Apologies to anyone who tried to download the Heritage Songbook PDF and couldn’t find it! It seems to have disappeared during a site update. You can now find it by looking on the “More…” menu; it’s the first item.

The Irish Music and Dance Association today announced that the Landmark Center weekend (described in the previous blog post). has been cancelled due to COVID-19. Let’s all hope they come back stronger next year!

Fans of the Minnesota Heritage Songbook: I’ll be playing at the Irish Music and Dance Association festival at Landmark Center on March 15 at 12:00 noon, and several Heritage Songbook items will be on the program. Unfortunately, I am recovering from influenza and have no idea whether I’ll have a voice, so I forgive you in advance if you can’t come. :-) But if you want to see the program, or if you’re at the IMDA Festival and want to stop in, you can see the list of songs and texts here.

Those wanting to know more about the Festival itself can visit http://www.IMDA-MN.org.

Careful readers of this site will know that Franz Rickaby’s Ballads and Songs of the Shanty Boy was one of the most significat sources for the Heritage Songbook. This important book is now back in print in an expanded edition with a better layout, a few new songs, and an introduction about Franz Rickaby. It is now available as Franz Rickaby with Gretchen Dykstra and James P. Leary, Pinery Boys, University of Wisconsin Press, 2017, ISBN 978-0-299-31264-0. 356 pages.

In September 2016, Solomon Foster sent me new information about the ships mentioned in “Red Iron Ore.” You can see his updated information at *Red Iron Ore (new material).

And while I’m at it, I have a new book out, On Myth and Magic: Harry Potter’s Folklore World. You can find out about that on the Other Books by Robert B. Waltz page.

Yes, folks, this blog is very quiet. No one is collecting any new folk songs in Minnesota! But, just in time for the New Year 2016, we have a very minor update to the song “Polly Put the Kettle On,” regarding J. R. R. Tolkien’s use of this tune.

We’ve made a few site updates this month. The most noteworthy is that the music player on the side of most pages has been reorganized and improved. (No credit to us, except for using the better software.) Also, I have added a new afterword to the book Alice’s Evidence; you can see the PDF here or the RTF and EPub versions here.

Portrait of Chaucer from a manuscript by Thomas Hoccleve, who may have met Chaucer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Another new book now available under “Other Books by Robert B. Waltz” on the “More” menu. This will probably be the last for a while. The new free download, Trouthe Is the Highest Thing, examines the virtue of trouthe as revealed in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer — and argued that it was a real emotion, experienced by people Chaucer knew (perhaps autistics), or even by Chaucer himself. It also argues for its revival. Note: Revised Version released as of January 27, 2014.

Alice Liddell (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Another new book now available under “Other Books by Robert B. Waltz” on the “More” menu. The new free download, Alice’s Evidence, replaces the earlier Looking Autism in the Face. The new book is a more orderly examination of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and his friendship with Alice Liddell, as well as the autism of J. R. R. Tolkien, Stephen Foster, Isaac Newton, James A. Garfield, and Marie Curie. It is intended as a discussion of the curious phenomenon of autistic friendships. Nothing to do with music, but a lot to do with me….