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Maine
Folklife Center |
Women Folklorists
Introduction |
Helen
Creighton |
Fanny Hardy
Eckstorm |
Joanna Colcord |
Helen Hartness
Flanders |
Louise Manny
Helen
Creighton 1899 - 1989
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Helen Creighton
was born into an old and distinguished Halifax family in 1899 in
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. She was born with a caul, a folkloric
sign of good fortune. In the 1920s, she began to write travel
pieces, fiction, and stories for the radio.
Creighton began
her career as a folk music collector in 1928. She started close
to home, on the shores of Halifax Harbor. Her first book, Songs
and Ballads from Nova Scotia, 1932, is based on these maiden
efforts.
(see
reproduction of the cover of the book & the pages from it.)
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When it
was suggested to me by Dr. Henry Munro, Superintendent of
Education for the province, that I look for ballads in my search
for literary material within this coast of adventure and
romance, I thought the possibility of finding any such songs
very remote indeed. For which my ignorance pleads humble
forgiveness. Yet be it said in defense that until the early
summer of 1929 I had never heard a ballad sung in this my native
province.
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| Notice the
beauty of the front cover of Songs and Ballads of Nova
Scotia, published by the Toronto firm of J. M. Dent and
Sons in 1932. |
. . . I
happened to be on a beach some few evenings later, and the
evening being June, and the sky filled with the radiance of the
setting sun, I walked on the sands with a companion, and
communed upon Romance of the past. In such mood we returned to
our bonfire to find a villager attending it, and . . . we opened
conversation by asking if treasure had ever been found upon this
shore. It was as we were going away that our informer mentioned
songs. Our talk of pirates had made him think of them. "The
people down here will not only tell you stories," he said," but
they'll sing you songs as well."
"What kind of
songs?" we asked indifferently.
"Pirate songs,"
he said. Could it be possible that I was to find them at my very
door? So I took the names of those most likely to sing, asked
him to prepare them for my coming, and went away wondering what
I was to find.
Collecting can never be done in any hurry, as I discovered very
soon. One or two visits were made in the day-time, when friendly
contacts were established. But we soon saw that evening was the
time for song. Evening, when the day's work is done and the hour
of relaxation has come. Evening, when the workaday world is at
rest and all people feel a kindly sense of companionship towards
one another.
Helen
Creighton, "Introduction," Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia.
Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1932.
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In 1931
Creighton found a partner in her efforts; the English folklorist
Doreen Senior. During the 1930s the pair travelled throughout
Nova Scotia gathering folksongs. Creighton sought out the
informants and recorded song lyrics, while Senior transcribed
the music. Creighton and Senior published Twelve Folk Songs from
Nova Scotia in 1941; and Traditional Songs from Nova Scotia in
1950.
Creighton
received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to attend the summer
Institute of Folklore at Indiana University in 1942. She studied
with Alan Lomax, Herbert Halpert, and others. She was the only
one of the women in this exhibit to formally study folklore.
This summer course gave Creighton exposure to the wide variety
of materials which folklorists dealt with, and thus may have
helped broaden her collecting interests. After her return from
Indiana Creighton began seeking out more diverse informants,
including African Nova Scotians, Mi'kmaqs, and Acadians.
Helen Creighton
became well known in Canada. The songs she collected were
reworked into operas, ballets, plays, and radio and television
programs which were hailed as cultural expressions Canadian
national identity. Her books include:
- Bluenose Ghosts, 1957
- Bluenose Magic, 1968
- A Life in Folklore,
1975
- La Fleur de Rosier:
Acadian Folksongs, 1989.
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Helen Creighton and Edward D. "Sandy" Ives were judges at the
First Miramichi Folksong Festival, held in Newcastle, New
Brunswick, in 1958. Sandy remembers his confusion about how they
were supposed to decide on prizes:
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Here, Creighton presents one
of these awards to local singer James Brown.
Maine Folklife Center Photo # 264. |
"I was still puzzled.
'What are we supposed to judge singers on?' I asked my
colleague. "I'd never thought of singing as being particularly
competitive, unless it was to see who knows the most songs, and
we certainly won't have time for that. Any ideas?" Helen
laughed. 'I don't know either,' she said, 'but we'll think of
something before we're through.' And we did. Ten-dollar bills
went to the oldest singer, youngest singer, singer from farthest
away, singer of the longest song, and so on. It worked out just
fine."
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In 1958,
Creighton was one of the judges at the First Miramichi Folksong
Festival, organized by Louise Manny. Sandy Ives, a fellow judge,
recalls his first meeting with Helen Creighton:
As
usual, guests were gathered on Louise's wonderful back porch
with its panoramic view of the Miramichi . . . . but there was
one person I didn't recognize, a woman sitting off to one side
who was putting in time before supper hemming a skirt. "And
this is Helen Creighton," Louise said, "She's collected a
thousand songs, and she'll be judging with you." Somehow I
already knew that that's who it was, although I'd never seen a
picture of her, and I remember remarking to myself how often
people you've looked up to as ancestor figures turn out to be
just people. . . . But if anyone qualified as an ancestor
figure for me in this folksong collecting game I had recently
entered, it was Helen Creighton, and there she was, hemming a
skirt. It seemed exactly right.
Edward D.
Ives, The World of Maritimes Folklore.
Evergreen Booklets No. 1. Halifax: The Helen Creighton
Foundation, 1993. Pages 1-3.
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Maine Folklife Center Photo #
5790.
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Edward D.
"Sandy" Ives shows Helen Creighton some of the holdings of the
Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History. Creighton
visited the Archives during the 1982 annual meeting of the
Northeast Folklore Society. She was the guest of honor at this
meeting, at which Ives presented her with a bundle of letters of
appreciation and thanks from her colleagues in folklore. |
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