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versions, as in Karpeles' 1934 publication, are a mixture of one singer's music with
another singer's text. The very volume of the material to be published probably explains
his condensing of closely similar versions. Even so, instead of cOllating texts, he could
have preserved the texts' integrity by using the same procedure as Karpeles would in her
1971 edition: selecting one or two reference versions presented as actually sung, followed
by a separate account of the variants occurring in secondary versions. Was the collector
more concerned with the songs themselves and aesthetic quality than with their particular
reidily and significance to the singers? We know of the disappoiml11cnl of one of his
informants never 10 have seen a "book" of her songs.!
MacEdward Leach first collected songs in Newfoundland in 1950 and 1951, largely
from the Avalon Peninsula.2 In 1960, he collected songs on the lower Labrador Coast.
The results of this later collection were published in 1965 as Fo/k Ba//ads and Songs oftlie
Lower Labrador Coast. The Introduction provides interesting comments, not only on the
socio-cultural environment in which the songs were collected, but also on the songs
themselves. Of all scholarly collections for Newfoundland, Leach's Introduction pays the
most auemion to the individual performance contexts, and his academic expertise in the
domain of folk song results in ethnographic and analytical insight making his collection the
most "academic" of the four. His comments range from the singers' repertoire and
performance to their status in the community. He opposes Newfoundland to Ihe "highly
creative" folk culture ofScotland in the seventeenth and eighteenth cenluries:
The folk culture of Newfoundland is not creative; it is important only as ..
repository; but these folk, even as custodians of the tradition bequeathed
them by their English, Irish, and Sconish forbears, have nOt been very
careful. Much of their lore they have let slip away; much they have
imperfectly preserved; much they have not understood and as a result have
garbled.'
It is interesting that Halpert and Leach, each with a wide collecting experience in
Newfoundland. arrive at contradictory assessments of its culture. Such divergence of
opinion reflecls the need for closer analysis of the repertoire. To this the sludy of c1assic..1
ballads can fmitfully contribute; their ancient and imported tradition is well suited to a
consideration of the relentlve and creative aspects of the local folk culture.
1This appears in an essay reporting an interview of Mrs. Clara Stevens by M.