A Hand-Me-Down Harvest; Down't Jones's Parin' Bee

<v Speaker>This is Laura Britton of uh Putney, Vermont. <v Speaker>Now [scenes] for the Flanders ballad collection Middleburry College, Middleburry Vermont. <v Speaker>It's difficult really to appreciate what Helen Hartness Flanders did <v Speaker>when she first began collecting in 1930. <v Speaker>Few people thought that there there were more than a handful of traditional ballads <v Speaker>left in Vermont. She quite quickly came to realize <v Speaker>that there was much, much more out there than these than these few ballads. <v Speaker>In fact, uh there may be 100s, perhaps even 1000s of items of traditional <v Speaker>music, not only in Vermont after awhile, but also in others of the New England <v Speaker>states. <v Speaker>Eventually, she came to collect some 9000 different items of traditional <v Speaker>music, some of it in a recorded form and some of it in a written form. <v Speaker>That collection is the 1 which is now the Helen Hartness Flanders ballad collection. <v Speaker>It's it's unique. There's nothing like that anywhere in the United States. <v Speaker>In no place can you find a collection of that magnitude nor of that importance. <v Speaker>[music]

<v Speaker>To call it the Flanders ballad collection is in some ways inaccurate. <v Speaker>As a matter of fact, there is a great deal more in the collection than simple ballads. <v Speaker>For example, a number of fiddle tunes and <v Speaker>um Mrs. Flanders made a lot of recordings, discs, so forth, <v Speaker>of important fiddlers from Vermont. <v Speaker>Among the most significant of those would be names like Elmer Barton, [inaudible] <v Speaker>Vermont. A number of different recordings by Elmer Barton. <v Speaker>Uh, Uncle Elmer and my father used to get together. <v Speaker>They both played fiddle, played jigs and reels.

<v Speaker>And my Aunt Edith, who was my father's and my uncle <v Speaker>Elmer's sister. She played chords on the piano and back before I remember, <v Speaker>they used to play for kids and young kids. They called them up around this area. <v Speaker>It was like barn dances, something like a barn dance or something like that. <v Speaker>An' so they used to play for those up around Curtis Pond up around there. <v Speaker>Mr. Elmer Barton of [inaudible] Vermont now plays to the Flanders Ballad Collection, <v Speaker>Middlebury College, Vermont, and old fiddle tune. <v Speaker>And he doesn't know what we call the name. <v Speaker>This is recorded August 13, 1945. <v Speaker>[music playing] <v Speaker>He used to come and visit us a lot. He and his family lived when they lived in Quechee,

<v Speaker>so I say he was quite a storyteller, so he likes to tell things, ya know. <v Speaker>Talk about 'em. So us kids all kinda sat <v Speaker>around and ya know [laughs], that sort of thing. <v Speaker>He was interesting. He he had traveled quite a lot. <v Speaker>So I say he got acquainted with Mrs. Flanders because she <v Speaker>or she got in touch with him. I think because he she had heard that he did <v Speaker>play fiddle, violin. <v Speaker>So I never met her. <v Speaker>I already remember what he told us about her. <v Speaker>He told me she was a very nice person. <v Speaker>And and uh she invited him to her house <v Speaker>for dinner. I think him and maybe some others, too. <v Speaker>I don't remember that. But anyway, said she had a very nice home with a lot of <v Speaker>lots of nice furniture and things. She was very nice person. <v Speaker>And she wasn't really um she made him feel at home. <v Speaker>But still, he was a little bit nervous about going to such an elegant dinner,

<v Speaker>you know, with lots of silver and all that sort of things. <v Speaker>So he [laughs] he was quite nervous about that. <v Speaker>He said he was sure he tried to watch her to see what she did [laughs] ya know he was <v Speaker>sure he'd make some kind of a [laughs] uh faux pas that would embarrass <v Speaker>him. But I don't think he did. [music plays] <v Speaker>[inaudible] Oh, I did that. <v Speaker>Oh, it's [inaudible]. <v Speaker>Did I really play that?

<v Speaker>[inaudible] He plays awful fast. <v Speaker>And and there while on the violin [inaudible]. <v Speaker> <v Speaker>They say they've played their fill. <v Speaker>Real fast music. <v Speaker>Haven't played too many slow pieces. <v Speaker>[laughing] That was another thing they like my father, you say you like to make the <v Speaker>violin talk [laughing]. [music continues] <v Speaker>Mr. Titus now is going to sing.

<v Speaker>Jones' [inaudible]. <v Speaker>A [inaudible] is [our] neighbors of years ago used <v Speaker>to congregate at some particular farmhouse and [inaudible], <v Speaker>they would be some [parren] with [parren] machines. <v Speaker>Others would be parren with knives. <v Speaker>Others would be stringin' with a twine string and a [inaudbile] needle. <v Speaker>And uh then they'd hang the apples up to dry. <v Speaker>That was what we used to call a [parren bee]. [singing] <v Speaker>Folk songs can serve a number of different functions.

<v Speaker>Uh 1 of the most important functions I think they can serve is an educational 1. <v Speaker>Before the days of television, before th- the time the newspapers were readily <v Speaker>available to everyone. Folk songs, folk ballads probably <v Speaker>uh helped people determine how they were going to live their lives. <v Speaker>It's a nice, painless way to to build behavior patterns <v Speaker>and er to teach behavior patterns. <v Speaker>You can have a folk ballad that's about murder. <v Speaker>Killing one's brothers. And inevitably, the person who kills one's <v Speaker>brothers comes in for an ill end zone and <v Speaker>a very young child learning that is going to somehow soak up the <v Speaker>um the sense that this is not something that 1 does on and on and on. <v Speaker>It's a teaching device to very large extent. <v Speaker>[singing] <v Speaker>Very few of the 200 songs that Granny Fish sang were Helen Hartness

<v Speaker>Flanders were sacred songs. <v Speaker>But another singer, Tom Armstrong, had forsaken worldly songs, <v Speaker>he hadn't sung a worldly song for over 40 years, so he contributed a good many <v Speaker>religious songs to the collection at Middlebury. <v Speaker>Mrs. Flanders heard him singing on the Springfield radio station, singing <v Speaker>religious songs unaccompanied in the manner of the folk, and she <v Speaker>followed through to find that he was visiting his sister, Mrs. Wilson, in Springfield. <v Speaker>She went over to Mrs. Wilson's house and he sang for her <v Speaker>along with his sister. <v Speaker>Several songs, including the duet, very beautiful duet, Brightest and Best, <v Speaker>which was uh a shape note song sung by the <v Speaker>and taught by the early singing masters here in New England. <v Speaker>[singing]

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<v Speaker>Hymns and sacred music. <v Speaker>Music of this sort. Music that was captured by Mrs. <v Speaker>Flanders and the collection is still being performed. <v Speaker>This is music still very much alive, we suspect, although <v Speaker>we don't really know. But we suspect that many of the ballads that Mrs. Flanders <v Speaker>found are no longer being performed by the folk. <v Speaker>That that generation has died out. And it seems that they probably didn't pass <v Speaker>these treasures on to the next generation. <v Speaker>There are a number of different sorts of music that's in the Flanders <v Speaker>collection that still is very much in the oral tradition. <v Speaker>I think 1st of all, probably of fiddling tunes and country dances and so <v Speaker>forth. Uh as an example, Ed Larkin <v Speaker>did a number of performances for the Flanders Collection in the 1930s in the 1st decade <v Speaker>of collection. Ed Larkin passed on to <v Speaker>his sons and daughters, a love for fiddling, contra dancing

<v Speaker>and so forth. If 1 were to attend the Tonbridge Fair or Celebration <v Speaker>Northeast at Dartmouth or a number of other festivals and celebrations <v Speaker>of the traditional arts in New England, 1 very possibly would have a chance <v Speaker>to see the Ed Larkin dancers performing the old dances, the old contra dances. <v Speaker>Among those performers would be Gertrude Roberts. <v Speaker>Ed Larkin's daughter lives in Chelsea, Vermont. <v Speaker>Still interested, still involved in the performing institutional arts, Vermont. <v Speaker>The- the contra dances are the forerunners of the square dance. <v Speaker>They were the 1s that came over from the mother country, Europe particular. <v Speaker>Although there were some added to them <v Speaker>uh when they got here, like uh Boston Fancy, you know, that relates to Boston, <v Speaker>Massachusetts. <v Speaker>But uh a lot of the tunes were originated in the mother country <v Speaker>and brought here.

<v Speaker>Contra means the women on 1 side and the men on the other facing each other. <v Speaker>And then what they call now the square dances. <v Speaker>In olden times, we'll call the c- drills. <v Speaker>They formed on 4 couples in the set. <v Speaker>Just the same. But the changes are different. <v Speaker>Uh there's not as much turning, there's not as much pushing. <v Speaker>It's done more graceful. [music plays] <v Speaker>And they used to have what they called kitchen ?junkets? <v Speaker>And they'd be held in different people's homes.

<v Speaker>And he played, called the changes, managed <v Speaker>to ?slow? ?all along?. <v Speaker>He didn't sing the changes, but he rang them out down through the hall. <v Speaker>And 1 time when I made a change just a little bit too quick, he sashayed the center. <v Speaker>He rung my name out down through the hall [laughs]. <v Speaker>But he'd play for all probably 3 [pause] <v Speaker>con- uh these contra dancers and they called him Kitchen ?Junkets? <v Speaker>at homes a week. <v Speaker>He owned a small farm. <v Speaker>He had a saw mill, ?inaudible? A jack of quite a lot of trades, <v Speaker>but his music stuck with him above all. <v Speaker>He'd have to go to some of these dances and be in a hurry. <v Speaker>Gotta get his cows milked and get to that dance and he'd say to me, Gertrude, <v Speaker>you have that washtub ready back on the farm ya know, they didn't have these ?inaudible? <v Speaker>tubs [laughs]. He says, you have that washtub ready my water in it, my <v Speaker>soap, my clothes all laid out [laughs] when I come in from the barn so

<v Speaker>I can get ready and get to that dance. <v Speaker>And I always hadda tie his necktie. [music plays] <v Speaker>Ah I remember 1 time he used to like to have me go to the dances with him

<v Speaker>because we had to drive the sleigh in the wintertime. <v Speaker>There was no automobile at this time. <v Speaker>We were headed for north Randolph to play for a dance and we <v Speaker>left uh real early 'cause we had to be there by I don't have ?that? <v Speaker>date. Maybe 9. <v Speaker>And it was in the winter time and it was drifted terrible on the roads, <v Speaker>but to prepare for the trip, you take the old fashion free stones <v Speaker>and put onto the stove and heat them all through during the day. <v Speaker>And then you'd wrap them up in newspapers and you'd have those at your feet <v Speaker>and 1 in your lap for your hands. <v Speaker>And then you'd have uh lap rope over your knees and down <v Speaker>under the lap rope we had uh ol' lantern and that lantern <v Speaker>would be turned down low, but it would still give off heat <v Speaker>for ya. <v Speaker>And we were going over the hill to East Randolph and it was drifted so bad

<v Speaker>we had to go out into the field and we got out in the field and something caught <v Speaker>the runner on the sleigh and dumped us, ?free stones?, lantern, and all right <v Speaker>out into the snow. <v Speaker>Well we picked up our things and got back into it, started on, <v Speaker>got dumped out again. <v Speaker>We finally made it over North Randolph. <v Speaker>He played for the dance and then coming home, he always wanted me to drive the horse <v Speaker>because he needed to sleep. <v Speaker>We finally got back down onto 110 route 110 <v Speaker>and uh found where we turned. It was Harry Flynt's ?farm? <v Speaker>and they were out to the barn doing their chores. <v Speaker>And it was 7:00 in the morning when we arrived there. <v Speaker>We got home. Dad did his chores. <v Speaker>Went to bed. I went to bed. I didn't get up to 4:00 that afternoon. <v Speaker>That was just 1 experience. [music plays] <v Speaker>Uh this is uh.

<v Speaker>What is your first name? <v Speaker>This is <v Speaker>?inaudible? of ?inaudible? Vermont. Now sings for the Flanders ballad collection in <v Speaker>Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont, a ballad called Mary of the Wild Moore <v Speaker>?inaudible? <v Speaker>To my mind the most important <v Speaker>thing she did was to be on the spot at a time <v Speaker>when these things were dying out and was successful in uh <v Speaker>getting so many of them. <v Speaker>Mrs. Flanders was, 1st of all, foremost and above everything, a remarkable <v Speaker>person. <v Speaker>I was in 1930 that the um Committee on Traditions and Ideals of the <v Speaker>Vermont Commission on Country Life had asked her to record <v Speaker>these folk songs or to try to find as many as she could thinking <v Speaker>that there wouldn't be very many. <v Speaker>It was clear after that 1 year of collection from which her 1st book, is is

<v Speaker>a result of that 1st year of collection. It was clear that there were many, many, many <v Speaker>more folk songs that existed out there. <v Speaker>From then on, it was uh she took it upon her own self. <v Speaker>It was her own responsibility to go ahead and collect as many as she could find. <v Speaker>I think she was remarkable for her tenacity. <v Speaker>Um she must have been a highly, highly disciplined person, <v Speaker>a person who had a vision of something and was going to <v Speaker>do it and did it in the best New England tradition. <v Speaker>She and this is a bit more difficult for me to get a hol- a handle on, but she must have <v Speaker>been a person who is also quite charming and personable. <v Speaker>In listening to the tapes once again, she gets remarkable things out of out of her <v Speaker>consultants. And if you can imagine, put yourself in a situation <v Speaker>of of going up to a farmhouse or going up to a house somewhere in the hills <v Speaker>of Vermont, knocking on their front door and within an hour getting them to sing <v Speaker>songs that they've never sung for foreigners before fo- for anyone outside of their

<v Speaker>immediate family. That's a fairly remarkable talent and it's <v Speaker>1 that she seemed to have in spades. <v Speaker>Um, she also had a keen sensitivity for the words. <v Speaker>She was a published poet, published several volumes of poetry in her life. <v Speaker>And because of that. And since folk ballads basically are poetry, she seems to have been <v Speaker>able to recognize what was particularly valuable, particularly beautiful. <v Speaker>All of these things taken together, um make for a remarkable <v Speaker>collector. And that's precisely what she was. <v Speaker>Maybe 1 of the most remarkable collectors in the United States ever of materials <v Speaker>like these. <v Speaker>Learned it of a schoolteacher. [different speaker]: ?inaudible? <v Speaker>?inaudible? Go ahead, John. <v Speaker>[singing] <v Speaker>[music playing] The producers of this program would like to thank the following people

<v Speaker>for their participation. <v Speaker>Beatrice Barton, Ines Barton, Ethel George Lewis, <v Speaker>Gertrude Larken Roberts, and Nancy Fish Smith, all of whom are relatives <v Speaker>of the musicians who performed for Mrs. Flanders. <v Speaker>And we thank Elizabeth Flanders Ballard, Fran Burne Flanders, Margaret <v Speaker>McArthur and Carole Moody. <v Speaker>Thanks also to Jennifer Quinn of Middlebury College for her invaluable assistance <v Speaker>in helping to choose the musical material for this program, as well as to <v Speaker>musicologist Dr. Dale Cockrell, folklorist Dr. Horace Beck <v Speaker>and director of Public Affairs Ron Neith. <v Speaker>All of Middlebury College. <v Speaker>Remote recording engineer for this program was Sam Sanders. <v Speaker>The mixing engineer was Joshua Landis. <v Speaker>This program was produced by Dorothy Ganon and F. <v Speaker>Grimes with research and assistance by Tony Marsteller and funds <v Speaker>provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. <v Speaker>I'm the executive producer, Betty Smith, and this is a production of Vermont

<v Speaker>Public Radio.