Newsgroups: uk.music.folk
Subject: Re: Folk song as historical document...any help?
From: Dick Gaughan <dickg (@) dickalba.demon.co.uk>
Date: 2001-11-14 06:25:59 PST

In <tseI7.23139$0W1.3897608 (@) news2-win.server.ntlworld.com> on Tue, 13 Nov 2001 19:24:31 -0000, "Sam Kelly" <sam.kelly (@) ntlworld.com wrote:

>I need to be able to explore the validity of folk song as a useful document for historians.

I doubt very much whether such validity could be proven to the satisfaction of historians. The orthodox historical method is to seek corroboration and supporting evidence and most historians would regard folk song as being interesting but necessarily anecdotal. Which is missing the point somewhat as they are different phenomena with different purposes.

Perhaps it might be useful to look at it this way - where "history" is largely interested in trying to establish what happened, "folk song" is largely a record of how those involved perceived and reacted to what happened.

Where folk song *can* be useful as historical evidence is when contemporary 'official' records of events were heavily tilted towards one point of view ("history is written by the winners") and the bulk of the songs give a different picture, as in the case of the 1798 United Irishmen attempted revolution in Ireland. In such cases, folk song can present an alternative view of events.

But given that songs present the subjective views of individuals, they are open to romanticism, sentimentalising (as in the 'Jacobite' songs of 1715-46 in Scotland), bowdlerising and misinterpretation. As an emotional record, songs are wonderful and probably totally truthful; as an objective record of events, they are often less reliable.

--
DG

 

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