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AFTERWORD |
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Come, Butter, Come! This is an old English butter charm. See the following version from Ady's book, A Candle in the Dark, 1659, p. $8, as quoted in Brand's Popular Antiquities, Hazlitt's ed., iii, 268:
Come Butter, come, Come Butter, come, Peter stands at the Gate, Waiting for a buttered Cake; Come Butter, come.
Ady says that the old woman who recited it said that it was taught to her mother "by a learned Church-man in Queen Marie's days!"
Professor Kittredge tells me that the Creation song, as given by Dr. Merle St. Croix Wright, was a famous minstrel piece, and not a real folk-song, as was also the case with the Monkey7s Wedding and Shoo Fly.
This overlapping of minstrel-and folk-song is a very interesting aspect of this study of folk-song. Of course, many pieces thought to be authentic folk-songs are undoubtedly of minstrel origin, no matter how sincere the collector may be in his belief that they are genuine folk-material. On the other hand, may not folk-singing and change make a folk-song out of what was originally a minstrel-song? And certainly there are cases where the folk-song came first — where the folk-song was taken over in whole or in part and adapted to the minstrel stage. Jump, Jim Crow was a fragment of folksong and dance before it was put on the stage and made popular as a minstrel-song. Casey Jones was a genuine Negro song before it became popularized by being changed and published. 'Tain't Gwine to Rain No Mo7 was a well-known Negro song, widely sung before the printed version brought it to the North.
Some aspiring scholar might write his doctor's dissertation on the inter-relation between folk-song and minstrel-song. That is only one of many aspects of the subject which might be carefully studied.
This has been, in truth, a folk-composition, for I have had the aid of numberless people in getting together the songs. For the material included in this volume, as well as for that which I have on hand to use in later volumes, I am indebted for help of one sort or another, direct or indirect, in the matter of information about sources, permission to quote from other collections (in a few cases), for inspiration and encouragement, as for words and music, to many persons. This research could not possibly have been carried on without such kindly assistance, and I am deeply grateful for it. The following is a list (I fear incomplete) of those who have aided me; |
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