The Water is Wide; History is Narrow

The second essay in The Rose & the Briar was written by Ann Powers on “The Water is Wide.” It’s a bit of a ride, a feminist historical journey on the ballad roads to contemporary folk. Turns out the song has sexist roots that no one talks about. But, then again, who doesn’t? I’m an historian by schooling and appreciate anyone who looks further down the road then their age. But I also understand that you can’t blame the daughters for their fathers. Lord knows I don’t blame mine for me.

In a key passage Powers writes:

Like the love it (“The Water is Wide”) ponders, it can be judged a false construction. Unlike Ivory soap, this song floats because it’s impure. Folk music aficionados can be very concerned about issues of authenticity; the problem of “fakesong”—lyrics and tunes passed off as “of the folk,” despite their actually being composed by professional writers or cobbled together from various popular sources—has stimulated debate at least since Cecil Sharp and the Lomaxes started their ballad hunting in the early part of the twentieth century. Artists tend to favor what works with the crowd over purism. “A mountaineer singing a pop song to some neighbors in his cabin might have more folk music in it than a concert artist singing to the Carnegie Hall audience an ancient British ballad he learned out of a book,” Pete Seeger wrote in his autobiography, The Incompleat Folksinger. Yet what about a song made of ancient poetic shards, transformed into a pop hit for modern times by folk preservationists who choose to ignore its dubious past. (pg. 30)

Yeah, what about it? It’s the hope of our species that we need not be tied down by our roots. Say what you will about America, it’s time-line is one of liberation, a slow one granted, and excruciatingly slow for the enslaved. Still, what Powers doesn’t discuss is why this song moves so many people. There is a poetry to it, whether it’s a blue blood folk song or not. For me, the first stanza is almost metaphysical and brings the entire song out of the maritime and into the mystic: “The water is wide, I can't cross over.” But it’s more than metaphysical of course. It is exactly the paradox of history. And we do cross over.

Then there’s this coda. Is there an equivalent “fakepoetry?” Are there those that are so concerned with playing Carnegie Hall, they forget what the mountaineers know? I’d wager that most poetry doesn’t know how to work the crowd, doesn’t care. It’s either form or consequences; heart and soul is only crackle for the masses. That pretentious water is wide indeed, but maybe in time poets too can cross over.