Missouri Ballads and Songs
by Louise Pound
American Speech, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Dec., 1940), pp. 422-423
MISSOURI BALLADS AND SONGS
MR. H. M. BELDEN'S assemblage o f Ballads a nd Songs[1]is a handsome volume of 540 pages, presenting nearly 300 pieces traditional in his home state. It takes rank among the most inclusive American collections now in print, and it is that most completely provided with up-to-date annotations. The Missouri Folk-Lore Society, the collections of which it incorporates, was founded in 1906. Had the volume been issued twenty years ago it would have been the largest of its day, save for the Campbell-
Sharp collection from the Southern Appalachians. Though his own results
rertlained unpublished so long, Dr. Belden, the founding spirit of
the Missouri society, meantime stimulated the recovery and study of
folksong in other regions; several well-known folklorists owe their initial
interest to his activities and encouragement. The late Phillips Barry of
Cambridge, the investigator of the histories of individual pieces, and the
editor of the Missouri collection, who is a former president of the American
Folk-Lore Society, are two men early contributing to a Seld which by
this time has been widely explored. The University of Missouri deserves
recognition not only as the home of a Mark Twain Lexacon and of a
model study of state place-names) these sponsored by Pro£essor Robert
Ramsay, but as an inspiring center £or the study o£ folksong under the
influence of Dr. Belden.
Of especial interest are some of the generalizations in the Preface, for
instance the following:
It does not appear that ballads in Missouri belong to any particular age, sex,
or class of society. A good many of the texts in the collection come from old
people; but more from school children . . . and from college students. Some were
learned from 'the hired girl' or 'the hired mant but more from the contributor's
father or mother, grandfather or grandmother. Men and boys know and sing
them equally with women and girls. The manuscript collections are especially
interesting to the student of folksong. They are not at all, as the handwriting
and spelling frequently testify, the work of curious antiquarians. They are merely
the setting down for their own convenience of songs that the singers heard
and liked.
Mr. Vance Randolph, a long-time contributor o£ Ozark dialect to Ameracan S peech, h as a fine collection of Ozark c ountry traditional s ongs, many of his entries not included in the present volume. Were it published, Missouri would be, as Dr. Belden points out, a Seld well covered.
LOUISE POUND
1. Ballads and Songs Collected by the Mtssourt Folk-Lore Society. Edited by H. M.
Belden. University of Missouri Studies, xv. 1940.