I wonder as I wander

I wonder as I wander. John Jacob Niles* (1892-1980).  Niles’s song provides an example of the working relationship between Niles and Carl Engel (1883-1944) of the New York publisher G. Schirmer. It was published in Songs of the Hill Folk - Twelve Ballads from Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina, Collected and Simply Arranged for the Piano [and solo voice] (1934). According to Niles’s notebook, he had collected a fragment from Annie Morgan (nda) while spending some time in Murphy, North Carolina. ‘I heard singing coming from the other side of the town square’, he wrote. On investigating, he found Annie. ‘She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang only a single line of song. The...