Folk Song Scholarship

• English Folk Song Some Conclusions Cecil Sharp, 1907, Simpkin and Co, Novello and Co. This was first published in 1907 and was written at a time when few people were aware of the wealth of folk music that England possessed. By that time Sharp had been collecting for four years and noted 1,500 tunes mostly from Somerset. There was a second edition in 1936 and a third revised edition in 1954. This was in effect a new edition by Maud Karpeles who makes a few modifications which she considers Sharp would have made with his later wider knowledge. There is an appreciation of Sharp by Ralph Vaughan Williams in this third edition. There was also a fourth edition (1965) and a reprint of the 1907 edition published by EP publishing (1972).
  1st edition available online in various formats at http://www.archive.org/details/englishfolksongs00shar

• English Folk Song and Dance, Frank Kidson and Mary Neal, 1915, Cambridge University Press (Reprint 1972 - EP Publishing)

• National Music Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1934, Oxford University Press

• The Common Muse V. de Sola Pinto and A.E. Rodway, An Anthology of Popular British ballad poetry from the 15th century to the 20th century. Chatto and Windus 1957 also Penguin 1965. Lots of interesting material but no tunes.

• Sailortown Stan Hugill, 1967, Routledge, Keegan Paul

• Folk Song in England, A. L. Lloyd, 1967, Lawrence & Wishart (then Paladin)

• The Sound of History - Songs & Social Comment, Roy Palmer, 1988, Oxford University Press

• The British Folk Scene - Musical Performance and Social Identity, Niall MacKinnon, 1993, Open University Press

• Victorian Songhunters: The Recovery and Editing of English Vernacular Ballads and Folk Lyrics 1820-1883, E David Gregory, 2006, Scarecrow Press (Published in USA). Paperback edition only.

• Vic Gammon. This downloadable PDF guide gives links and descriptions for the material that the folk song scholar Vic Gammon has placed on the Internet Archive and, additionally, other material of his that is available on the Internet.

[[1]] or [[2]]

There are also more than 100 papers by Vic Gammon posted on the Academia website here [[3]].

• Dave Harker. Dave Harker’s Books on North East Music and Song now online.

Six volumes of Dave Harker’s books on North East music and song, published since 2012 and richly illustrated and contextualised, are now available online. You can read and refer to them online or download them as pdfs or other forms of electronic documents.

Specifically, the books are:

Gannin’ to Blaydon Races: The Life and Times of George Ridley (2012) https://archive.org/details/ridley-2012/page/183/mode/2up

Cat-Gut Jim the Fiddler: Ned Corvan's Life and Songs (2017) https://archive.org/details/cat-gut-jim-corvan-2017

The Gallowgate Lad: Joe Wilson’s Life and Songs (2017) https://archive.org/details/gallowgate-lad-wilson-2017-copy

Billy Purvis: The First Professional Geordie (2018) https://archive.org/details/purvis-2018

Tyneside Song From Blind Willie to Bobby Nunn (2019) https://archive.org/details/tyneside-song-blind-willie-to-nunn-2019

The Northern Minstrels: From Richard Whirlepipyn to James Allan (2020) https://archive.org/details/northern-minstrels-2020

Harker’s book, Fakesong (1985) ‘… which covers the period from c. 1700 to the 1980s, is both historical and critical and has given rise to substantial debate’, has been available for some time from the same source. https://archive.org/details/FakesongD.Harker/page/n7/mode/2up

His earlier book on popular music One for the Money (1980) has also been online for some time: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/harker/One for the Money.pdf

Other important works by Harker on aspects of song and music such as his outstanding edited works Songs from the Manuscript Collection of John Bell (1985) and Songs and Verse of the North-East Pitmen c.1780-1844 (1999) are not available on the internet but can be obtained second-hand from book dealers.