Song Resources on the Web

 

The first version of this list was developed at the 'Forum Focus' session at the TSF meeting of 30th November 2002 entitled 'Song Resources on the Web'. I have, again, checked most of the original links, but I will undertake a major revision of this list in the next few months as part of a site overhaul. There are many other sites that could be added. The classification is an attempt to give some structure to the list and can be argued with and may well change if I revise it. The 'stars' awarded to each site are a personal view indicating how it struck me after a relatively short wander around it. There is no dross on this list! Many of them are worth considerable amounts of your time if you can spare it. Have fun!

The ­ ratings are the editor's personal view and can be changed by buying him large quantities of beer

 

The most useful site of them all!:

http://www.efdss.orgl

The EFDSS website, and particularly, that part of it devoted to the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library has grow in size, content and quality to such an extent in recent years that it has become of unparallelled value for researchers interested in English traditional song. There are now many featured items on the site including:

 

Books on line:

http://ling.lll.hawaii.edu/faculty/stampe/Oral-Lit/English/Child-Ballads/child.html

Child Ballads - This is one very large file but, with broadband, downloading it has become a less painful experience. This is the complete text of Child's 'The English and Scottish Popular Ballads' with all their variants. The work of Cathy Lynn Preston and Davis Stampe of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii. ­­­

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/victorian/poplit/curiosities/

The text of Charles Hindley's 'Curiosities of Street Literature' published in 1971. This is still work in progress, after several years - apart from the introductions only the section on gallows literature is complete. ­

http://www.bartleby.com/243

Oxford Book of Ballads - completed text of the 1910 edition edited by Quiller-Couch ­­

 

Ballads:

http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads

Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads. An amazing site. Search for broadside ballads and, if they are there, view them as images in their original state. Basic information about dates and publishers. One of the most useful sites on the web! ­­­­

http://mh.cla.umn.edu/pitts.html

Pitts Broadsides - 13 from a collection of 216 in the University of Minnesota library. ­

http://mh.cla.umn.edu/catnach.html

Catnach ballads - an index of the 80 (on forty sheets) from a volume held by the University of Minnesota Library. Of these 26 have been transcribed in full. ­

http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/music/ballads/streetballads.html

Victorian Street Ballads - listing of a collection of broadsides in the library at Kent State University, Ohio. A few of the ballads have been scanned and can be downloaded ­­

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/ballads/

'Sixteenth Century Ballads - A work in progress' this is a subset of the web-site of the Society of Creative Anachronism (www.sca.com ) produced by Greg Lindahl. It is well worth exploring all the levels of this site. There is an enormous amount of interest here ­­­

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/ravenscroft/

The Music of Thomas Ravenscroft - Another great piece of work by Greg Lindahl who has put together a site dedicated to Thomas Ravenscroft with facsimiles of Pammelia, Deuteromelia, Melismata and a great deal besides. A very useful reference for early music. Also a number of other links to explore. ­­­­

http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/teach/ballads/index.html

Glasgow Broadside Ballads (The Murray Collection) - Put together by the University of Glasgow Library as part of its ‘Special Collections’ web site. This is a nice looking site and has been improved since first launched. There is some lovely material here including, (as well as the ballads themselves, presented from an index as nice clear images of the ballad sheet) contemporary illustrations, performances of some of the songs by modern singers and a lot of background material on broadsides. There is now a separate site of the same name that you can click through to which has additional information and more ballads - confusing, but good stuff. H ­­

http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/britlit/cbooks/cbook.html

The Scottish Chapbook project - really a site in preparation and does not contain chapbooks as such. Describes a joint project with Glasgow University that will catalogue about 1800 Scottish Chapbooks from various collections (including Murray). Has a useful description of what Chapbooks are for reference. ­

http://www.middlebury.edu/lis/lib/guides_and_tutorials/guides_to_collections/collection_guide-flanders/

Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection - Some description of the work of Flanders in Vermont and indexes to recorded and printed material ­

 

Child’s ‘English and Scottish Ballads’ - The 1860 edition

This first attempt by the master of the ballad can now be found online as part of the ‘Making of America’ project. The slightly less good news is that this is a very clunky site - each page (including blank pages, which is very off-putting!) is scanned as an image. There is, though, a downloadable text version as a single big file for each volume. Unfortunately there is not, it appears, a single link that will take you to all eight volumes - so here they are separately ­­

Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5, Volume 6, Volume 7, Volume 8

 

Folk Song:

http://www.lyon.edu/wolfcollection/index.html

Wolf Collection. A wonderful resource based on the work of John Quincy Wolf who started to collect songs in the Ozarks in the 1940s. There is a great list of songs for which texts can be viewed. For many it is also possible to listen to the original singers - Including the wonderful Almeda Riddle. This is a top-notch site ­­­­

http://crixa.com/muse/songnet

Australian Folksongs. The work of Mark Crixa - songs and music together with information for a good selection of Australian songs. Midi sound files play through Quicktime. ­­

http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/joseph.taylor/

Joseph Taylor - Another site originally started by Garry Gillard and now moved to a new home. Contains a lot of interesting information about one of the most famous of all folk singers ­­­

http://www.smsu.edu/folksong/maxhunter

The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection - Another fine collection of songs from the Ozarks. 1594 songs for you to listen to including a separate section on Child ballads. Another good reason to go broadband! ­­­

http://www.asaplive.com/fnesearch/index.cfm

The Farne Project. A cracking site (we heard all about it at the November 2003 meeting in Gateshead). An astonishing array of material from the North-East - Songs and a great deal besides, searchable, listenable and with pictures. H ­­­

http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/carpenter/

The online index to the James Madison Carpenter collection. A huge piece of work but does not (yet!) contain any song texts ­­

 

Popular Song

http://www.musichallcds.com

Windyridge CDs site. A catalogue of CDs for sale of music hall performers but also includes useful background, pictures and biographies of music hall performers ­­

University of Colorado Digital Sheet Music Collection. A collection of American sheet music, mainly with Colorado connections but there are some useful links to other sheet music sites ­

http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu

The Lester S Levy collection of sheet music at Johns Hopkins University. A nicely designed site containing this collection of American sheet music with clickable images of the whole of the piece ­­

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/sheetmusic/

Historic American Sheet Music - another sheet music collection, this time at Duke University ­

http://www.nla.gov.au/music/"

A collection of 19th Century sheet music from Australia. Many of the songs are actually transnational so can be a useful source in searches related to the UK ­­

 

Guides:

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/Members/martin.nail/Folkmus.htm

Martin Nail's guide to folk clubs, musicians and everything in the UK - a very useful reference ­­­

http://www.folk-network.com/directory/links.html

A directory compiled by Malcolm Douglas for the South Riding Folk Network. This page is devoted to internet resources and includes a number that I have missed ­­­­

 

Organisations:

http://lcweb.loc.gov/folklife

American Folklife Centre. Part of the Library of Congress website and an important source of information about recordings of American culture ­­

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html

American Memory - another Library of Congress site containing a number of separate song resources (go to the Performing Arts header). Once you are there it will take a little effort to find your way through - but it is worth the effort to hear some great recordings (main tip - the songs are accessed through the links in the header bar). Good loading speed! ­­­

http://www.chivalry.com/cantaria/index.html

Cantaria - a collection of 'Bardic' songs forming part of the Chivalry Music community of independent artists from Missouri. A collection of songs (mainly celtic) with MP3s ­

http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/BalladIndexTOC.html

The Ballad Index. A reference work whose definition of ballad stretches fairly widely but which contains a lot of useful data. ­­

http://www.itma.ie

Irish Traditional Music Association web site. Explainds the work of the Association and describes it collections and how to gain access to them ­­

http://www.music-hall-society.com

British Music Hall Society - disappointing if you are looking for information on the music hall. This will only tell you about the Society. Let down by frames which restrict the view. Some useful links but a couple caused crashes ­

http://blpc.bl.uk

The British Library public catalogue - search for publications and find out about other services ­

www.georgeformby.co.uk

George Formby made to the repertoire of singers in the 20th Century. Visit and find a lot of Formby stuff, including the lyrics to 170 songs ­­­

 

Enthusiasts sites:

http://ingeb.org/folksong.html

German and international songs - part of Frank Petersohn's amazing site. Contains an amazing variety of songs, some folkier than others. Also midi files of many of the tunes. Worth exploring on a rainy day ­­

http://www.thecopperfamily.com

Originally compiled by Gary Gillard, now run by the family themselves. News, merchandise and transcriptions of several of their songs ­­

http://www.stolaf.edu/people/hend/songs/BawdyBroadsides.html

Stewart Hendrickson, a folk enthusiast from Seattle has put together a small collection of bawdy broadsides as well as a few fiddle tunes. ­

http://www.lukehistory.com/resources/ballads.html

A resource designed for C17th re-enactment enthusiasts, this section gives as part of the background a small collection of black letter ballads ­­

http://www.contemplator.com/folk.html

The Contemplator (Lesley Nelson-Burns) has assembled this collection of folk music of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and America. Nice design and midis that play as you view or can be downloaded. Songs in various categories (Sea, War, America etc.) as well as some useful links. Another place for a rainy day! H H H

http://songbook1.tripod.com

Songs collected by Donagh McDonagh - Niall McDonagh's compilation of the texts over 300 Irish songs from his fathers collection as sent in to him as a result of his programme 'Ireland is Singing' on Radio Eirann. No tunes are given and the sources are not well documented but the site is indexed and there are some unusual variants here ­­

http://users.erols.com/olsonw

The late Bruce Olsen's web site - his motto quoted at the end of the index page is 'keep at it, muddling through always works. Well this site is a glorious idiosyncratic muddle with a lot of good stuff on ballads and folk song touched by wisdom. ­­

http://www.adamsmyth.clara.net

Index of poetry in printed miscellanies, 1640 - 1682 - the work of Adam Smyth as the foundation of his PhD thesis­

 

On-line Magazines:

http://www.mustrad.org.uk

Musical Traditions. Rod Stradling's magnum opus. Just continues to grow and to get better ­­­

 

"Other":

http://www.cyberhymnal.org

The Cyberhymnal - a collection of popular hymns listed alphabetically and searchable. Midis playable for each hymn. Includes biographical details for the writer/composer. ­­

http://www.folkplay.info/index.htm

English Folk Play Research Home Page - Eddie Cass and Peter Millington's wonderful collection of material about traditional plays for the Traditional Drama Research Group. The site includes 180 play texts as well as images, 600 links to relevant sites and lots more laid out in an exemplary fashion ­­­

http://www.copac.ac.uk

COPAC is a search engine for the online catalogues of 22 of the largest university research libraries in the UK and Ireland plus the British Library.­­

http://www.familysearch.org

Family History site operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Searchable on-line version of the 1881 census as well as other useful material ­­­

http://freecen.rootsweb.com/index.html

UK Census on line - patchy coverage of the UK 1891 Census. If you are lucky the transcription will cover the area you are looking for (Devon and Cornwall are quite well covered) but this is being done by volunteers and is very much work in progress. It is also hard to navigate successfully ­­

 

Book Searches:

Three useful places for find second-hand books - there are others

http://www.addall.com

http://www.alibris.com

http://www.abebooks.com

 

Oddities:

http://www.monologues.co.uk

Make em laugh - a nice collection of monologues put together by Paul Wilkinson. Includes classics performed by Marriot Edgar, Stanley Holloway, Billy Bennett and others ­­­­

 

 

Missing from this list is the rapidly growing encyclopedia of folk - www.folkopedia.org and the Yorkshire Garland site - www.yorkshirefolksong.net/

And, for some reason, I have even failed to add my own Sabine Baring-Gould site - www.sbgsongs.org

 

Martin Graebe

23 Nov 2009