Come and I Will Sing You: A Newfoundland Songbook

Edith Fowke is a professor emeritus at York University and author of the
recently published Canadian Folklore: Perspectives on Canadian Culture.

Genevieve Lehr, who is studying linguistics at Memorial University, and Anita Best, a teacher and folksinger, have travelled around Newfoundland recording songs wherever they could find singers. The result is this excellent collection of 120 songs. Some of them are familiar, but quite a few are published here for the first time. The compilers have not included any songs that appear in the major Newfoundland collections unless their versions differ substantially.

Editorial material is kept to a minimum. A preface outlines the editor’s purpose in presenting the songs (“to provide a handy reference for the people who want to learn and sing them”) and tells how the book was prepared, and an introduction discusses the collectors’ experiences with the singers. Some songs are identified only by reference to Paul Mercer’s Index of Songs and Ballads in Print 1842-1976; others have brief notes about the singers or composers, the historical background, and occasional comparative references. The book also has a list of contributors and a useful glossary and bibliography.

Genevieve Lehr notes that she has emphasized songs of local composition but that the 120 included are a cross-section of the songs collected. It is indeed a good cross-section, but I find the arrangement, which is alphabetically by song title, somewhat distracting. I would have liked some classification to bring together songs of similar type: perhaps those of British origin, general North American songs, and those of local composition. It would also have been useful to include the Child and Laws numbers for the British ballads.