MacEdward Leach and the songs of Atlantic Canada

This essay describes a website that brought the earliest audio recordings made in Atlantic Canada to the attention of scholars, singers, and cultural historians: MacEdward Leach and the Songs of Atlantic Canada (http://www.mun.ca/folklore/leach). Among the many collections of traditional song that have been made in Newfoundland and Labrador, there was until 2004 a noticeable gap in their accessibility. Collections by Karpeles (1970), Greenleaf and Mansfield (1965 [1933]), Peacock (1965), and Lehr (1985)--as well as Leach's Labrador collection (1966)--were published in print editions, and selections from Peacock (1956) were released on LP, but the earliest audio recordings made on the islands of Cape Breton and Newfoundland by American folklorist MacEdward Leach were largely unknown.1 His collections are important not only for their size but also for their geographic and generic range.Not