As someone who came to singing of traditional songs by a roundabout route, aI figured any way to learn the song was fair game. Most of what I sing comes from several sources, and darnfew of those from 'source singers.' When I state that something I do is 'from the singing of...' it means that's whose version of the song inspired me to learn the song, and whose phrasing and dynamics are what I strive for. Most of the time, something comes into my repertiore with several ancestors. I'm firstly a visual artist, and find that while I sing along very well by aural tradition, I usually need to write the lyrics down if I intend to specificly learn a song. A week in a singing class Frank Harte convinced me that 'twas no shame to have a lyric book.

I come from an area that doesn't have a strong traditional singing aesthetic, and the idea of someone 'owning a song' or giving it to you is something I understand from traditional singers elsewhere. It just does not exist here.

When I sing "House Carpenter" the chords and most of the words come from (I think) the Joan Baez songbook. The sound in my head comes from Pentangle, as do some variations on the lyrics. The autoharp technique got inserted after listening to David Rice do an entirely different tune. After hearing Dan Kedding re-insert the demonic emphasis to the story I absorbed his bit 'she looked down, saw his cloven hooves and wept most bitterly'

Much of what I've swotted down comes from listening to the singing of Phil Cooper & Margaret Nelson frequently. I've heard them perform songs repeatedly, own all their recordings, and find them an endless source of songs I come to love, but I'll always go to written sources when I set out to learn it myself, modifying it to their version. Where it's a song Margaret has written, I am going to the source, eh?

Some of my earlierst exposure to the Brit trad that I love so dearly came at third or fourth hand. In particular I think of "Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy" which *I* learned from the singing of Dick Swain, who was always expansive about what his sources were, and so I heard of Peter Bellamy, who I got to hear do it eventualy. And Peter got it from the Copper Family, who I also got to hear and hoist a beer with. In my heart, though i know it's a Copper Family song, (got the albums, got the songbook...) to me it's a Dick Swain-with-a-concertina song.

With all the performances, recordings, online archieves, songbooks and library sources, we've such a wealth of ways to get to having a song in our personal repertoire. Instead of splitting hairs over 'from the singing of' and another designation, freely stating where songs come from helps give them a place to go to.

Joanne in Cleveland