In one area, I actually am reasonably well organized. I have most to the songs I have learned typed out and in three-ring binders. I also have most of them in computer files, so if necessary, I can make changes and reprint them.

Like McGrath, over a period of time and with a lot of singing, I sometimes note that I have unconsciously changed a word or two, and it sings better than the way I originally learned it Set up the way I have it, I can easily incorporate the changes.

But there are some songs that I may not have sung for years and that I have partially forgotten ("How the %@&^!# does that third verse start!?"), so I can haul out the notebook and refresh my memory rather than maybe losing the whole song because I can't remember a crucial verse.

Consider. One of the first major collections of ballads was made by Bishop Thomas Percy, who was visiting a friend. He noticed that the maid was lighting the fire with sheets from an old manuscript. Curious, he looked at it and discovered that it was a collection of old ballads that someone had written down. He rescued it, and this became the nucleus of his collection, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. And Samuel Pepys assembled a collection of broadside ballads. These and other collections provided material for Francis James Child's monumental and definitive work, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.

Had someone not written these down in the first place, we could very easily have lost an immense number of really good songs and ballads. How many have we lost because theyi weren't written down someplace or the writtenn copy was destroyed, and for some reason people just stopped singing them. And not because they weren't good songs.

I shudder at the thought!

Don Firth