Krišjānis Barons

Krišjānis Barons
Krišjānis Barons
Born	(1835-10-31)October 31, 1835 Jaunpils parish, Russian Empire (Now Latvia)
Died	March 8, 1923(1923-03-08) (aged 87) Rīga, Latvia
Occupation	Writer folklorist linguist
Nationality	Latvian
Literary movement	Young Latvians

Krišjānis Barons (October 31, 1835 in Strutele, Jaunpils parish, Latvia – March 8, 1923 in Riga) is known as the "father of the dainas" (Latvian: "Dainu tēvs") thanks largely to his systematization of the Latvian folk songs and his labour in preparing their texts for publication in Latvju dainas. His portrait appears on the 100-lat banknote, the only human face of an actual person on modern Latvian currency. Barons was very prominent among the Young Latvians, and also an important writer and editor.

Barons is well known as the creator of Latvju dainas (LD), published between 1894 and 1915 in six volumes, and including 217 996 folk songs. But Barons was not the author of the original idea, neither did he collect the texts, nor rewrite all of the received texts on the tiny paper slips of the famous Cabinet of Folksongs ("Dainu skapis"), though there is a significant number of the slips displaying Barons' own handwriting, as some may believe. Still his contribution is of no less importance. He elaborated the classification system of LD, arranging the texts and introducing the notion of song type or bush (choosing a text as the main one among a number of similar ones, and grouping the rest around it – this allows for easier perception of variation and saves space in the published edition, as only the differences are indicated in print). Barons had also edited some texts, in order to restore their possible older and better form. In recognition of the Barons' labors and the historical value of the Dainu skapis, the work was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2001.

Already at the time when Barons was working on the edition, the traditional singing had been lost to a great extent; Barons in his introduction to LD mentions that "the sources of nation's memory, as it seemed, filled up and having run dry long ago, started to flow amazingly." He also warns that "the old ladies, our purest source of folk songs, become more and more rare with each day". Barons also points at the Latvians themselves turning away from the singing of traditional songs when accepting Christianity for example.