ABSTRACT
In Newfoundland, although a vibrant exchange exists between traditional song and popular culture, not enough is known about the specifics of these exchanges. Scrutiny of the key twentieth-century Newfoundland folk song collections of Greenleaf and Mansfield, Karpeles, Leach, and Peacock reveals that popular nineteenth-century music, in the form of broadsheets, songsters, and sheet music, substantially influenced the local song tradition. Initially a British colony, and since 1949 a province of Canada, Newfoundland has historically been a gateway for mercantile activity focused on the import and export of goods to and from Britain, Ireland, and the United States including the importation of popular printed music. The 'growth of a market for domestic music' both encouraged and was encouraged by the printing of music at reasonable cost. In the second half of the nineteenth century the market for newly composed popular music at cheap prices had opened up across the Atlantic.
