The Impact of Communications Technology
One of the things you hear fairly often these days is how unique and revolutionary the Internet is. You hear it from the porno-fear mongers who claim that it is an unprecedented danger to our kids. You hear if from the technocrats making predictions that the world will be transformed.
While I agree that electronic communications has the potential to transform our culture, I think it's important to realize that it's revolutionary and transformational nature is not itself a new or unique thing. For hundreds of years new communications and publishing technologies have been arising and changing our society and culture. The Web, desktop publishing, electronic books and so on are all part of a tradition that includes the printing press, the spirit duplicator, the mimeograph and typewriter, hot lead machines, and xerographic copiers.
The Lesson of Pretty Polly
As an example, in 1720, in England, a pretty young lady named Polly was murdered by her fiancee. It is said that he killed her because she was pregnant. Now, 275 years later, you can read about that murder on the Web. How that came to be is an interesting lesson in both folklore and the impact of technology on communications.
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"Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, come go 'long with me, Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, come go 'long with me, Before we git married, some to pleasure to see." She got up behind him and away they did go, She got up behind him and away they did go, Over the hills to the valley so low. They went up a little farther and what did they spy? They went up a little farther and what did they spy? A new-dug grave and a spade lying by. He stobbed her to the heart, her heart blood it did flow, He stobbed her to the heart, her heart blood it did flow, And into the grave pretty Polly did go. He threw somethin' over her and turned to go home, He threw somethin' over her and turned to go home, Leaving nothing behind him but the girl left to mourn. Gentlemen and ladies, I'll bid you farewell, Gentlemen and ladies, I'll bid you farewell, For killin' pretty Polly will send my soul to hell. |
Some time after Polly was murdered, the story was turned into the broadside ballad "Pretty Polly". The "broadside ballad" was a commercial artform of the seventeenth and eighteenth century that owes its existence to then-modern technology. A "broadside" or "broadsheet" is a large single sheet of paper, generally printed on one side, used to publish advertisements, public notices, political messages and the like. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century they were also used to publish both existing street songs and original songs, often of a lurid, scandalous, or political nature. The sort of things that later filled the pages of tabloids.
The song was carried from England to Appalachia, and handed down from mother to child for about a hundred years. All this time it was an a cappella tune. In the nineteenth century as the banjo was becoming popular among minstrels, "Pretty Polly" was adapted for the instrument. In the early twentieth century, it was transcribed from banjo to guitar and recorded on vinyl.
How did I learn all this? I heard it on National Public Radio, on "All Things Considered" where a folklorist told the history of the song and played antique recordings of both the banjo and guitar accompanied versions. Going to NPR's Web site and using their search facility found me the following abstract for the story I heard:
All Things Considered, Monday 03/24/97
[9.] [PRETTY POLLY] -- Folklorist Stephen Wade examines the history of the folk ballad "Pretty Polly." The story told in the song came from a real incident in England in the 1700's, and was originally printed up for people to read. But over time, storytellers and singers set the story to music, and as people emigrated to America, the song came with them. Appalachian singers started using the banjo and guitar for the music, but the story has remained essentially the same since the late 1700's. (5:45) ((STEREO))
Searching the Web itself came up with the words to the most recent version of "Pretty Polly" as sung by E.C. Ball, one of the versions played on NPR, and which I have reproduced in the sidebar:
http://artemis.austinc.edu/acad/english/bbarrie/eng15/prettypolly.html
Notice the variety of amateurs and professionals that have contributed to this story getting to you. Notice also the impact of the printing press, radio, the banjo and the Web. The proliferation of the press made the broadside possible. Suddenly a songwriter could print and sell 200 copies of a new song in a day. It was just one step in a long chain of publishing inventions that made publishing more and more accessible to the common man. Radio gave storytellers and folklorists access to thousand or millions of listeners at once. The phonograph allowed us to hear the musicians of the past.
All these inventions, not just the modern ones, allowed the story of Pretty Polly to be handed down across three centuries, and allowed us to chart the course of her story. Publishing, storytelling, information exchange are all parts of a long history, a history that for hundreds of years now has been one of revolution and popularization.