Appendix A: On the Reliability of Grid TranscriptionAppendix B: Beyond QuatrainsB.1. Higher LevelsB.2. Micro-Cadential PatternsOnline Appendices to Hayes and MacEachern, “Folk Verse Form in English”to appear in LanguageThe material here would not fit into our article “Folk Verse Form in English,” but seems relevant and also perhaps lays to rest issues that might call the main analysis into question. We therefore have chosen to make it electronically accessible.Appendix A: On the Reliability of Grid TranscriptionFolk songs existed largely in an oral tradition, and were sung almost exclusively by individuals who knew no musical notation. The field workers who set the folksongs down on paper listened to the songs and relied on their rhythmic intuitions and formal musical training to establish an appropriate graphic depiction of the songs’ rhythm. In our own work, we examined the musical notation of the field workers, and converted it into the grids on which our analysis is based. The question addressed here is: should the resulting grids be counted as legitimate data, or are they merely a large pile of capricious, subjective interpretations imposed by ourselves and by the fieldworkers?First, with regard to the conversion of musical notation to grids, the opportunities for any subjective judgments on our part to influence the theoretical outcome are low. The only parts of the conversion task that are potentially subjective are the establishment of grid structure above thelevels indicated by musical bar lines (usually, nothing depends on what this structure is), and the division of the temporally continuous grid into lines. In our experience, any subtle judgment calls that arise in the latter task do not affect the classification of the lines by rhythmic cadence, and thus would not affect our results.Second, we must consider the harder task faced by the musical field worker; that of establishing the rhythmic structure from purely auditory impressions. In general, we think that transcription as carried out by skilled musicians is sufficiently reliable for our purposes. The crucial fact is that the transcription process shows high intersubjective reliability: when the same song is reduced to notation by independent observers, they usually obtain the same results, differing only in nonessential detail.To elaborate on this point, we wish to describe a quite rare occurrence, one in which differentmusicians really did come to a different conclusion from the same auditory input.In 1917, Cecil Sharp, conducting field work in Kentucky with Maud Karpeles, took down themusic of “Nottamun Town” from Una Ritchie and her cousin Sabrina Ritchie. In his field notes (published in Karpeles 1932, #191A), Sharp used a modified version of 9/8 time, later adjusted to straight 9/8 in a version he published for public use (Sharp 1923).Hayes and MacEachern Folk Verse Form in English: Appendices p. 2In 1965, Jean Ritchie, Una’s younger sister, published a book of Ritchie family songs. She employed two amanuenses, Melinda Zacuto and Jerry Silverman, to prepare the musical notation. In notating the largely identical version of “Nottamun Town” that Jean Ritchie sang, Zacuto and Silverman used 6/8 time rather than 9/8. This difference implies radically different grid and structural analyses. We translate a couple of lines of the song into grids implied by Sharp’s transcription and by Zacuto and Silverman’s, abstracting away from some minor details to facilitate comparison:(1)a. Sharp: 9/8xx x xx x x x x x x x x| | | | |In Not- ta- mun Town,xx x xx x x x x x x x x| | | | | |Not a soul would look up,xx x xx x x x x x x x x| | | | | |Not a soul would look up,xx x xx x x x x x x x x| | | | | |Not a soul would look downb. Zacuto and Silverman: 6/8x xx x x xx x x x x x x x x x x x| | | | | | | | |In fair Not- ta- mun Town, Not a soulx xx x x xx x x x x x x x x x x x| | | | | | | | |would look up, Not a soul would look up,Hayes and MacEachern Folk Verse Form in English: Appendices p. 3x xx x x xx x x x x x x x x x x x| | | | | |Not a soul would look down,Our opinion is that these two interpretations are not equally legitimate structural renderings of the same input material; rather, Zacuto and Silverman committed a gross (though isolated) transcription error. Looking at the grids, one can see that the Zacuto/Silverman transcription places many strong beats where no syllable occurs, and repeatedly slides in and out of parallel with the lines of the song. In contrast, Sharp’s transcription closely aligns musical strong beats with strongly stressed syllables, and employs a grid with the correct periodicity. Zacuto and Silverman’s error is established vividly if one attempts to sing or chant the words while tapping ona table to what Zacuto and Silverman claim to be the strongest beats.This, then, is what a genuinely serious transcription error looks like. We present it as the exception that proves the rule: in our experience errors of this magnitude are quite rare.The process of transcription, at least as we do it, consists of listening for a sequence of strongbeats at evenly spaced intervals, letting this serve as the basis for locating bar lines (or, for grids, the highest grid levels), then recursively subdividing longer intervals into shorter ones until an appropriate structural location has been found for every syllable or note. Assuming that Zacuto and Silverman did pretty much the same thing, we may conjecture that they erred at the first step of this process, which is what establishes the 6/8 vs. 9/8 distinction. There are two plausible sources for their error. First, 9/8 rhythm is unusual in music, especially in folk songs (we have never seen a 9/8 folksong other than “Nottamun Town”). Second, the song itself contains a metrical irregularity near the end, which under any analysis forces a deformation of the grid. Sharp correctly treated this as a local irregularity, whereas Zacuto and Silverman made it the basis for the entire analysis.Appendix B: Beyond QuatrainsNone of the principles on which our analysis depends are intrinsic to quatrains. In principle, then, the same formal patterns we have seen in quatrains should also occur at higher and lower levels. In this section we explore cases of this sort.B.1. Higher LevelsNot all stanzas are quatrains. Apart from the obvious case of two-quatrain