TROUBADOURS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 215, 10 September 1940, Page 10

TROUBADOURS.

BACK IN NEW ZEALAND. SUCCESS IN AMERICA. "We are the world's worst sightseers, for we haven't seen either the Grand Canyon or Vosemite, but we do learn to know people!" said the Misses Joan and Betty Rayner, well known New Zealand troubadours, who have arrived in this country for a brief stay before going on to America. Joan and Betty Rayner, whose fresh and original entertainments have won them fame in many different countries of the world, have spent the last three years in North America, playing to audiences all over the country, and collecting material for their programme as they went. "We loved playing to the mountain people in Kentucky," they said. "We had no idea they had such an abundant store of legends and stories, but actually ballad singing is their only form of entertainment, as they are "so isolated. They are very shy, but after carefully scrutinising us, apparently decided we were up to no harm! Their folk lore is chiefly of European and English origin." The Rayner sisters were amused at the way in which. Kentucky children supplied the modern touch to the old song. "A Frog He Would A-wooing Go," which dates from the loth century, by singing "The frog got into his machine, and put his foot on the gasolene." The troubadours played in " cities throughout the Iliddie West of America, but they did not collect any material from there, since that part of the country is too civilised. Most of their material comes from the remote parts of America, from Pennsylvania, where they played to a colony of Dutch people, and from Nova Scotia and Cape Cod. One of their most interesting trips was to Captain KiddV Treasure Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, which was riddled, they said, with passages where search lias been made for the buried treasure. The sisters also played in New York every season. In America, Joan and Betty Rayner presented legends of Sweden and Czechoslovakia. "As a rule, we let the audience choose their own programme," they said. They added that they were delighted to be back in New Zealand, and seeing many of their old friends, and -were sorry they could not make a longer stay.