A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs

A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs by Hubert G. Shearin invites listeners into an early 20th-century archive of Appalachian voice, offering a meticulous catalogue of the region’s oral repertoire. Shearin gathered 333 songs (plus 114 variants) across twenty-one Central and Eastern Kentucky counties, preserving ballads, love songs, dance tunes, play songs, lullabies, counting-out rhymes, jigs, nonsense verses, and more. Presented as a syllabus or finding list for folk literature, the work keeps much of the archaic and variable spelling that marks oral transmission while noting a few corrected typographical errors. Capturing material collected casually over five years of travel, acquaintanceship, and correspondence, the collection illustrates how popular songs live, adapt, and absorb literary forms into the stream of vernacular tradition. Readers will hear the poetic cadences and musical structures that shaped local identity during the early 1900s and discover source material valuable to comparative study and cultural preservation. Ideal for lovers of Music, Poetry, and Literature—especially folklorists, ethnomusicologists, musicians, poets, teachers, and cultural historians—this audiobook is a primary-source treasure for anyone seeking authentic Appalachian song texts, historical context, and a direct connection to oral tradition.