An hour eh? Sounds like my kind of thing...

Thing is though, I remember when I first heard King Orfeo (sung by Fred Lane on a record of Talharp / Jouhikko music by Stybjorn Bergelt some 30 years ago) but I don't remember when I first heard the story of Orpheus & Eurydice. At the same time I was listening to a lot of Willian Lawes Dialogues (on a record by the Consort of Musicke) which touched on similar themes - Charon, Orpheus, Eurydice et al (one line ran Orpheus, oh Orpheus, gently touch thy lesbian lyre..., all a far cry from Scowan Urla Grun...)

Thing is, for the life of me I can't conceive of 'The Tradition' in sense of any sort of specialised purity cultural continuity as fantasised over by folkies. What goes around comes around, & by any means possible too - be it TV, Education, Book, Radio, Bards, Broadsides, Records or whatever. Cultural Process is Tradition enough. I know that first hearing King Orfeo touched me because of of my familiarity with the old myth, which I've known all my life though in all probability I learnt in school when I wasn't even listening. Even now my ADD is pretty ghastly; back then my brain would be a riot of day dreams & longings & gazing out the window watching the colliery engines, but things went in inspite of myself, paving the way for King Orfeo with his Lesbian Lyre & Gabber Reel...