Season 2: Episode 6 - Steve Roud Interview Part 2

Dive into the enchanting world of folk songs and nursery rhymes in the latest episode of A Tisket-Tasket Podcast with your host Gina! In an engaging conversation with renowned folklorist Steve Roud, creator of the Roud Folk Song Index, Gina explores the intricacies of cataloging and understanding the historical roots of these timeless tunes. Gain insights into the meticulous process of folk song indexing, the challenges faced, and the broader impact on preserving cultural heritage. Join the conversation as they discuss the significance of being evidence-based, methodical, and skeptical in folklore research. Uncover the rich tapestry of folklore and the importance of being stewards of information in this captivating episode. Any questions or comments can be directed at info@atisketasketpodcast.com Checkout our blog at atisketasketpodcast.com #Folklore #RoudIndex #CulturalHeritage #NurseryRhymes #FolkSongs #TaskAtPodcast

Transcript

Note - this transcript is auto-generated and there will be errors! If you have questions or concerns, please email Gina at info@atiskettasketpodcast.com

Gina: Hello and welcome to a Task at podcast. I'm your host, Gina. Today, you'll hear the final part, Part two, of my interview with Steve Roud. If you haven't, please check out part one; otherwise, this interview won't make much sense. I get to interview the famous Steve Roud, who is the creator of the Roud Folks Song Index Number.

This index covers folk dance in folk songs and serves as a reference for nursery rhymes, complementing Opiate Ops' method of referencing nursery rhymes by their first line. I firmly believe that Roud is the way to go.

I had a wonderful time interviewing Steve Roud; he's truly a remarkable man. And if you're listening, thank you so much for sitting down and talking with me. Stay tuned and enjoy the peculiar world of nursery rhymes.

Gina: One of your questions was going to be about the future. Yeah. In the, you know, I'm 75, so I have a limited future. I hope the plan is that some library will take it over. I doubt if there is a person who would be as dedicated as me to spend the rest, you know, the next 50 years doing it.

Roud: There could be a committee. It could be a bunch of people. Trouble is, all my, most of my friends are the same age as me, or some of them are even older. So the plan is, and this is what my daughter knows because she's a librarian, is that if nobody wants to take it over, then it would go to the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.

Roud: They will have to maintain it, even if they don't increase it, as it were, you know, so that it doesn't just disappear. If they could just keep it up on their website forever, that's the start. And every now and again, somebody will pop up and say, oh, I've just indexed, you know, I'm doing a thesis on so and so collector, I've done an index, do you want that? Can we add to that?

Roud: So I think it will survive. Because it's become, this is what I wanted, it's become embedded in the research. Most books on folk songs now over here, the ones on traditional song, will include my numbers. You know, if you're putting a song in your book, you don't have to have a headnote which says, you can also find this in so and so and in so and so and in so and so, you just have to say Roud 42.

Roud: And anybody can find that information. So hopefully, the system is now embedded enough that it will have to survive because otherwise, all of those references make no sense at all. Absolutely. You know, if you can't check what Roud 42 is, then there's no point in telling people. So I hope that somebody like the Vaughan Williams Library will keep it going.

Roud: I mean, it would be possible for me to. You know, at the click of a button, I can isolate all the American entries. So, it's possible that the American Folklife Center might want the American stuff. It's possible that Irish Traditional Music Archive might want the Irish stuff. That's feasible.

Roud: But, you know, if it's after my time, it'll be up to my daughter to police that. Basically. Not sure if she knows it, but that's the idea. Well, I certainly hope it stays together because My original, when I sat down, knew nothing. I hadn't realized that most nursery rhymes were of English origin.

Roud: And so, I quickly got into that. But I really hope it, all of your work stays cohesive. Because, just like me as a brand new researcher, I found myself dipping into all these different cultures when I didn't even intend for that. I hope it sticks together. One of the problems, though, going to be an index nerd for a moment, is that the more you put in, the better it is.

Gina: Because You know, obviously it's giving you access to more stuff, but the harder it is to make it easy to use. Oh, absolutely. Yes. When there were 15,000 records in there, you know, you typed in and you got four, four hits for a particular song. That's manageable. Whereas when you're going to get 400 hits, which you will for songs like Barbara Allen.

Gina: Or in the Gypsy Laddie. People then say, oh, I can't deal with that, you know. And you say, well, actually, if you narrow your search, and you can already see that people's eyes are glazing over because we live in a Google age, where Google has taught us, you just type something in and it finds it.

Gina: And you say, well, if you put in Barbara Allen, Roud 54, Child 84, then if you put in USA as well, You'll narrow it down to because that's what you're interested in. It's just that you hadn't thought I'm interested in the USA. In other words, you have to teach people to use it and that's what makes it harder for beginners.

Roud: Absolutely. I mean, you're, you're, you're interested enough to work at it. I think, oh, how else can I narrow this down? You know, I've got 5,000 Ring-a-Rosies. What am I going to do? Oh, I'll just try, look for the English ones. I'll try for the early ones. I'll sort them into date order. Right. Yeah. You know how to do it. Most people don't and they don't want to know. Exactly. And it can be really frustrating for even people who are passionate about it because they don't know how to even begin to think about how to, to narrow it down.

Gina: Going back to the basic question of why it exists is again the librarianship idea of getting control of the information. Bibliographic control used to be called in the days of books. In other words, you are the portal, you're the facilitator for people to find information, whatever it is they're looking for, you know, whether they want to know how to look after their goldfish or, you know, how to feed their pet or, you know, whatever it is they're asking, it's the librarian's job to say, Oh, that's, that's your question.

Gina: In the old days, walk into the library, You could either browse the shelves, or you could say to the librarian, where are your books on American history? And they'd say, there. Here you are. Start with this one. In other words, it's that information role that Is the basis for my, it's the basis for any index, giving people access to that information.

Gina: I get a kick out of that. And I think it's important in the modern world. Okay. The, the internet has vastly changed things. You know, you don't need to have a shelf of reference books because they are all on the internet, but somebody still has to index that in Google or whatever. You still have to have some way of finding out that information.

Gina: So I, I like folk songs. I think they're interesting. I think they're important. I know there are people who want to find them, that want to sing them, want to research them, and so on. So it's my job to help them to do that. Because I'm, I'm an expert on information, but I've also become an expert in the subject.

Gina: I'm an expert on folk song, just because I've read every folk song, like you're an expert now on, on nursery rhymes. So, what was I saying? Yeah, that's the, that's the importance is that it gives people access to the thing that I'm, that I, that we care about. And. Again, it's important that it works at all levels.

Gina: If you're looking for a song, I want the words of the Gypsy Laddie, then you can find it. But once you've got a lot of data in there, you can start asking other questions. Where was Gypsy Laddie collected? Why was it so popular in Texas? But not in the statuette. Do you? What do you mean? What songs were sung by women in England around 1900?

Gina: In other words, you can start doing research. It's the same data you're using, but you're just using it in a different way. So I think that again, that's, that's the first importance is just getting access to the stuff. That's what it's all about. But the second is get enough information in there. You can ask questions that you couldn't ask before.

Gina: You couldn't say, what's the most popular folk song connected in England? Because you couldn't read all the books. You couldn't even find all the versions of the song, but we can start saying that. There's always caveats. There's always, ah, when you say most popular, you mean the ones that the collectors thought were worth collecting, because there are other really popular songs that they didn't like, so they didn't collect them, so you don't know they were popular.

Gina: Right. But that's, that's historical research. You always have to question your sources, your evidence. But, you know, things like quantifying, you know, what songs were collected, when they were collected has the tradition changed over the 50 years, 100 years? You can't ask those questions until you've got big data.

So I think that's the next importance of it, is that because of its size,  and the fact that it does cover England and Ireland and Scotland and America you can start asking questions.  So it's a research tool,  what I'm saying, basically. It's  a finding tool, but it's also a research tool.  One of the things I say about indexes is that  if an index works well,  the user  uses it and moves on. 

They take no notice. They don't say, wow, that was a good index. It made me find what I wanted.  They just look it up, page 42. If it's a bad index,  everybody criticizes you. It's true.  So,  don't become an indexer if you've got a thing.  Because the  a bad index sort of starts to get in the way of research, whereas a good index facilitates it. 

Having no index at all is the worst scenario. I mean,  let's face it, everything in life should be properly indexed. Oh, absolutely. In alphabetical order.  We should know where we stand on all things. But that, you know, can't work on that yet.  As much as we try.  One sub at a time. Yes,  absolutely. Your discussion reminded me, I in another life, I worked with farmers in an organization that they are chest, chestnut farmers and walnut farmers here in the United States.

I know that may not seem like it has any connection with FolkSong, but one of the. One of my friends used the word stewardship  of information and what you were talking about really reminded me of that is this idea of being stewards of information and teaching others on how to access it and, and why it's important to use and so that really. 

Yeah, let me call it like that. Yeah, that's  a nice phrase actually, Stuart. Yeah, it sounds like the proper, like the proper way of describing things, I think. But yes, that's, that's very good. So I guess one of the questions that we haven't covered here is, well, you, you talked a little bit about how do you see the index helping other folklore.

I really love the idea of the idea of a good index. You don't, you don't notice, but if it's a bad index, you're talking about it. But so I did ask, do you, do you see it expanding to include more than just folk song, which you talked a little bit about other indexes that have been inspired by this, but can you talk a little bit more about that?

So we have so much on folklore that we want to index and we, we want to get organized. How do you see your index inspiring that?  Well, to answer the first question, would I include other things? And the answer is no basically because I don't have time. Right. You know,  the, the folks on Corpus is going to see me out without a doubt.

If I stopped now and started including stories, for instance, you know,  folktales For every folktale I index, that's one song that doesn't get indexed. So in other words, I'm the song man. If you want to do folktales, you go and do it.  Folktales is a good example in a way, because there is already a sort of motif index.

Some things have numbers there are tale types. So,  already has a certain amount of structure.  There are databases of  folk tales but other parts of folklore like, you know, superstitions or customs and so on.  I have dabbled in it. I did because of my interest in Mama's Plays. In fact, I was doing a Mama's Play index at the same time as my Folk Song index years ago.

But again, it just got  set aside.  I do, I do get asked by people who are doing other, I mean, we haven't even talked about the music of the songs. Absolutely, yes. My index is based on the text. That's how you compare two songs. It's not whether the tune is the same. Mm hmm. Because the same tune could be sung, you know, the same song could be sung to all sorts of tunes.

It's the text.  People who want to do the tune, I do advise them.  As to say, you know, well, this is the way I do things. It's not necessarily the proper way, but it, you know,  think about so and so. You may not have thought of so and so. So I sort of act as an advisor to people doing other  kinds of index kinds of, other kinds of folklore. 

But of course, each one, each type of folklore genre will have its own problems. Absolutely. That's a definition of where to find it.  And how to control it. So  nursery rhymes can be fitted into the folk song model,  more or less,  you know, a nursery rhyme is metrical, you know,  it's a rhyme. It has meter, it usually rhymes,  sometimes even has a tune.

In other words, it is a nursery rhyme. Type of song  I include children's rhymes. Mm-Hmm.   Like ring and ring roses if they are  sort of a song,  whereas I don't index children's games that don't have a verbal part to them. Mm-Hmm. like, what would you call teak or tag? Mm-Hmm.  . There's millions of games of tag, and I would love to index those,  but if they don't have a rhyme attached to them, then I can't fit them into my song. 

model, as it were.  So the answer is no, it can't really be expanded,  but  the principles  can be applied  to  any kind of folklore, if you like. What it boils down to is who, what, who, what, where, when,  who did it, what did they do? Where did they do it? When did they do it? So the four W's, who, what, where, when.

Roud: So I think that's the next importance of it, is that because of its size, and the fact that it does cover England and Ireland and Scotland and America, you can start asking questions. So it's a research tool, what I'm saying, basically. It's a finding tool, but it's also a research tool.

Roud: One of the things I say about indexes is that if an index works well, the user uses it and moves on. They take no notice. They don't say, wow, that was a good index. It made me find what I wanted. They just look it up, page 42. If it's a bad index, everybody criticizes you. It's true.

Roud: So don't become an indexer if you've got a thing. Because a bad index sort of starts to get in the way of research, whereas a good index facilitates it. Having no index at all is the worst scenario. I mean, let's face it, everything in life should be properly indexed. Oh, absolutely. In alphabetical order. We should know where we stand on all things.

Roud: But that, you know, can't work on that yet. As much as we try. One sub at a time. Yes, absolutely. Your discussion reminded me, I, in another life, I worked with farmers in an organization that they are chestnut farmers and walnut farmers here in the United States. I know that may not seem like it has any connection with FolkSong, but one of my friends used the word stewardship of information and what you were talking about really reminded me of that is this idea of being stewards of information and teaching others on how to access it and, and why it's important to use and so that really.

Gina: Yeah, let me call it like that. Yeah, that's a nice phrase actually, Stuart. Yeah, it sounds like the proper, like the proper way of describing things, I think. But yes, that's, that's very good. So I guess one of the questions that we haven't covered here is, well, you talked a little bit about how do you see the index helping other folklore.

Gina: I really love the idea of the idea of a good index. You don't, you don't notice, but if it's a bad index, you're talking about it. But so I did ask, do you, do you see it expanding to include more than just folk song, which you talked a little bit about other indexes that have been inspired by this, but can you talk a little bit more about that?

Roud: So we have so much on folklore that we want to index and we, we want to get organized. How do you see your index inspiring that? Well, to answer the first question, would I include other things? And the answer is no basically because I don't have time. Right. You know, the folksong corpus is going to see me out without a doubt.

Roud: If I stopped now and started including stories, for instance, you know, folktales For every folktale I index, that's one song that doesn't get indexed. So in other words, I'm the song man. If you want to do folktales, you go and do it. Folktales are a good example in a way because there is already a sort of motif index.

Roud: Some things have numbers; there are tale types. So already has a certain amount of structure. There are databases of folk tales but other parts of folklore like, you know, superstitions or customs and so on. I have dabbled in it. I did because of my interest in Mama's Plays. In fact, I was doing a Mama's Play index at the same time as my Folksong index years ago.

Roud: But again, it just got set aside. I do, I do get asked by people who are doing other, I mean, we haven't even talked about the music of the songs. Absolutely, yes. My index is based on the text. That's how you compare two songs. It's not whether the tune is the same. Mm hmm. Because the same tune could be sung, you know, the same song could be sung to all sorts of tunes.

Roud: It's the text. People who want to do the tune, I do advise them. As to say, you know, well, this is the way I do things. It's not necessarily the proper way, but it, you know, think about so and so. You may not have thought of so and so. So I sort of act as an advisor to people doing other kinds of index kinds of, other kinds of folklore.

Roud: But of course, each one, each type of folklore genre will have its own problems. Absolutely. That's a definition of where to find it. And how to control it. So nursery rhymes can be fitted into the folksong model, more or less, you know, a nursery rhyme is metrical, you know, it's a rhyme. It has meter, it usually rhymes, sometimes even has a tune.

Roud: In other words, it is a nursery rhyme. A type of song I include children's rhymes. Mm-Hmm. Like ring and ring roses if they are sort of a song, whereas I don't index children's games that don't have a verbal part to them. Mm-Hmm. Like, what would you call teak or tag? Mm-Hmm. There's millions of games of tag, and I would love to index those, but if they don't have a rhyme attached to them, then I can't fit them into my song.

Roud: model, as it were. So the answer is no, it can't really be expanded, but the principles can be applied to any kind of folklore, if you like. What it boils down to is who, what, who, what, where, when, who did it, what did they do? Where did they do it? When did they do it? So the four W's, who, what, where, when.

There is also why and how. They're a lot harder. A lot harder.  So there's the six W's except one of them is an H. Who, what, where, when, why and how. But the who, what,  where, when  is the basis of, of our kind of indexing because we are interested in  What the rhyme was, but also when was it? Yes. Does it go back to the plague?

Or was it, you know, was it still being said in 1975?  Was it being said in America, but not in England or vice versa? Where did it come from? So who, what, where, when  is what it really, what it boils down to. Now, that's very difficult for superstitions. Yes. Yeah.  You would have to sort of tweak a lot of it to work out how to, how to index a superstition. 

One thing to remember about my index is that it's not a subject index.  And I would love to do a subject index for folk songs, because a lot of the questions are, you know, what's that song about?  So and so, you know, I, yeah, my mum used to sing it, it was about so and so, or I'm doing a program about.  Colour in folklore.

Which songs have colour in them? That's a whole entire other life work. That's what I always, I always tell my friends because they always bring up such interesting questions. I'm like, I don't have enough time to dedicate my life to this. I've already started on this route.  There's a hell of a lot to do, even in our narrow world of nursery rhymes and folk songs.

There's several lifetimes of research, but  hopefully what we are doing, what you're doing in your way, what I'm doing in my way is laying the groundwork for the next generation. Well, you are the next generation as far as I'm concerned to follow on and to use because we all stand on the shoulders. 

I stand on the shoulders of Cecil Sharpe,  child with the balance of other people's books and stuff. The next generation, we use my index and they'll wonder, I'm saying.  What's this route? Who is this Steve route?

They'll find this blog out there and they'll say, Oh, that's who he was. Yes. Okay. Nevermind.  Well, I was just really excited, excuse me for saying this, to see that you were still alive because I've been researching Opie and Opie and all these people and they've been dead and I'm like, I can't ask him the million questions I have.

So I was, I was absolutely excited to see that you were willing to talk to me because I'm like, Oh, he's still working on this.  I had more than more than one student say to me.  I thought you were dead.  Obviously. I should be. Yeah. Child is dead. Lars is dead.  Yess are dead. Yes. Yes, yes. The Now I did know I never met Peter Bie, but I, Mm-Hmm.

I met Iona. Mm-Hmm.  a few times. I have some of, I have her card index of.  When they were working on the in game  book and so on so, yeah, we are all in a sort of chain of enthusiasts, so we all build on the ones before. Absolutely. And, we could spend a whole other hour talking about how the internet has helped and will hinder that but I have been very lucky.

I went to my first folklore conference last November and to be able to meet some of the, those other enthusiastic people who are, who are willing to help and willing to give advice. I guess I will end today with one more question is , What pieces of advice would you give someone like me, a new scholar to the field, who is interested in maybe, maybe not necessarily starting an index, but starting to catalog and organize  pieces of folklore work?

Well, if  you're getting interested in folklore in particular,  I would say you've got to be evidence based  because there's  speculation all over the place in our particular field in a way that that doesn't exist in in other fields because folklore is such an easy entry level. Absolutely. Why we like it, but it's very, it's so easy.

So I would say be evidence based.  Be methodical  and be sceptical and, you know, keep your enthusiasm,  you know, I love your enthusiasm and I love the fact that you do actually go back to Halliwell and, you know, and the Opie and and so on. But in folklore, you really do have to be sceptical because there's an awful lot of  mis and disinformation, however interesting that disinformation is.

You've got to.  Yes, absolutely. Be clear headed yourself.  You've got to have a grounding in historical,  because even if you're doing modern folklore, modern, you know, stuff that's still there, it's folklore because it's been there for a while. Otherwise, it's just popular culture. Yes. If it doesn't have roots of some degree.

And so we're always looking at the roots. Nothing, nothing comes from nothing.  So you have to have a historical head on your shoulders,  weighing up the evidence, looking at,  you know, reading around the subject, all of that stuff that historians do.  If you're interested in indexing or getting control of the stuff.

Again, you've got to be methodical.  You've got to spend the time just doing it.  Because  it's by doing it that you learn about it. 

If everything's handed to you on a plate,  somebody else has done the work, then you don't  really learn. It's the process of doing it that you learn.  It makes you learn, as it were, that teaches you. Not sure any of this is making sense. Oh, it does. It's a lot of what I've repeated to my very, my freshman English writers, actually.

 What you're saying makes a whole lot of sense.  I think it's true. I mean, it's true in life, perhaps. I don't know. But  it is, you're going to get back what you put in, as it were.  And the more you put in, the more you're going to get from it.  Absolutely.  But, you know, if you want to start indexing, my advice is don't.

In  my case,  1970 is what, 50,  30, 54 years ago. 54 years later, you'll be saying, oh, I wish I hadn't started this.  It sounds so familiar. Yeah, it sounds so familiar. Oh, my goodness.  Get somebody else to do it for  you.