night, except for a short allusion at the end that she once had been "our village pride". Maybe the song was originally only a part of a stage play that had offered Mary's story, or maybe it had been introduced with a narrative delineating the background. But contemporary listeners or readers surely didn't have any problems understanding this ballad. There were enough songs around that offered other variants of this very popular topic. One example most likely predating "Mary" is "Wandering Girl", here from a London broadside dated 1817 - 1828 (Firth c. 18(104)), also reprinted in later years. Here the girl with her child, left by her true love and despised by her father, "must wander like one that is poor". The grim ending is missing, instead she warns all "pretty fair maids [...] never trust a young man in any degree": I lov'd a young man as dear as my life, Another Mary's story is told in "Blue-Eyed Mary Or: The Victim Of Seduction" (Harding B 11(346)), also printed by Catnach, but not dateable, so it may also postdate "Mary Of The Moor". This girl from a "cottage embosom'd within a deep shade", at first also the pride of the village, is seduced by a squire, follows him to the town and in the end dies as a prostitute: In a cottage embosom'd within a deep shade, Even printer James Catnach himself tried his hand at a song about this extremely popular topic. His "Home", first published in 1823 in The may-flower.New songs (Johnson Ballads fol. 17), was written to the melody of "Sweet Home" by John Howard Payne, one of the great hits of that time and is a good example for a typical answer-song. Later it was even printed by Catnach’s rival Pitts side by side with the original and another parody (Harding B 11(3711)) : I was courted by a young man who did me betray, Wandering girls were usually betrayed mothers with a little child, the wandering boys used to be poor orphans. A well known example is Henry Kirke White's (1785 - 1806) poem "The Wandering Boy" where the "winter wind whistles along the wild moor". It circulated widely on broadsides and was performed by singers. Liston's Drolleries (Catnach 1822, Johnson Ballads fol. 14) includes the original version as "sung by Master Hyde at the London concerts": When the winter wind whistles along the wild moor, But there were also versions circulating with two additional verses at the end that hadn’t been part of White's original (Johnson Ballads 2961, ca. 1824): I'll lay my self down I'm denumbed with could [sic!], The door which he lay at belonged to a squire, Here the poor boy is suffering the same fate as Mary and is found dead the next morning. Another related song is "The Soldier's Boy" (Roud # 258) describing a similar scene (Catnach, ca. 1828/29?, Harding B 17(291a) and more often): The snow was fast descending, But in this case the poor boy is saved: The lady rushed from her window, A similar story of an orphan wandering through the "dreary moor", also with a positive ending, can be found in The "Farmer's Boy" (Roud # 408), a song printed by Catnach in some of his Long song-sheets like Cupid's Bower and The Jessamine and reprinted throughout the century, here quoted from Harding B 11(1152): The sun went down beyond your hill Another song touching this topic is “Poor Little Sailor Boy”, also very popular at that time (for example with “Poor Mary Of The Moor” on Harding B 17 (243b) by Pitts). “The Robin’s Petition”, the song that may have furnished “Mary” with its melody may have been an inspiration too, it belongs to the same family (Johnson Ballads 260). "Mary Of The Moor" is for the most part a combination of motives and ideas from songs about the "wandering girl" and the "wandering boy". Nearly all elements of "Mary" can be found in the lyrics quoted and the writer surely was aware of them. Even songs with different topics may have offered some inspiration. The St. James's Looking Glass also includes "The Blue-Eyed Stranger" - the first print of this one is from the early 20s (Harding B28 (58)) - that opens with a similar scenery and also uses the image of the father with "frantic" hair gazing upon a girl: One night the north wind loud did blow, The author of "Mary Of The Moor" only needed to grab into the big bag of motives available at that time to create another song about a topic popular at that time.
V. How To Write An “Old” Song Though most likely derived from contemporary popular songs the style is different. The lyrics read like a pastiche of older ballads like "Barbara Allen" with some added melodramatic effects. "Mary" has all ingredients of a "fabricated Folk-Song". This is not meant as a pejorative value judgement but as a description of style. The language sounds stilted and approaching fairy-tale style, the rural scenery is stylized and artificial, like a setting on a stage. The melody used by the writer may have originally been created for a children’s poem, ”The Robin’s Petition”. The narrative is constructed like an historical legend, opening with the classic introductory formula: 'Twas [...] when [...] and ending with the villagers pointing out the old cottage that "to ruin" has gone: And noone they say has liv'd there 'till this day Only the willow "over the door" remains as a memento of that drama and indicates the place where Mary had died. In fact the writer might have had "Barbara Allen" - a song still or again very popular at that time - in mind when he conceived "Mary Of the Moor". Both songs share the tragic ending with the father "pining away in grief" after finding Mary in the morning just like Barbara Allen died of sorrow after her young man's death. Also the refrain lines are constructed similarly with the real culprits, Barbara Allen respectively the "winds that blew 'cross the wild moor", placed at the end of the verses. Comparing these two songs makes me wonder if "Mary" was originally intended as some kind of parody of an "old" Folk ballad. It should be noted that it was - in the context of European romanticism - the time of the very first "Folk Revival", the blueprint for all later revivals. Since the 18th century urban intellectuals in Europe had "turned their attention as never before to the vernacular culture of their country's peasants, farmers and craftspeople [...] Once scorned as ignorant and illiterate, ordinary people began to be glorified as the creators of cultural expression with a richness and depth lacking in elite creations" (Filene, p. 9). The fascination with the "Folk" and with a rural past more imagined than real was in Britain as important as in all other European countries and a lot of writers - from antiquarian to poet - were busy researching and recreating ballads and songs from the olden times.
Some of the basic ideas behind these and other related works have tremendous reverberations until today. There is first and foremost the fascination with anything that's "old", especially if it seems to have rural origins. The search for "authenticity" also "implies the existence of its opposite, the fake [...] identifying some cultural expressions or artifacts as authentic, genuine, trustworthy, or legitimate simultaneously implies that other manifestations are fake, spurious, and even illegitimate" (Bendix, p. 9). Since that time we also have a class of mostly urban intellectuals who claim to know better than the "Folk" what was "Folk", what was authentic and old. A didactic element has also been a part of this ideology: the desire to refresh and revitalize the whole culture or at least one's own work with the help of the products of the authentic "Folk". And not at least the idea of creating the "old" anew started in this era with the heavy-handed editing of sources by antiquarians and folklorists and with poets writing in the "old" style. The idea of the special value of something that is "old" and of rural origin quickly found its way to the common folks, both the "Folk" on the countryside and the "rabble on the streets" in the towns, the latter watched by ideologists with suspicion and disgust. Old and new "old" songs were part of the popular music scene of that day. For example Allan Ramsay's songs had been "warbled, to raptorous applause, by the favourite vocalists at the London 'gardens', and other places of popular resort. Familiar with the old popular songs of both countries [England and Scotland] he utilized them for his own purposes [...] His manner was exactly that which the masses could thoroughly appreciate [...]" (Henderson 1910, p. 404) and they were still reprinted and performed in the 1820s. There was a market for "old traditional songs" and rural nostalgia, not at least because the Britons were experiencing massive economic and social changes with the country just developing from a basically rural, agrarian society to an urbanized and industrialized state. Performers and printers revived "real old songs" and classics like "Barbara Allen" or "The Gipsy Laddie" were reprinted on broadsides and performed for "Folk" of all kind. Professional songwriters were able to fulfill these demands, too. Rural songs were written in town and old ballads were created anew. "Mary Of The Moor" is a product of these times, it was in no way originally a "Folk Song" or a song from the countryside imported to London. Most likely it was the work of a London writer, a seasoned professional who knew what he wanted and what the people wished to hear and I doubt if it has ever seen any rural part of England before it was printed. Bob Dylan in his "Bob Dylan's Blues" (1963) mocked about "all the folk songs [...] written these days, up in Tin Pan Alley". "Mary Of The Moor" seems to have been written in 1820s London's "Tin Pan Alley".
VI. From Popular Song To Nostalgia Favourite I have no idea what the intention of the author was when he wrote this song. Maybe it was originally a parody on "old Folk ballads", maybe he simply tried to cash in on the fad for old time music with a melodramatic tearjerker disguised as a folk song. It may have even been conceived as an ironic pastiche of moralizing fables á la "Winter's Evening". But the "Folk" in the towns and on the countryside obviously loved it. Without doubt they didn't regard it as a "mawkish popular song" (Carl Sandburg) but as a beautiful, tragic and moving ballad. "Mary Of The Wild Moor" - as it was named in later years - was surely performed on stages in and outside of London and it was regularly reprinted in the following decades, not only in London but also for example in Leeds [n.d.], Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow (ca 1850-1870). The people bought these broadsides at country fairs and other occasions to read or to sing this ballad and to decorate the walls with these sheets (see Joy). Since the 1890s Folklorists collected the song among the rural folks and it was included in Frank Kidson's Traditional Tunes and William A. Barrett's English Folk-Songs, both published in 1891. Cecil Sharp found "Mary" in Somerset in 1904 (Roud id S183632) but he didn't publish it. "Mary Of The Wild Moor" was among the many English songs that started a new life in Turner is only credited as the arranger of this version of "Mary Of The Wild Moor". According to Helen K. Johnson (1889, p. 303) he combined the lyrics with another melody that "had never been linked" to this song until he "united them, added a few lines, and adapted them with a piano arrangement". So Turner 's melody - it's a variant of "Old Rosin The Beau", a song of Irish origins very popular in the USA since the 1830s - seems not to have been the original one. Why he felt the need to change the melody is not clear. Either he didn't like the one used before or there wasn't a melody because the ballad used to be recited in performance or he only had a British broadside print at hand. His lyrics leave the storyline intact, there are only some minimalist changes that don't read like improvements but make the lyrics sound even more stilted than the original text: One night when the wind it blew cold, Interestingly there was a note added on the cover of the sheet music explaining why Mary had to return home and even reinstating the motif of the cruel father who doesn't let her into the house: "This song depicts the fate of a beautiful girl who was wooed by a young man who did not however suit the fancy of her parents. The lover besought her to leave her father's dwelling and unite with him in marriage. After being wedded about a year, he became a dissipated wretch, and she was driven by poverty and [cold?] back to the home of her childhood. But her father refusing her admittance she perished beside the cottage door" Maybe Turner or his publisher made it up themselves because the song was lacking any information Another American variant with a different set of revisions can be found on a couple of song sheets - only the lyrics, but no music - that are undated but seem to have been published in the 1860s. It's not Turner's text and I don't think it was derived from his version. This adaption seems to be based on an original British broadside. It is not known which melody was used for this variant nor who the reviser was. Maybe it was an editor at the publisher's office or a performer who used to sing it on stage. It was on one cold winters night,
“The vender is often a ragged urchin, but sometimes we find a young girl patiently displaying and offering her wares. Scan the titles closely, and you will meet here and there the face of an old acquaintance-" Mary of the Wild Moor," perhaps, or Watson's pathetic little ballad, "And she sent as she went Sunshine to and fro." If you happen to be familiar with London -street and concert-hall ballads, you will stumble over many a scrap you have heard before-for not less than one-third of the whole collection is of transatlantic origin”. Another way of distribution were so-called songsters, cheap, pocket-sized songbooks with only the lyrics but not the music of popular and traditional songs well known among the people. A great number of these songsters circulated in 19th century USA and some of them included of course "Mary Of The Wild Moor", for example The shilling song book; a collection of 175 of At this point "Mary Of The Wild Moor" was a song popular from the parlors to the streets. It was spreading throughout North America and I assume it was performed in public places. In 1889 Helen Kendrick Johnson included J. W. Turner's version in her very influential Our Familiar Songs (1889) and she may have been the first one to identify "Mary" as "very old" thus giving it authoritative folk song credentials. That surely would have pleased the anonymous writer from ca. 60 years ago. Interestingly she also claimed that the "song is so poor as poetry, that it has depended for its popularity solely upon the plaintive beauty of" the melody. I have some doubts about that and I don't think only Turner's music was important. This judgment seems to be more a reflection of her high-brow tastes. The tragic story surely was more responsible for the song's longevity as it could easily exist without that melody, both before and after Turner's arrangement was published. Ms. Johnson's book deserves special note as it was an impressive compendium, nearly a canon of the most popular songs of the 19th century of British origin, "Three Hundred Standard Songs of The English Speaking Race, Arranged With Piano Accompaniment, And Preceded By Sketches Of The Writers And The Histories Of The Songs". She had caught them at a moment when they were in the process of being transformed from current popular songs to old favorites of nostalgic value: "They need no introduction; they come with a latch-string assurance of old and valued friends [...] They are not popular songs merely, nor old songs exclusively, but well-known songs, of various times [...] " (p. v), and she might have been more than anyone else responsible for carrying these songs into the next century when the popular music was more or less shaped by Immigrants and African Americans. At the end of 19th century "Mary Of The Wild Moor" fell out of the favor of mainstream music listeners. There were for example no recordings made of this song in the 1890s when the recording business started. But it was kept alive in the memory of the older generation who had learned it in their youth and sang it at home, in books like Ms. Johnson's Our Familiar Songs - reprinted in 1904 and 1907 - or in the Old Favourite-sections of newspapers and magazine as for example in The Family Herald & Weekly Star in Montreal since 1901 (Roud id S244560). But in the new century it should be restored to public favor with the two new genres that grew to be very important for the resurgence of 19th century popular music in a new shape with new credentials:
VII. Ballad Hunters And Folk Song Collectors Since the turn of the century the Folklorists in the USA began to discover and collect "Folk ballads" for example in the Appalachians. They regarded them not as love-lorn ditties of nostalgic value but as important cultural relics from the British Isles. The background of this first American “Folk Revival” was quite complex. But one of the main aims was the search for the Anglo-Saxon and rural roots of American culture at a time of ongoing urbanization and industrialization and the arrival of so many immigrants with a non-Anglo-Saxon cultural background. Authenticity was located "in the rural past. Idealizing mountain culture enabled them to challenge or at least sidestep the contemporary trends toward an urban, machine-driven industrial economy and a mass commercial culture” (Filene, p. 24). Francis Child’s massive and magnificent English And Scottish Popular Ballads (1882 - 1898) had already defined the genre and now American collectors were busy researching the American tradition and feeding them back into oral tradition. Professor Child used to bemoan the corruption of "traditional" balladry since the invention of print and wouldn't have even touched a song like "Mary Of The Wild Moor", a "vulgar ballad" that was only as old as he himself. The massive broadside collections available were for him "veritable dunghills, in which, only after a great deal of sickening grubbing, one finds a very moderate jewel" (quoted in Shepard, p. 2)
The people weren't as discriminating as the Folklorists. They had taken their favorite songs from all possible sources and they gave the collectors what they thought they were looking for - old ballads - and for them "Mary" fit into this context and could sit easily besides "Barbara Allen" and similar "real old" songs. Or maybe they had read Helen Johnson's Our Familiar Songs where this song had been described as being "very old". "Mary Of The Wild Moor" is included in most North American "Folk song"-collections. Among the earliest collected versions is one found by Goldy Hamilton - a protegé of Folklorist Henry Belden - in 1910 in Missouri. This one seems to have been the first "Mary" printed in folklorist context - here besides older ballads like "Barbara Allen" and "Cambric Shirt" - but with a quite limited distribution as it was in a High School yearbook. The introductory remarks offer glimpses into the ideas behind this era's ballad hunting. "The purposes of the [Folklore] societies are multifold - to collect and put into permanent literature the songs of the Civil War, those in negro dialect and all other pieces containing ballad characteristics, to obtain old manuscripts of these and the air if possible, either by having them written down or reproduced on phonograph records, thus saving the old ballad tunes permanently. New ways and means are furnished by which ballads may be collected most successfully. And as the work is becoming more general ballads can be obtained from anyone who might have them, for the asking. In a short time people will be saving them for the fascinated school children or others who may happen to take an active part in this work. [...] The interest has reached its climax in bringing to light many old manuscripts from the closets and shelves of the forgotten past. Also numerous airs were obtained and learned by the Seniors. [...] Many of those we visited would sit and sing the different ballads they knew over and over, then go from fragment to fragment, only in the end to say they had hardly realized their value before; that at one time they knew many more but had forgotten them". Other early versions from the collections of academic or non-academic Folklorists were published in 1911 in the Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs by Shearin & Combs, in 1919 in Shoemaker's North Pennsylvania Minstrelsy and in Songs From The Hills Of Vermont by Sturgis/Hughes and then in 1922 in Louise Pound's important American Ballads And Songs.
It was on a cold winter's night, And maybe only Sandburg was able to sell this extremely mutilated relict of a "mawkish popular song" as the real thing, a "wisp of a melody [...], five brief lines as implicative as a Chinese poem". The version in Louise Pound's American Ballads And Songs is a "text transcribed by Mrs. Nellie B. Pickup of Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1914, from the singing of her mother who learned it in her childhood in New York" (p. 247). This seems to delineate the way the song had been traveling through America: from the urban centers to the Midwest & south. In fact Mrs. Pickup's mother might have even bought a copy of the song sheet from a New York street vendor like those described by Fairfield in 1870. Her text is virtually identical to the song sheet with only minimalist variations and includes all of that version's revisions like the tolling of the village bells, the tears pouring down the father's cheek and the "gay village bride". Also for example variants collected by John Harrington Cox (p. 148) in Roane County, Tennessee in 1917 from Mrs. Bishop - who had learned it in Charleston “about 1880” - , by Vance Randolph in Missouri 1928 and by Paul Brewster in Indiana 1935 definitely derive from the song sheet version. Even Sandburg's fragment belongs to the same tradition as it still maintains the tolling of the village bells, one of the major textual hooks of that version. Ms. Hamilton's 1910 Missouri text is part of this family, too, there is only one addition, the informant placed the story into the year 1824 (or it's the number of hairs the father tore from his head): [...] All these variants collected by Folklorists surely denote how popular the songsheet version had been and that it was known throughout the USA. But later versions - like those recorded by Max Hunter in Missouri 1958 and Arkansas 1976 or by John Quincy Wolf in Arkansas 1953 - may have easily been influenced by books, radio performances or commercial recordings. Turner's version was not found that often. It might have reached the informants either directly with the original sheet music or via Ms. Johnson's Our Familiar Songs - both aimed at the more educated middle-class - or maybe with one of the widespread songster books or of course with public performances. Edward Mellinger quotes in his Folk Songs From The Southern Highlands (p. 372 ) a variant "obtained from Mrs. Ewart Wilson, Pensacola, North Carolina, August 1930" that is still recognizable as Turner's revision, but condensed down to half of its original size: One night when the wind it blew cold, In Monroe, Wisconsin in 1946 Helene Stratman-Thomas recorded a performance by Mr.
The most interesting field recording is by Letys Murrin from Toronto, recorded in the 1950s by Edith Fowke and released on Folk Songs of Ontario (Folkways 04005, 1956). Ms. Murrin had learned her version from her grandfather (1859 - 1948). The melody is identified by Ms. Fowke as "Old Rosin The Beau". But whoever put this variant together added two introductory verses that sound partly suspiciously close to the note on Turner's sheet music respectively Helen Johnson's resume in her Our Familiar Songs: By the moor resides an old man The rest of the text adheres strictly to Turner's version except for the second part of the penultimate verse that is nearly completely changed: In frenzy he tore his gray hair All the Folklore variants I know can easily be traced back to one of the two printed American versions, either the song sheet or Turner's. I haven’t yet seen one that is based on the British original. Versions deriving from the song sheet seem to have been connected with different melodies - and the reasons may simply be that the singers only had the lyrics at hand and had to make up a new melody or use one from another song - while variants derived from Turner tend to use his music. The two traditions existed side by side. Only very occasionally these two basic texts seem to have been mixed up, as for example in another very late recording (Arkansas 1968) from the Max Hunter Folk Song Collection. Also there is no special regional distribution discernible except that the song seems to have traveled westwards with the people. Even the fact that most versions have been unearthed in rural regions doesn't mean that much. The collectors rarely went to the big towns. I don't doubt they would have found enough "Mary"s among the older generation in the urban centers. In all collected versions I have seen the text remains very stable, there are rarely noteworthy variations compared to the printed sources. Occasionally there are one or two verses missing and differences of the lyrics may be more explained by memory lapses than by creativity. Obviously there was never something like an extensive oral tradition of "Mary Of The Wild Moor". The song's regular appearance in Folklore collections only proves how popular it had once been, how far it had spread through North America and that it may have been performed among family members at home.
"Soldier's Boy" and “Farmer’s Boy”, two other songs quoted here by me as related to "Mary" have
The way these songs were transmitted was the same as for the older or "real old" ballads like for example "Barbara Allen". This song - one of those revived during the very first British Folk Revival - was widely printed and reprinted - on broadsides and in books, - performed and parodied in 18th and 19th century Britain. It could be found in the cheapest songbooks and in the most distinguished folklorist tomes. One of many examples is a broadside from Glasgow's Poet's Box (1855) where the version from Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany is placed side by side with a "comic version [...] as sung by Messrs. Lloyd, Cowell, &c [...] now drawing crowded audiences at all the different theaters and concerts in the kingdom". "Barbara Allen" had migrated quickly to the USA and there it became even more popular than in Britain A lot of commercial prints & performances of that song kept it alive (see Coffin, p. 87f), the lyrics were available as song sheets and sheet music, in songsters, magazines (here from Harper’s Magazine 1888), and books (not at least from 1889 on in Our Familiar Songs). In the 20th century Folklore collections, performances, songbooks as well as commercial recordings were surely more important than any oral tradition. There must have been times when it was actually impossible to avoid this song. Without print it wouldn't have survived that long and in the course of time "Barbara Allen" took over roles as love-lorn dittie, popular song, nostalgia favorite, "ancient ballad" and more. The ways of transmission were the same, no matter if it was an older ballad or a more recent popular song.
VIII. Old Familiar Tunes And Authentic Kentucky Mountain Girls Country music distributed via radio and records since the 1920s was responsible for the reanimation of many old songs from the 19th century and so-called Folk songs including a lot of those already promoted in Folklorist collections. At first this genre used to be called "Old Hill Tunes" or "Old Familiar Tunes" and it was instantly frowned upon both by hip urban music fans - their fascination with this kind of music only In this respect they were of course right: records and radio did in fact massively influence later Folklorists' collections. This was surely true for Bradley Kincaid, "The Kentucky Mountain Boy". He used to perform "Barbara Allen" and other "old ballads" regularly on the popular National Barn Dance radio show on WLS and published a dozen songbooks that reportedly were sold in the 100000s. Kincaid may have been more responsible for the survival of "Barbara Allen" than all Folklorist's efforts. Vernon Dalhart's "Prisoner's Blues" was sold in great amounts and found itself immediately in oral tradition. But there were also a lot of touching points between Country music & Folklorists. For example Bradley Kincaid - a fine singer and immensely popular - preferred not to be called an "hillbilly", he was an educated man who regarded himself more as a Folklorist and a keeper of the tradition. Buell Kazee, a learned minister and a tenor trained by a professional singer had started his career giving Folk music concerts - including lectures about the songs - in tails and ties, accompanied by a pianist. Even some academic revivalists smuggled themselves into the studios. The first ever "Black Jack Davy" was recorded by a Professor I. G. Greer from North Carolina in 1929 (Paramount 3195 A).
Also the printed sources behind both Folklore collections and commercial recordings of "old familiar tunes" were often identical. Besides songsters and other popular song collections as well as song sheets also the songbooks for shape-note singing like the Sacred Harp were of prime importance: "The shape-note writers and publishers contributed mightily to the" southern rural music repertoire (Malone, p. 29ff). Another song related to "Mary Of The Wild Moor" belongs into this context. "The Orphan Girl" (Roud # 457) was collected regularly by Folklorists, at first by Henry Belden in 1906 and later for example by Randolph, Brown, Dorothy Scarborough, Lomax, Mellinger, Wolf and Hunter. Sandburg included it in his "American Songbag". But it was also very popular among Country-music performers and audiences. In the 20s Buell Kazee, Fiddlin' John Carson, Riley Pucket and Ernest Stoneman where among those who recorded this song and of course strengthened their listeners familiarity with the "Orphan Girl". "The Orphan Girl" was written by Elder C.G. Keith in 1905 for the Cooper Edition of the Sacred Harp songbook: "No home, no home," plead a little girl, Here the author is grabbing deep into the bag of Anglo-Saxon song tradition and his methods are not that different from a 19th century London popular song writer or a 20th century "old familiar tune" composer, not to mention all kinds of Folk Revivalist songwriters. Bill Malone (p. 31) notes that the works of shape-note writers were "allied closely in style, mood and often in theme with the popular music of the day". The melody was taken from the Scottish air "The Braes o' Balquidder" - not Tannahill's song but another one - and is the same that had been used for the well known "The White [later 'Lone'] Pilgrim" (1833, and included in the first edition of the Sacred Harp by B. F. White and E.J. King, 1844) and before that by Robert Burns for his "Bonnie Peggy Allison" (1780). The lyrics could have easily been derived from "Mary Of The Wild Moor" and related songs from the circle about the "wandering boy" and "wandering girl". The basic scenery is similar: the poor girl freezes in a cold winter night and is found dead in the morning. The language is old-fashioned, the "princely hall" is an anachronism that made this song sound much older than it actually was. The song could have been written for a London stage in the 1820s and it fit perfectly into both Folklore collections and the "old familiar tune"-repertoire. There was a market for "old familiar songs" and "old hill tunes", "[...] a demand for recorded music capable of evoking sentimental recollections of a preindustrial era" (Kenney, p. 148). This nostalgia for songs of the rural good ole days was an integral part of the popular culture of these years when the south was getting urbanized and industrialized and a lot of southerners were transplanted into towns. The record labels were able to answer these demands. On the one hand they "attempted [...] to purge the music of the very archaisms valued by scholars" - a-capella ballads were rarely recorded -, on the other hand they tried to "appeal - through carefully shaped images of rusticity - to the nostalgic longings of a public caught in the midst of the rapid social transformations of the late 1920s" (Whisnant, p. 184). It was the time when all these artificial images were created that are a part of Country music until today: the clean “Kentucky Mountain Boy” á la Bradley Kincaid, the "Hillbilly", the "Cowboy" and more. Not the folklorists's authenticity was important but the authenticity of style. In this context any fondly remembered old song could do and the southerners remembered a lot of old songs and didn't care much for folklorist fundamentalism. In fact the records and radio performances of Country artists were much nearer to the tastes and the interests of the people than the more museal perspective of folklorist scholars. The WLS National Barn Dance from Chicago offered not only "traditional country dance tunes" but also "heart songs and sweet ballads popular within the memory of most listeners" (quoted in Petersen, p. 100) and "in the 1930s, when the Louvin's were hearing their mother sing, both the old parlor songs and the old British ballads [...] both types were old, sad, lonesome songs [...]"(Clarke, Close Harmony, p. 7). But any more recent or new song was appropriate, too, as long as it sounded "old" and authentic. This concept is reflected for example in advertisements in the Talking Machine World (1924/25) promoting "mountain star" Henry Whitter, one of the pioneers of that genre: "Throughout his native hills he is acclaimed the most novel entertainer for he plays a harmonica and a guitar at the same time and never misses a note and in between accompanies himself when he sings those quaint, "Old Time Pieces [...] the old-time tunes of the Hill country, many of them his own composition [...]. The craze for this 'Hill Country Music' has spread to thousands of communities" (Graczyk, p. 374) A. P. Carter and Jimmie Rodgers were experts in that field, "either they dredged up old, half forgotten relics of the past, or they composed original songs that sounded like the old ones" (Porterfield, 99). But the anonymous writer of "Mary Of The Moor"" had surely known a hundred years before Ralph Peer "that old-timey music need not actually be old" (Filene, p. 37) and he had conceived his song the same way and under similar circumstances as Peer's clients and other "Hillbilly"-artists a century later. He had been part of the same tradition: writing "old" songs for a nostalgia-driven audience, a concept that is well known until today and helped "Mary Of The Wild Moor" to survive. "Mary" turned up in the repertoire of Country-music performers surprisingly late. I haven't yet found any " On WLS Chicago's National Barn Dance, Linda Parker seemed to be the image of tradition embodied. She was born in Kentucky and, like many in her audience, had migrated to the industrial areas around Chicago. But Linda was special: her knowledge of old Southern ballads from Kentucky and “the plaintive note, so typical of mountain music, ” as WLS's 1934 Family Album noted, seemed to be tradition in all its glory. She had learned to sing “just as her mother and her grandmother sang, artlessly, but from the heart, ” and her repertoire included traditional old ballads and tunes". (McCusker, p. 3) In fact she was an artificial character created by manager and promoter John Lair, who had had turned Jeanne Muenich, a young professional night-club singer from Indiana into the "Kentucky Sun-Bonnet Girl" wearing checked gingham dresses and singing "old-time folk songs with guitar accompaniment" (cont. promotion, Petersen, p. 115). She died too early in 1935 and never recorded "Mary Of The Wild Moor", but she may have been the first to give the song the credentials as an "old southern The Blue Sky Boys - two brothers from North Carolina singing old gospel hymns and mountain ballads - were responsible for the first commercial recording of "Mary Of The Wild Moor" in 1940 for Bluebird. Maybe they had been aware of this song already from home, but it's known that they were very familiar with the repertoire of Carl Davis and Harty Taylor, the former members of the Cumberland Ridge Runners. They could easily have been inspired anew by Linda Parker, either via radio or songbook. I haven't yet seen the songbook version so I can't say if it's the same. The melody they use is of course not Turner’s and I wasn’t able to find out when or by whom it was at first applied for this song. The lyrics of their version are very close to the song sheet text but they also show some slight traces of Turner's revision: 'Twas on one cold wint'ry night, The Louvin Brothers' "Mary Of The Wild Moor" (1956) is in melody |
Bob Dylan performed "Mary From The Wild Moor" - with Regina Havis singing harmony and playing the autoharp - at 16 shows in 1980 and 1981. It was the time when began to grow out of the fervent musical evangelism of his so-called "religious period" and started to reinstate some of his 60s and 70s classics back into his concert repertoire. This “old Southern Mountain Ballad” was an ironic answer to the people asking him to play his "old songs" and he used to introduce his fine performances with comments like these:
London. Catnach was - besides William Pitts - the most successful and important broadside printer until the late 1830s. These "Long song-sheets" were one of his innovations (Shepard, p. 81): collections of songs on a big sheet of paper sold very cheaply on the streets.
of that song - there are 24 in the allegro Catalogue - it must have been very popular. On Catnach’s 
Partly it may have been the performers and musicians themselves. But often enough the singers and concert halls bought the lyrics from the street and tavern poets, the same writers who used to work for the printers, too. Henry Mayhew (p. 279f) was actually able to interview one of this poets who had to work for both sides of the tracks to make a living, for the printers and for the concert-venues and whose songs had been very successful. They can be found in the broadside archives and some of them were also printed in the USA:
North America where it became one of the most popular songs of the second half of the 19th century. In 1845 Keith's Music Publishing House in Boston published a 
about what had happened to the girl before she tried to make it back to her parents and their "fair cot" and Turner had even deleted the reference to Mary once having been the "village pride". But this text may also be a hint that an introductory narrative like this had been used in the original performance context. Turner's arrangement was obviously very popular for the next decades. As late as 
This is from a song sheet published in 
the most favorite national, patriotic, sentimental, and comic ballads of the day (W.E. Tunis, Niagara Falls 1860). Here Turner's text was used. New York publisher Beadle printed the lyrics to "Mary" 
"Mary Of The Wild Moor" is only one of the many songs that have found their from 19th century London stages and broadsides into 20th century North American Folklore collections, either directly with the immigrants from Britain or supported by popular prints and performances in the USA and Canada. Edith Fowke - to take only one example - counted more than 100 songs of broadside ancestry among the songs she had recorded in Canada. Her Folkways record also includes a variant of another British song quoted above as a possible precursor of "Mary Of The Wild Moor"": "The Wint'ry Winds" is a version of "Winter's Evening, or: The Deploring Damsel", Roud #175)
1870" (p. 246). But for both “![17. Bonny Barbara Allan USA, [n. d.]](../../Ballads/Mary/BarbaraAllanUSA.gif "17. Bonny Barbara Allan USA, [n. d.]")
. “During the antebellum era, traditional ballads, including those brought to America from the British Isles continued to sound around American hearths and workplaces, [people] crooned ‘the old time songs our mothers had sung, such as ‘Barbara Allen’ […] as they worked the factory looms’” (Tawa, p. 271/2). Horace Greeley - recalling his childhood in the 1820 - noted that “when neighbors and neighbors’ wives drew together at the house of one of their number for an evening visit, they were often interspersed with ‘Cruel Barbara Allen’, and other love-lorn ditties then in vogue” (Tawa, p. 162). 
started a generation later - and by most academic and non-academic Folklorists. The Folklore scholars disliked anything "commercial" and they feared contamination of what was left of pure oral tradition.
The sources for the "old" ballads and songs were the same: the older generation, especially the women. Bradley Kincaid's mother used to sing "old English ballads. I learned a lot of ballads from her [...]" (Clarke, p. 125). Charlie and Ira Loudermilk in Alabama - later the Louvin Brothers - "grew up hearing [...] their mother's ancient ballads like 'The Knoxville Girl' and 'Mary Of The Wild Moor'" as well as parlor songs and sentimental ballads from the 1880s (Clarke, Classic Country, p. 217; Clarke, Close Harmony, p. 6/7). And A. P. Carter of course knew where to get new old songs: "his methods, too, resembled those of the folklorist: whenever the trio arrived in a new town for a show, A. P. would seek out the old people in the neighborhood from whom to collect new material" (Cantwell, p. 54). But his aims were in no way antiquarian or didactic, he simply wanted to broaden his repertoire and to record what the people wanted to hear. 
mountain ballad". Her version was included in the popular songbook 100 WLS Barn Dance Favorites, edited by John Lair and published in Chicago 1935.