Traditional Songs from Nova Scotia

Neil V. Rosenberg is a professor of Folklore and Director of the
Folklore and Language Archive at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland.

This is a reprinting of a volume first published in 1950, Creighton’s second large collection of Nova Scotia folksongs. It surpassed her 1932 collection in terms of the variety of songs, quality of the musical transcriptions, and extent of annotation. It appeared at the height of Creighton’s scholarly activity, when she had just published her study of the folklore of Lunenburg County, had made a substantial number of sound recordings of folksongs from Nova Scotia for the American Library of Congress, and was working as a field researcher for the National Museum of Canada. The book printed for the first time a number of Nova Scotian songs which have become popular throughout Canada, particularly the one now known as “Farewell to Nova Scotia” — which Creighton here calls “Nova Scotia Song,” and to which a notice of copyright (the only one in the book) has been added.

It is a shame that this long-overdue reprinting comes with virtually no added information which could serve to set the book and its contents in its cultural and historical context. Also regrettable is the inane cover drawing.