![]() There are three essential features of Darwinian evolution, viz. ![]() ![]() The word has several meanings, but the most commonly understood one is that of a gradual development, especially from simple things to complex things or to a wider range of things, the latter being the more relevant to the development of songs. Of course, all these words have general meanings which predated The Origin of Species 4, including the word 'evolution' itself, which interestingly Darwin did not use until the final page of his work. Let us first look at previous thoughts about evolutionism and folk song.ĭarwinian evolutionary theory was applied to English folksong by Sharp early on 2, and other scholars have used Darwinian terminology such as variation, selection, development, transmission 3. Whilst respecting the scholars' opinion, I did not agree with it, and having looked at it again, I thought it might be timely to publish it elsewhere, and I hope readers will agree. However, much of the material I wrote at that time was considered too 'speculative' for Folk Music Journal. As an ex-geneticist, I naturally draw parallels between the development of organisms and songs, and the study of John Barleycorn certainly was a great stimulus in this regard. That song has stood the test of time over 250 years by proliferation of both text and tunes to make it one of the most popular folk songs in the English speaking world, the vast majority of which were found in England. This established that the song we have sung in the current revival belongs to a family of songs on the same theme, and whereas the concept of Barley as a person dated back to the 16th century, it took a single event of great inspiration to create the character 'Sir John Barleycorn' in the early 17th century, and later another act of creation which resulted in the modern song, sometime about the mid 18th century. In a paper on the song John Barleycorn in 2004 I traced the origin of the song from precursors 1. John Barleycorn revisited Article MT232 John Barleycorn revisited Evolution and Folk Song
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