Arrangement
Series I: Original Collection Materials
Series I contains Carpenter's principal fieldwork documentation as well as associated notes, drafts, and miscellanea. The fieldwork materials are interrelated; however, these relationships are not always readily apparent. Many of the ballads and songs are documented by written texts, recorded tunes, and transcribed tunes (often with texts). The photos often depict the subjects of the ballads and songs (castles, rivers), the informants (mummers, wassailers, fishwives), and their environment (cottages, ports, villages). Many ballads and folk plays are represented by several versions recorded by different informants. In addition, Carpenter's documentation of the informant, place, and date of recording is not consistent or complete.
The manuscript material in Series I consists of approximately 13,500 typed and handwritten pages, some bound and some unbound. These pages document Carpenter's fieldwork, subsequent work on the materials, and Carpenter's other professional activities.
The materials fall into several categories, each of which may have several iterations: texts of ballads, songs, and plays; transcriptions of tunes; lists and indexes; correspondence; lecture notes and drafts; plans and drafts of publications; curriculum and administrative material from Duke University; newspaper clippings; and miscellaneous notes. The music texts and transcriptions include sea songs and chanteys, Child ballads, bothy ballads, dreg songs, children's songs and games, and carols. The ritual drama texts include mumming plays, Christmas plays, sword dance plays, guyzards, pace-eggers, plough boys, and riding the stang.
The manuscript materials represent several stages of work, from rough field notes and transcriptions to more complete, alphabetically arranged versions of these writings. Some of the manuscripts, particularly the correspondence, notes, and lecture/publication drafts, shed light on the relationship of the photographs to the rest of the materials, Carpenter's fieldwork experiences, and his scholarly analysis of the collection. They also inform the reader about Carpenter's concerns and work after his years as a collector.
The collection also includes papers that represent the work of Carpenter’s students at Duke University. Some of the papers are complete; others have had pages removed (presumably by Carpenter) and interfiled with other manuscript materials in the collection. Student papers usually have a surname in the upper right corner of each page, so they are easy to distinguish from Carpenter’s own documents and handwriting. These papers include research on folk songs and tales, and often include original art for the cover pages.
The sound recordings in Series I include wax cylinders and 12-inch acetate discs used by Carpenter to record in England, Scotland, and the United States, 1928-1941. Carpenter copied many of the cylinders onto the discs; he also used the discs to make new recordings. According to Carpenter, he recorded approximately 3,000 tunes (many are repeated by the same or different singers), and was the first to make sound recordings of some of these ballads. The types of material recorded include ballads, lyric songs, sea chanteys, fiddle tunes, folk tales, folk plays, children's songs, and African American songs and tales. A content list of the sound recordings, prepared by Carpenter, can be found in Folders 9-10.
The graphic materials in this series include film negatives, photographic prints, glass negatives, glass positives (lantern slides), and drawings. For the most part, the photographic materials are not dated, but seem to span the years 1928-1935; they depict subjects from England, Scotland, and Wales. Carpenter or other annotators sometimes noted cryptic descriptions on the backs of photographs, on the front of the lantern slides, or on accompanying paper or enclosures (see Folders 185-89, “Notes Relating to Photographs”). While Carpenter was the primary photographer, he also obtained many photographs from commercial photographers and other sources. At some point Carpenter made glass negatives of the photographic prints, and then glass positives. Therefore, identical images often appear in different formats.
Although his use of the photographs and their relationship to the other materials is not explicitly stated, Carpenter probably used the lantern slides to illustrate lectures, and planned to use the photographs to accompany publications about the materials. The images cover a range of people, places, and activities, from Carpenter himself, to Christmas wassailers, dancing children, Scottish castles, Roman baths, market squares, mumming plays, May Day celebrations, and the English Folk Dance Society (EDFS) festivals. They represent the content of the ballads and songs, the informants themselves, and subjects whose relationship to the collection is not yet known. Of particular note is the documentation of castles in Scotland and England that creates a visual record of these structures before their decline or in some cases renovation.
The 40 ink-and-pencil drawings are the work of George Baker, a British dry mason and the son of a mummer. Undated, the drawings depict characters and scenes from mumming and Christmas plays. Often a caption identifies the characters, and multiple drawings of the same ones (“the doctor,” “belsebub”) exist. Carpenter planned to use these drawings as illustrations for publications on the folk plays.
Series II: Oral History, Programs, and Products
Series II consists of materials generated by the Library of Congress concerning the collection. It contains manuscript material, sound recordings, and photographs documenting a 1972 interview with Carpenter as well as a 1987 lecture that drew on collection materials.