Fifty songs is a hell of a lot to start off with. If your friend tries learning that many all at once, she'll end up learning the words and the tunes, without internalising the meanings.

Best to start off with just one that she enjoys singing. When she's got that reasonably well sewn up, she can then start on a second and a third and so on, until she feels she's got a reasonable number to practice on.

When she's got to the stage where she feels she would be comfortable singing the song(s) in public, IE., when they start to fit like an old jacket, then go sing them in public.

If she's able to, it's always helpful to gauge audience reactions, and to invite criticism. I have long suspected that what kept traditional singing in healthy fettle (when the tradition itself was in healthy fettle) was that people were less afraid in those days to say what they thought of someone's performance, especially if said performer was a novitiate.

Unfortunately, we have become too polite nowadays to do anything more than clap politely at some dire performance, except maybe to hope fervently that the person in question doesn't sing the same song next week. And that is the reason why we have so many dire singers in folk clubs.

Wouldn't it be far better if people felt able to give a friendly word of advice as to where they felt the singer was going wrong? But God, the can of worms that can open up.

If your friend is already a good singer in some other branch of music, then she will find that an enormous asset. There is an awful lot of tosh talked about traditional singing being a different art form to, say, opera singing. To a large extent that is true, as anyone who listens to the way that Harry Cox handled rhythm, for instance, or the way Joe Heaney handled ornamentation. But the basic disciplines of relaxation, breath control, posture etc are universal.

Which brings me to the final good advice.

Listen to the old boys, and old girls, IE., the people from whom the songs were collected in the first place. No, they didn't sound as smooth as Barry Manilow, but most of them could get under the skin of the song and lay bare its meaning to anyone listening. If you're able to do that, you'll have cracked the problem, not merely of what to sing, but of how to sing it.