Shankar Vedantam

He picks up a letter.

The date of this letter is September 7, 1976.

More than four decades ago, Riley wrote this letter to the Registrar of Copyrights.

Stasia was 11 years old.

In the letter, Riley asks for the forms he'll need to copyright an encyclopedia.

He adds a long postscript.

He says perhaps someone in the Library of Congress would be interested in the following.

Over the past 16 years, I alphabetically indexed more than 43,000 titles of songs, including published versions and variants in English, French, Spanish, etc., all of which have enjoyed a folk-type tradition within the borders of the United States and Canada.

All the titles, he continues, have been alphabetically cross-indexed and cross-referenced with the titles of books they appeared in along with the editors and publishers.

Each reference is clearly coded so that practically every folk song relative to the United States plus all its known versions and variants can be easily located.

You may be interested to learn that the 43,000 titles are clearly the outgrowth of only 4,000 songs, texts, and tunes.

He ends the letter this way.

Riley wanted to get his encyclopedia to a wider audience.

The chief archivist at the time wrote back and offered the names of potential publishers.

He also said he'd like to see some of Riley's work.

So Riley sent in the samples that the library now holds.

In a follow-up letter, Riley explained how his indexing system worked.

Each title is followed by the first line or lines of the song and or versions thereof, and this by the source.

Example, Goose Hangs High, the Civil War Ballad.

It deals with Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania and the Battle of Gettysburg.