KATHERINE JACKSON FRENCH
KATHERINE JACKSON FRENCH
KENTUCKY’S FORGOTTEN BALLAD COLLECTOR
Elizabeth DiSavino
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Copyright © 2020 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
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Unless otherwise noted, photographs are courtesy of the Berea College
Special Collections and Archives.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: DiSavino, Elizabeth, author.
Title: Katherine Jackson French : Kentucky’s forgotten ballad collector / Elizabeth DiSavino.
Other titles: English-Scottish ballads from the hills of Kentucky.
Description: Lexington : The University Press of Kentucky, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020004315 | ISBN 9780813178523 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780813178547 (pdf) | ISBN 9780813178554 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: French, Katherine Jackson, 1875–1958. | Ethnomusicologists—United States—Biography. | Women musicians—United States—Biography. | Musicians—United States—Biography. | Ballads, English—Kentucky—History and criticism. | Folk songs, English—Kentucky—History and criticism. | Women—Southern States—Social life and customs—20th century. | Ballads, English—Kentucky. | Folk songs, English—Kentucky.
Classification: LCC ML423.F76 D57 2020 | DDC 782.42162/130769—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004315
This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Member of the Association
of University Presses
For my mother and father
In Scarlett Town, where I was born
There was a fair maid dwelling
And every youth cried, “Well away!”
Her name was Barbara Allen.
British/Scottish/Appalachian ballad
Contents
1. “The Spirit and Sap of the Stock”
PART 2. “THE STURDINESS AND TRUTH OF SONG”
6. A Comparison of the Ballads of Katherine Jackson and Olive Dame Campbell/Cecil Sharp
PART 3. “ENGLISH-SCOTTISH BALLADS FROM THE HILLS OF KENTUCKY”
7. Introduction by Elizabeth DiSavino
8. Introduction by Katherine Jackson French
9. “English-Scottish Ballads from the Hills of Kentucky”
Appendix A. A Note on the Ballads
Appendix B. Informants for the Ballads of Katherine Jackson
Appendix C. Time Line of the Ballad Wars
Introduction
Every study begins with a question and ends with many others.
When A. J. Bodnar and I began a fellowship project at Berea College in 2012, the name of Katherine Jackson French was unknown to us. We entered the vast vault of the Berea College Special Collections and Archives at Hutchins Library and entrusted ourselves to the tender mercies of the archivists Harry Rice and Shannon Wilson.
It was Harry who first told us about Katherine Jackson French. I was intrigued. She was a woman who had attempted to publish a large collection of ballads (over sixty by some accounts) seven years before Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil Sharp’s landmark English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (1917).1 She was one of the first women from Kentucky to earn a PhD, the second woman to earn one from Columbia University, and the first from south of the Mason-Dixon Line to do so. Paradoxically, she was a southern woman who studied and taught in the North but kept returning home.
The more I learned about her, the more questions arose. Why had this girl from London, Kentucky, gone north and east for her education? As one of eight children, why had she—a girl—been singled out for higher education at the end of the nineteenth century? What influences did she encounter in her youth that led her to this calling? How did her family,