Thanks, Stewie!

Richie, regarding Steve's work. You of all people must realise that there is a mountain of work out there. Steve started out like me with thousands of 5x3 record cards but quickly realised the possibilities of computer data banks. He transferred to computer early on but I preferred my old record cards which I still have. (Swings and roundabouts IMO) The main advantage obviously with Steve is others can use his Indexes. With that amount of data speed is essential and sometimes there isn't time to sort out a complicated family of songs so they get lumped under one number. Sorting out these lumps I'm afraid is down to people like us. Steve doesn't blindly accept our suggestions. Most of the many corrections I've sent him he has accepted. Just one or two he baulks at, e.g., The Flash Lad/Wild and Wicked Youth he is finding hard to separate and I've had to leave Flash lad without a number in my latest book. The 2 songs have plot and a couple of stanzas in common, but different origins. There is therefore no definition of a Roud number. He generally includes everything in English that has ever appeared in Folksong anthologies. I have separate indexes for Folk song collected in England and those collected in other English-speaking countries. This enables a relatively small manageable core study without excluding everything else. And of course I also have a broadside index and a few specialised indexes such as shanties/carols/forces songs/children's songs, foreign language ballads, Music Hall......