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language use and ealing habits. But, it is her correspondence and interviews which are
revealing of her attitude towards her collected material and her editing practices. These
unpublished papers tell us of her "fight" with H.N. MacCracken and G.L. Kittredge, her
Vassar editors, to whom she presented her detennination to have the songs published as
she heard them, and printed with words and music together on the same page. On the
other hand, she explains in an interview thai she and Mansfield had agreed on musical
nomlS below which they would not retain a song. 1 A singer, to gain their ancntion, would
have 10 be able 10 "hold the pitch" well enough. Such indications, along with her own
disinterested dedication to the task, suggest that she would not easily tamper with the texIS
4 or the music +but also that she left much behind!
In her correspondence, we read that it was the music that first atlracted her to the
songs. The same commitment to preserve them in their integrity was responsible for one
of the first scholarly folksong collections to print the music on the same page as the text.
In this, she made a significant contribution to American folklore scholarship, which lip to
then was mostly text-oriented and relegated the music to appendices. Her genuine interest
and sympathy for the people she collected from naturally directed her to whal Leach has
GlUed "the right approach." The academic value of her collection was not recognized until
4 its re issue in 1968. Leach explains why:
In its range and variety and in its Introduction and notes the Greenleaf
book is equal or superior to that of Sharp. But Sharp was a well-known
musicologist widely known in England, and one whose authority and
competence was generally accepted in America.... Elisabeth Greenleaf
and Grace Mansfield, on the other hand, were looked on as amateurs.
Although these collectors may have been amateurs, yet they had an insight
for the right approach. The songs were collected in context, that is the
natural social situation. 2
The collection is almost entirely from the northern pan of the Island--the northeast region
around Twillingate--and the West Coast of the Great Northern Peninsula. Its 185 songs
include nineteen classical ballad texts.
In the fall of 1929, Maud Karpeles first arrived in Newfoundland. At the time, she
did not know of Greenleaf and Mansfield's "Vassar College Folklore Expedition," which
had preceded her only by two months. Cecil Sharp and herself had projected a collecting
trip to Newfoundland, attracted by the province's remoteness on the edge of the North-
I MUNFLA 7R-57/C6198, colI. Carole Carpenter.
2Leach, foreword, Greenleaf, Ballads iii.