Experts at the universities of Aberdeen and Sheffield have this week unveiled a unique but neglected collection of traditional British song and drama.
The James Madison Carpenter Collection is one of the largest and most important collections of folksong and folk drama ever made in Britain. Carpenter travelled 40,000 miles around the UK in an Austin 7 between 1929 and 1935. He searched for singers of sea shanties, traditional ballads and folk songs and performers of mummers plays and recorded their performances, as well as noting down their words.
This rich and varied record was never published and has been in the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress in Washington DC since 1972. However, until now the collection has never been properly catalogued and was neglected by scholars and performers alike.
A team of experts from the universities of Aberdeen and Sheffield have catalogued the collection and produced it as a free, publicly available, online resource. The website will allow experts to search for particular songs and plays, while new users can browse the collection and find out more about Carpenter and his work. The site will also be of interest to local historians and genealogists, as there will be links to more information about the people that Carpenter recorded and the locations where he carried out his work.
Dr Ian Russell, Director of The Elphinstone Institute, at the University of Aberdeen, said: "The riches of the Carpenter Collection are extraordinary especially for North-East Scottish song and balladry, and now, for the first time, it can be explored at the touch of a button. In making the collection freely accessible, we hope it will lead to study and performance of this wonderful material."
Dr Julia Bishop, of the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition at the University of Sheffield and leader of the cataloguing and encoding team, said: "Carpenter would have loved this resource. He was always trying to show people the value of his collection and now they can explore it at the touch of a button. We hope that making the collection so freely available will lead to study of the material and encourage performers to bring it to life again."