The Lost Voices of Maud Karpeles Folksongs from Newfoundland

In September 1929, Maud Karpeles of the English Folk Dance and Song Society arrived in Newfoundland for the first of two pioneering expeditions.A disciple of Cecil Sharp and friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Karpeles was a central figure in the British folk revival and later cofounder of the International Folk Music Council.She had initially planned to visit the island with Sharp as early as 1918, however that trip was cancelled due to funding concerns and Sharp's untimely death foiled similar plans seven years later.Undaunted, she undertook the challenge alone, notating more than 200 tunes from singers in forty outport communities in one of the earliest Newfoundland folksong expeditions of its kind.Focusing her efforts on the East and South Coasts of Newfoundland (the former in 1929, the latter in 1930), Karpeles covered a remarkably wide area in a relatively short period.It was an arduous and remarkably courageous journey in many respects.With few paved roads in rural Newfoundland at the time, much of her travel was undertaken by small boat or rail.In some instances she travelled on foot, manuscript paper and pencil in hand, from one community to another.She was supported by Newfoundlanders such as Frederick Emerson, a cultured lawyer with an aptitude for music, yet much of the time she travelled alone in what must have surely been a bold new adventure for the 43-year old Londoner.At various times she found herself lost at sea on a foggy night, stranded in a roadside ditch after narrowly avoiding a wayward cow, seasick on a tumultuous ferry crossing, and all the while dodging the black flies that appeared drawn to her like a magnet at every turn.The unprecedented sight of a lone female song collector wandering door to door gave rise to no shortage of explanations to account for the sudden and unexpected appearance of the mysterious visitor.In some communities she was mistaken for a nurse, in others a German spy, while in the community of Stock Cove, she received a rather unexpected inquiry of a personal nature:They are all expecting me to find a young man and settle down here, and one young man even got to the length of asking me if I had a boy in King's Cove.I felt that was the time to give some indication of my age.(Karpeles, 1929) While not all Newfoundlanders welcomed her with the enthusiasm of the young man from Stock Cove, Karpeles met with an unusually hospitable reception most everywhere she went, prompting her to remark that she had not ever experienced kinder or friendlier people.(Karpeles, 1971) To her credit, she responded in kind, returning to visit socially with several of her 1929 informants the following year and forming lifelong friendships with the Emersons in St. John's.Not unlike her predecessors in the British folk revival, Karpeles' criteria for judging the "authenticity" of folk songs were selective and included, among other things, age, anonymity, style, and oral transmission.Ancient songs with British roots were especially valued, while locally composed songs of recent origin and those previously appearing in print were generally not notated at all.In this sense, flawed expectations of the island's isolation resulted in continual disappointment as singer after singer regaled her with heartfelt renditions of "When You and I Were Young, Maggie," "The Letter Edged in Black," and other popular songs of the era that she rejected on the grounds that they were already in print.(Ibid., p. 18) Initially distraught by what she perceived to be a lack of "authentic" folk songs during the early stages of her collecting, she persevered and, by the end of her 1929 expedition, became increasingly convinced that her efforts had been worthwhile.As she remarked in her diaries, "Mr.Emerson is delighted with

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