'Harry Cox had a collection of broadsides - one of the last jobs Bob Thomson did before Harry died was to organise them for him into a scrapbook. Yet Harry was insistent that he never learned any of his songs from them'

I can confirm both these facts: my wife & I spent a whole afternoon at Harry Cox's house with Bob, with all the broadsides, MSs, notebooks &c, spread out on the table, helping Bob begin the work of sorting them. Asked if he used them to learn from, Harry replied that he used them sometimes to refresh his memory, but not to learn the song from originally — that was done, in his youth, from family, or from the older men at the Windmill [some of whose songs, as I have mentioned before, Harry 'inherited' by consent of the regulars when the original singers died - compare e.g. some of Moeran's earlier collections in Catfield & Sutton with his later, + with those of Kennedy, Mervyn Plunkett, BobT et al from Harry Cox].