Folklore & essays
The stories that travelled with the tunes
Music doesn’t cross an ocean on its own. It goes in the heads of people who are leaving something behind, and it picks up new stories on the way. These essays follow the music from Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales, and Brittany to the Maritimes and the Southern mountains — and back again.
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Essay · in progress
Why a Knoxville fiddler plays a Scottish reel without knowing it
“Soldier’s Joy” at a Blount County porch jam is the same tune Joshua Campbell printed in Edinburgh in 1778. How it got here, what changed on the way, and why the bowing gives the journey away.
Start with the tune -
Essay · in progress
The Scruffy City: how an insult became a name
The 1980 World’s Fair, a newspaper’s dismissal, and a town that decided to keep the word. A short history of Knoxville’s nickname and why this project wears it.
Read the short version -
Reference · in progress
Child ballads in the Smokies
Francis James Child numbered 305 English and Scottish ballads in the 1880s; Cecil Sharp found dozens of them still sung in the Southern Appalachians in 1916. A working index of which ones, and who sang them.
Coming with the archive -
Glossary · in progress
Words you’ll hear at a session
Set. Strathspey. Snap. Cut. Roll. Crooked. Lift. Cèilidh itself — which means a visit, a gathering, before it means a dance. A plain-language glossary with hover definitions across the site.
Coming with the archive
How the essays are written
Sourced, plainly. Where we quote a collector, a singer, or a printed collection we say who, where, and when, and the references sit at the end of the piece where you can check them. Where the record is silent — as it usually is on why a tune has the name it has — we say so rather than invent a story. The tradition has enough real ones.