A Pioneer Songster - by Harold W Thompson & Edith E Cutting (Paperback)

About the Book

Folklorists and lovers of folk songs will delight in this collection of the lyrics of songs sung by settlers of western New York in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Book Synopsis

Folklorists and lovers of folk songs will delight in this collection of the lyrics of songs sung by settlers of western New York in the middle of the nineteenth century. The manuscript on which this book is based is the most important collection of traditional song-texts, British and American in origin, to survive from its period. Discovered in the 1930s in the attic of Harry S. Douglass in Arcade, New York, it was written by Julia S. and Volney O. Stevens, who transcribed nearly ninety of the songs with which their father, Artemas Stevens, so often entertained them. The Stevens family had come to Wyoming County, New York, from New England in 1836, bringing with them traditional songs and ballads. The Stevens-Douglass manuscript contains the texts of 89 songs. In A Pioneer Songster, these are organized first by their origins (36 are from the British Isles; 53 were composed in America) and then according to themes and subjects, including love, history, politics, the pioneering life, politics, murder and shipwrecks, minstrel songs, spirituals, Indian legends, temperance, and satire. The book features a general introduction and shorter introductions to each themed section. In addition, each song is accompanied by an informative headnote detailing its history, meaning, and significance.A Pioneer Songster, first published by Cornell University Press in 1958, has been edited for the enjoyment of the general reader, but in their annotation, the editors have aimed at assisting students and scholars of folklore, musicology, and American history. While preserving the manuscript's original punctuation and spelling, they have succeeded in creating a resource that will be of interest to all who care for the American folk tradition and the history of New York State.

Review Quotes

Consummate scholarship, simplicity of presentation, humane warmth, and quick insight are what we have learned to expect from Harold Thompson. The songster he and Edith Cutting have assembled here is not meant for singing, but for the study of song repertory of a bygone era.... As a document, A Pioneer Songster is a true pioneer.

This treasure is a remarkable collection of the songs the early settlers sang in western New York from about 1836 until just before the Civil War. The 89 songs in the manuscript provide much information about 'the Golden Age of Homespun.'... There is an excellent bibliography and a combined index of song titles and first lines of songs.

About the Author

Harold W. Thompson (1891-1963) was Goldwin Smith Professor of English at Cornell University and the first president of the New York Folklore Society. Edith E. Cutting is the author of several collections of New York State folklore, including Lore of an Adirondack County, also from Cornell.