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12 Indiana University Publications, Folklore Series
ville Press, the Indianapolis News, and the Indianapolis Star. The late Mrs. Kate Milner Rabb, special writer for the latter, on several occasions generously gave us space for queries in her column, A HOOSIER LISTENING-POST. Publishers of the Oakland City Journal, the Western Star (Mount Vernon), the Grandview Monitor, the Boonville Standard, and other local papers also helped the cause by allowing us to run informative articles, and to print specimen songs in their pages.
Soon after the first mention by Mr. Strickland of our project, we were fortunate enough to gain the attention and the interest of Mrs. Inez Lysle Johnson, of Mount Vernon, who not only gave freely of songs which she had previously taken down from the singing of her father, but also kindly offered to take over the musical side of the collecting. Supervisor of music for several years in the Mount Vernon schools and a folksong enthusiast herself, she has rendered an invaluable service in noting for us the old tunes, many of which, but for her tireless effort, would not be included in this volume.
THE CONTRIBUTORS
Contributions to the Indiana collection, which numbers at present approximately three hundred texts (exclusive of variants) and nearly one hundred tunes, have come from eighteen counties, most of them in the southern part of the state. The counties represented in the collection are: Crawford, Delaware, Gibson, Hendricks, Jennings, Marion, Monroe, Morgan, Orange, Parke, Perry, Pike, Posey, Spencer, Vanderburg, Vigo, Warrick, and Washington.
Something should be said here perhaps regarding the racial stock and the ancestry of our contributors, though lack of space makes it impossible to present a thorough study. Suffice to say that we have not been unmindful of the very important relation of genealogy to the preservation and the transmission of folksong, and that we have endeavored to obtain from each contributor all possible data regarding his forebears both in this country and in the country of his family's origin. The following brief sketches, which I think may be fairly considered typical, will give a general idea as to the background of the contributors and of the songs themselves.
My paternal great-grandfather was George Row, a lieutenant in the Northampton County State Militia, Pennsylvania, during the Revolutionary |
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