New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, N.B., 1989.108.322

Louise Manny and Helen Creighton collecting folksongs with Chief John Augustine and Mary Sanipas, at Red Bank, New Brunswick, c. 1953

photographer: Richard H. Smith

silver print, 16 x 21.7 cm

Dr. Louise Manny Bequest, 1970

The criteria for song authenticity were at first determined by Lord Beaverbrook himself, who insisted that only New Brunswick folksongs were eligible for the project. As a collector in the field, Manny soon met up with confounding ambiguities, such as local favorites imported from the United States and Europe, or regional lyrics set to Old World melodies. "I am beginning to think we should take all songs which are popularly sung here among our ballad singers," she reasoned, "instead of trying only for songs which originated in N.B.  It is too hard to guess…. For instance, we turned down WHAT THE OLD COCK ROBIN SAID, and it is a Saint John song, and one of the rarest." But Beaverbrook stood by his original criteria: "I think you should confine your collection to the story of the Miramichi." he replied, "The Pride of Glencoe and other songs of that type will have been recorded in Scotland and elsewhere." Manny, a self-described "magpie collector" had found that "it doesn't pay to discard anything in this sort of work." She continued to collect whatever was available, but publicized the songs selectively, mindful of the "risk [of] having someone say to Lord B 'that's not an NB song,' whereupon Lord B might feel we've made too many mistakes, and drop the whole thing."   

Manny eventually synthesized her own definition of what constituted an authentic folksong. For her, folksongs were those which "people sing from memory for their own and their friends' amusement, and are composed by the people themselves and passed on by word of mouth." They "may have been composed a century ago or yesterday," and they "show the basic cultural background of our country, something which is truly our own and which has sprung from the people. In recording them in all their simplicity we have preserved something of New Brunswick life and culture which has a value and beauty all its own." "Sincerity is perhaps the outstanding quality of our songs."

New Brunswick Museum, 1989.108.930

Louise Manny (left) and Helen Creighton collecting folksongs with Chief Augustine and unidentified fiddler, 1953

photographer: Richard H. Smith

Dr. Louise Manny Bequest, 1970