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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Audience Influence On The Composition, Revision And Interpolation Of Traditional Irish Ballad Narrative, Seán Ó Cadhla
Audience Influence On The Composition, Revision And Interpolation Of Traditional Irish Ballad Narrative, Seán Ó Cadhla
Doctoral
The following thesis critically examines the essential thematic malleability of traditional Irish song narrative, with particular focus on the penetrative influence of the audience on both composer and performer alike. Such narrative fluidity is specifically examined within the context of works narrating attested historical events, output which could be reasonably assumed to adhere to factual and chronological consistency. The research concludes that the audience continuously exerts a powerful cultural influence on the performance space, and further demonstrates the considerable extremes that both composers and singers will routinely embrace in order to satisfy the constantly shifting demands of their audiences, even …
In Search Of The Original "Skewball", Seán Ó Cadhla
In Search Of The Original "Skewball", Seán Ó Cadhla
Articles
The well-known horseracing ballad ‘Skewball’ has been widely documented in oral tradition on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as on numerous English broadside printings. It recounts the tale of a mid-eighteenth-century horserace held at The Curragh of Kildare, in which a heavily-backed mare is comprehensively beaten by a relatively unknown skewbald gelding leaving the mare’s owner — along with much of the assembled onlookers — significantly out of pocket. The ballad became widely popularised in North America where it was first published in a song book in 1826 (Benton 1826:3-4). It was later subsumed into African-American song tradition, …
Horses For Discourses?: The Transition From Oral To Broadside Narrative In “Skewball”, Seán Ó Cadhla
Horses For Discourses?: The Transition From Oral To Broadside Narrative In “Skewball”, Seán Ó Cadhla
Articles
The well-known horse-racing ballad ‘Skewball’ (hereafter, SB) has a well-established oral tradition in Ireland, with versions documented throughout the eighteenth-,nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries. The latest is a 1979 field-recording of Derry folksinger and storyteller, Eddie Butcher (Shields 2011:58-9). The ballad was also assimilated into African-American oral tradition, in which it was reconstructed and renamed ‘Stewball’ (Scarborough 1925:61-4; Lomax 1994:68-71), and was still being documented in American folk tradition as late as the 1930s (Flanders 1939:172-4). In common with countless other folk songs, SB was appropriated by broadside printers and subsequently enjoyed widespread public appeal throughout England in the early- to …