Helen Hartness Flanders

The title of this book is a lie. And that's a good thing.

Properly, a songster is a book of texts of songs (usually songs with some local popularity), without tunes although tunes may be indicated (that is, it may say "To the tune of Yankee Doodle" or the like). The idea is to have a small, inexpensive reference to a whole bunch of song texts, to help people sing them alone or together.

So this isn't a songster, because it has a large collection of tunes.

But it is a very good and useful collection of Vermont folk songs. Many of them were found in the surviving copy of the Green Mountain Songster; these have been filled out and tunes supplied -- generally from other traditional collections in Vermont. In addition, very extensive notes have been supplied with background information. None of this would show up in an ordinary songster. But all of which make it useful for the folk song scholar. It is a valuable volume, even if the name could lead you astray.… (meer)