Minor matters today. More one-on-one post-class discussion. Allen makes arrangements.
AG: [to Student] – What have you got? some poems?
Student: Some homework, from last week – Lyke Wake Dirge.
AG: Oh great – good – Shall I take it home?
Student: There’s a journal and a transcription.
AG: Oh yes, shall we make a date?
Student: Sure….. Mondays and Fridays are (the) best (days)…
AG: Mondays and Fridays?
Student: Mondays are good..
AG: Well, tomorrow I’ve got a reading. (But) At weekends, I’m free, certainly…
Student: Weekends are fine.
AG: When?
Student: Saturday or Sunday?
AG: Saturday?
Student: Sure. Afternoons are probably good.
AG: What time is good? – Three?
Student: Three’s just fine – Ok, I’ll see you at three.
AG: Thank you for getting this (sic) ready. We’ll have this.. This is the… I want there to be.. could you make an index with the (poems)..
Student: Oh sure…
AG: And I’ll take this (the homework) home.
Student 2: There’s a singer who sometimes sings down at the James bar (sic) on Saturday’s, I don’t know her last name, but Christine.. She accompanies herself on autoharp and she’s knows..
AG: She knows a lot?
Student 2: She knows all the Child Ballads.
Student 3: Where?
Student 2: The James.
Student3: The James?
Student2: The James, yeah.. It’s 13th Street, just off the Mall…Saturday night(s), …she’s not there all the time. It’s Christine, that’s all I know. But she knows all the old Child Ballads. And then, a lot of them that don’t have music ..she’s composed her own music..
Student 2: I’ve found that a lot of them that don’t have music (like Lyke Wake Dirge). That they said.. most of the people said.. well, they just weren’t that particular about taking down the music, as the guy would sing with whatever instrument he had, passing the hat, or take it and do whatever he..(thought fit)..
Usually, with the records, though, they’ll be an insert in which the musician will say, “Well I got the music from here. I borrowed it from here”. “We didn’t have the original music but I borrowed a tune that would fit it”, you know, (a tune) that was current to the times. It’s real interesting. And then how it would move from country to country. Each country would add its own flair, its own flavor. And something always happens in Child Ballads. It’s not
“I love her, and isn’t this great?”. It’s, like, a storyand they end up (very) different from how they started…
[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately forty-two-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately approximately forty-five minutes in ]