Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) was an American scholar, educator, and
folklorist
Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...
, best known today for his collection of
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
and
Scottish ballads
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or '' ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...
now known as the
Child Ballads
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as '' ...
. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, where he produced influential editions of English poetry. In 1876 he was named Harvard's first Professor of English, a position which allowed him to focus on academic research. It was during this time that he began work on the Child Ballads.
The Child Ballads were published in five volumes between 1882 and 1898. While Child was primarily a literary scholar with little interest in the music of the ballads, his work became a major contribution to the study of English-language folk music.
Biography
Francis James Child was born in
Boston, Massachusetts. His lifelong friend, scholar and social reformer
Charles Eliot Norton
Charles Eliot Norton (November 16, 1827 – October 21, 1908) was an American author, social critic, and Harvard professor of art based in New England. He was a progressive social reformer and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries c ...
, described Child's father, a sailmaker, as "one of that class of intelligent and independent mechanics
.e., skilled craftsmen which has had a large share of developing the character of our democratic community, as of old the same class had in Athens or in Florence." The family was poor, but thanks to the city of Boston's system of free public schools, the boy was educated at the Boston's grammar schools and
The English High School
The English High School of Boston, Massachusetts, United States, is one of the first public high schools in America, founded in 1821. Originally called The English Classical School, it was renamed The English High School upon its first relocation ...
. There his brilliance came to the attention of the principal of the
Boston Latin School
The Boston Latin School is a public exam school in Boston, Massachusetts. It was established on April 23, 1635, making it both the oldest public school in the British America and the oldest existing school in the United States. Its curriculum f ...
, Epes Sargent Dixwell, who saw to it that the promising youngster was furnished with a scholarship to attend
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
.
At Harvard, "Frank" (nicknamed "Stubby" on account of his short stature) excelled in all classes and also read widely outside his studies for his own pleasure. Although shy and diffident on account of his working-class origins, he was soon recognized as "the best writer, best speaker, best mathematician, the most accomplished person in knowledge of general literature", and he became extremely popular with his classmates. He was graduated in 1846, topping his class in all subjects and was chosen Class Orator by his graduating class (of sixty), who received his valedictory speech with "tumultuous applause". Upon graduation Child was appointed tutor in
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
at Harvard and in 1848 was transferred to a tutorship in history, political economy, and
English literature
English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...
.
In 1848, Child published a critically annotated edition (the first of the kind to be produced in America) of ''Four Old Plays'' of the early English Renaissance. Though there were no graduate schools in America at the time, a loan from a benefactor, Jonathan I. Bowditch, to whom the book was dedicated, enabled Child to take a leave of absence from his teaching duties to pursue his studies in Germany. There Child studied
English drama
Drama was introduced to Britain from Europe by the Romans, and auditoriums were constructed across the country for this purpose.
But England didn't exist until hundreds of years after the Romans left.
Medieval period
By the medieval period, t ...
and Germanic
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...
at the
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
, which conferred on him an honorary doctorate, and at
Humboldt University
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiati ...
,
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
, where he heard lectures by the linguists
Grimm
Grimm may refer to:
People
* Grimm (surname)
* Brothers Grimm, German linguists
** Jacob Grimm (1785–1863), German philologist, jurist and mythologist
** Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), German author, the younger of the Brothers Grimm
* Christia ...
and was much influenced by them.
In 1851, at the age of 26, Child succeeded
Edward T. Channing as Harvard's Boylston Professor of
Rhetoric
Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...
and
Oratory, a position he held until Adams Sherman Hill was appointed to the professorship in 1876. Harvard had at that time an enrollment of 382 undergraduates and a faculty of 14, including the president of the University, who was then
James Walker.
As a mathematician, wrote folklore scholar David E. Bynum, Child came to his interest "in what he variously called 'popular', 'primitive', or 'traditional' balladry'" (that is, in oral literature, then deemed "primitive" because its stylistic features antedate the invention of writing) not by accident "but by force of logic":
Child well understood how indispensable good writing and good speaking are to civilization, or as many would now prefer to say, to society. For him, writing and speaking were not only the practical means by which men share useful information, but also the means whereby they formulate and share values, including the higher order of values that give meaning to life and purpose to human activities of all sorts. Concerned as he thus so greatly was with rhetoric, oratory, and the motives of those mental disciplines, Child was inevitably drawn into pondering the essential differences between speech and writing, and to searching for the origins of thoughtful expression in English.
During the twenty-five years Child was Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard he undertook general editorial supervision of the publication of a 130-volume collection of the works of the British poets, many not previously generally available to the reading public, which began appearing 1853. The volumes on the works of
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser (; 1552/1553 – 13 January 1599) was an English poet best known for ''The Faerie Queene'', an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of ...
(five volumes, Boston, 1855) and the ''English and Scottish Ballads'' (in eight small volumes, Boston, 1857–1858), Child edited himself. Child planned a critical edition of the works of
Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
, as well. He soon realized that this could not be done, however, since only one early (and faulty) text was available. He therefore wrote a treatise, blandly titled "Observations on the Language of Chaucer", published in the ''Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences'' (1863), intended to make such an edition possible.
Child's linguistic researches are largely responsible for how Chaucerian
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...
, pronunciation, and
scansion
Scansion ( , rhymes with ''mansion''; verb: ''to scan''), or a system of scansion, is the method or practice of determining and (usually) graphically representing the metrical pattern of a line of verse. In classical poetry, these patterns are ...
are now generally understood.
Child's largest undertaking, however, grew out of the original ''English and Scottish Ballads'' volume in his ''British Poets'' series. The material for this volume was mostly derived from texts in previously published books. In compiling this work he realized that the folio manuscript of
Percy's ''Reliques'', from which most of these texts were drawn, was not available for public inspection, and he set about to remedy this situation. In the 1860s he campaigned energetically for public support to enable the
Early English Text Society
The Early English Text Society (EETS) is a text publication society founded in 1864 which is dedicated to the editing and publication of early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes contain editions of ...
, founded by philologist
Frederick James Furnivall
Frederick James Furnivall (4 February 1825 – 2 July 1910) was an English philologist, best known as one of the co-creators of the ''New English Dictionary''. He founded a number of learned societies on early English literature and made pione ...
, to obtain a copy of Percy's Folio and publish it, which they did in 1868. Child and Furnivall then went on to found The Ballad Society, with a view to publishing other important early ballad collections, such as that of
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no mariti ...
.
In 1876, University of California President
Daniel Coit Gilman
Daniel Coit Gilman (; July 6, 1831 – October 13, 1908) was an American educator and academic. Gilman was instrumental in founding the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale College, and subsequently served as the second president of the University ...
offered Child a research professorship at the newly established
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...
in
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
, which Gilman was in the process of organizing. Johns Hopkins was the first American university conceived on the German research model initiated by
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt (, also , ; ; 22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835) was a Prussian philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin, which was named after ...
and divided into departments representing "the branches of knowledge", with elective subjects and a graduate school dedicated to advanced studies. In order to retain him, Harvard's president
Charles William Eliot
Charles William Eliot (March 20, 1834 – August 22, 1926) was an American academic who was president of Harvard University from 1869 to 1909the longest term of any Harvard president. A member of the prominent Eliot family of Boston, he transfor ...
created the title of "Professor of English" especially for Child, freeing him from supervising oral recitations and correcting composition papers so that he could have more time for research. Thereafter, Child devoted himself to the comparative study of British
vernacular
A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...
ballads
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or '' ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...
, using methods adopted from historical comparative
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...
to arrive at the earliest attested versions.
Child considered that folk ballads came from a more democratic time in the past when society was not so rigidly segregated into classes, and the "true voice" of the people could therefore be heard. He conceived "the people" as comprising all the classes of society, rich, middle, and poor, and not only those engaged in manual labor as Marxists sometimes use the word. Although Child concentrated his collections on manuscript texts with a view to determining their chronology, he also gave a sedulous but conservative hearing to popular versions still surviving. Child carried his investigations into the ballads of languages other than English, engaging in extensive international correspondence on the subject with colleagues abroad, primarily with the Danish literary historian and ethnographer
Svend Grundtvig
Svend Hersleb Grundtvig (9 September 1824, Copenhagen – 14 July 1883, Frederiksberg) was a Danish literary historian and ethnographer. He was one of the first systematic collectors of Danish traditional music, and he was especially interested ...
, whose monumental twelve-volume compilation of Danish ballads, ''
Danmarks gamle Folkeviser'', vols. 1–12 (Copenhagen, 1853), was the model for Child's resulting canonical five-volume edition of some 305 English and Scottish ballads and their numerous variants. Since the ballads were known to have been a pan-European, Turkish, and North African phenomenon, Child and Grundtvig also consulted with numerous scholars in other parts of the world, such as, for example, the Sicilian physician, folklorist, and ethnographer
Giuseppe Pitrè
Giuseppe Pitrè (22 December 184110 April 1916) was an Italian folklorist, medical doctor, professor, and senator for Sicily. As a folklorist he is credited with extending the realm of folklore to include all manifestations of popular life. He is ...
. Professor Child served two terms as president, in 1888 and 1889, of the
American Folklore Society
The American Folklore Society (AFS) is the US-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world, which aims to encourage research, aid in disseminating that research, promote the responsible ...
, which was founded with the mission of collecting and preserving African-American and Native American folklore equally that of European derivation.
Worked and overworked to the last, he died in Boston after completing his task – apart from a planned general introduction and bibliography. A biographical introduction was prefixed to the work by his student, and successor,
George Lyman Kittredge
George Lyman Kittredge (February 28, 1860 – July 23, 1941) was a professor of English literature at Harvard University. His scholarly edition of the works of William Shakespeare was influential in the early 20th century. He was also involved i ...
.
Child added to the Harvard University Library one of the largest folklore collections in existence. Kittredge succeeded him as Professor of English literature and modern languages at Harvard and considered himself the custodian of Child's scholarly legacy. Kittredge was president of the American Folklore Society in 1904.
All the earlier, printed sources known to Child, ('The Child Ballads'), are subsumed, and progressed upon in number and research by
Steve Roud
Steve Roud (; born 1949) is the creator of the Roud Folk Song Index and an expert on folklore and superstition. He was formerly Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society.
Life and c ...
, in the
Roud Folk Song Index
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London ...
.
He is buried in the cemetery in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in the "
Sedgwick Pie
The "Sedgwick Pie" is a cemetery plot in the United States. It is the family burial plot of the Sedgwick family in Stockbridge Cemetery, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and gets its nickname from its shape and layout.
Description
The burial sites ar ...
", since (like his good friend Charles Eliot Norton), he had married into the
Sedgwick family
The Sedgwick family is a predominantly American family originating in England. Members of the family and their descendants have been influential in politics, law, business, and the arts. The earliest known member of the Sedgwick family to have gone ...
. (Child's grave is not far from that of
Elizabeth Freeman (Mum Bett)
Elizabeth Freeman ( 1744 December 28, 1829), also known as Bet, Mum Bett, or MumBet, was the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, in Freeman's favor, ...
, the first enslaved African American to sue for her freedom in the courts based on the law of the 1780 constitution of the state of
, which held that "
all men are born free and equal." The jury agreed and in 1781 she won her freedom. Her lawyer had been
Theodore Sedgwick
Theodore Sedgwick (May 9, 1746January 24, 1813) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served in elected state government and as a delegate to the Continental Congress, a U.S. representative, and a senator from Massachusetts. H ...
.)
''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads''
Child's monumental final collection was published as ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads'' in 1882–1898, at first in ten parts (the tenth, posthumously) and then in five
quarto
Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...
volumes, and for a long time was the authoritative treasury of their subject. The "English" and "Scottish" of the title notwithstanding, it was an international piece of research, with references that include thirty different language sources.
A commemorative article in the 2006 edition of the ''Harvard Magazine'' states:
Child's enthusiasm and erudition shine throughout his systematic attempt to set the British ballad tradition in context with others, whether Danish, Serbian, or Turkish. He made no attempt to conceal or apologize for the sexuality, theatrical violence, and ill-concealed paganism of many ballads, but it is characteristic of the man that in his introduction to "Hugh of Lincoln," an ancient work about the purported murder of a Christian child by a Jew, he wrote, "And these pretended child-murders, with their horrible consequences, are only a part of the persecution which, with all moderation, may be rubricated as the most disgraceful chapter in the history of the human race."
Since Child did not live to complete the planned introduction to his work which was to have explained his methodology, it has sometimes been alleged his selection was arbitrary and based purely on personal taste. The most recent edition of the ballads, however, published in 2002, now includes Child's rediscovered essay, "Ballad Poetry," which he had published anonymously in 1874. Reviewing the new edition, Ian Olson notes that the rediscovered essay:
gives considerable insight into Child's thinking after he had published his "first go" of English and Scottish Ballads in 1857-59 and was in the process of researching and reconsidering his last great work. It may not be Child's "final statement" that we all wish he had lived to make, but it comes close in many ways, and nicely complements the original Introduction to 1880s English and Scottish Popular Ballads made by Child's successor, George Lyman Kittredge (retained in this volume).[Olson, 2002.]
Owing to the indelicate nature of their theme, certain traditional ballads such as
The Crabfish
"The Crabfish" is a ribald humorous folk song of the English oral tradition. It dates back to the seventeenth century, appearing in Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript as a song named "The Sea Crabb" based on an earlier tale. The moral of the story ...
were deliberately excluded from this work. For a listing of all the Child ballad types, and links to more information on each individual type, see
List of the Child Ballads
The Child Ballads is the colloquial name given to a collection of 305 ballads collected in the 19th century by Francis James Child
Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, ...
.
See also
*''
Il Pesceballo
''Il pesceballo'' (The Fish-Ball) is a 19th-century American pasticcio opera in one act featuring the music of Bellini, Donizetti, Mozart, and Rossini, with a spoof Italian libretto by Francis James Child which makes use of some of grand opera' ...
''
Notes
References
*
*Atkinson, David. "The English Revival Canon: Child Ballads and the Invention of Tradition". ''The Journal of American Folklore'': 114: 453 (Summer, 2001): 370-80.
*_____ ''The English Traditional Ballad: Theory, Method, and Practice''. Aldershot, UK and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002.
* Brown, Mary Ellen. ''Child's Unfinished Masterpiece: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads''. University of Illinois Press, 2011.
* _____. "Child's Gallant Army of Auxiliaries". ''Journal of Folklore Research'' 43: 2 (May–August 2006): 89-108.
*Cheeseman, Tom, and Sigrid Rieuwerts, editors. ''Ballads into Books: The Legacies of Francis James Child. Selected Papers from the 26th International Ballad Conference (SIEF Ballad Commission), Swansea, Wales, 19–24 July 1996''. Berlin (etc.): Peter Lang Verlagsgruppe, (Second Revised Edition) 1999.
*Graff, Gerald. ''Professing Literature: An Institutional History.'' University of Chicago Press, 1987.
*Rieuwerts, Sigrid. "'The Genuine Ballads of the People': F. J. Child and the Ballad Cause". ''Journal of Folklore Research'', 31: 1-3 (1994): 1-34.
*Rudy, Jill Terry. "Considering Rhetoric's Wayward Child: Ballad Scholarship and Intradisciplinary Conflict." ''Journal of Folklore Research'': 35: 2 (May 1998): 85–98.
*_____. "Transforming Audiences for Oral Tradition: Child, Kittredge, Thompson, and Connections of Folklore and English Studies." ''College English'': 66: 5 (May 2004).
External links
*
*
*
Biography of Francis James Child at ''The Contemplator'''
*[http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/child.htm Olson, Ian. Review of Mark and Laura Heiman's ''Corrected Second Edition of Francis James Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, volume 1'', in ''Musical Traditions'' internet magazine, May 14, 2002.]
"Francis James Child" entry 43 in ''The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). Volume XVIII. Later National Literature'', Part III, XXV. ''Scholars'', no. 43. "Francis James Child".Project Gutenbergfree e-texts of ''The English and Scottish Ballads'' are available in several formats
Volume 1Volume 2Volume 3Volume 4 ther volumes in preparation.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Child, Francis James
American folklorists
American folk-song collectors
American educational theorists
Harvard University faculty
1825 births
1896 deaths
Harvard University alumni
English High School of Boston alumni
Sedgwick family
Presidents of the American Folklore Society
19th-century musicologists