RE: "I wonder as I wander"

[music <music...>]

Our Bob Rothstein wrote, re my adducing "I Wonder as I Wander" 
and implicitly attributing it to John Jacob Niles:

> The copyright was presumably for his arrangement of what is cited as a
> "traditional Appalachian carol."  

No doubt it is; but I think it is now generally accepted that, in an odd 
inversion of the appropriation of many traditional songs by collectors/
arrangers, Niles actually *wrote* many of the songs that he presented
as "traditional"!

Here's Oscar Brand in his THE BALLAD MONGERS:  RISE OF THE
MODERN FOLK SONG (1962):

John Jacob Niles is an accomplished composer from Boot Hill,
Kentucky....One day, many years ago, he heard a short poem 
recited by a little mountain girl.  He wrote some additional
verses, composed a haunting melody, and published the work
as "I Wonder as I Wander."  Many authorities include this work
in the folk song catalogue [here, Oscar means those authorities
who would not have considered it a folk song if they knew its
composer; I don't accept that basis of distinction and neither
does Oscar] because they are unaware of its origin.

-- Robert Cohen

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