Steve's book has just fallen on my face as I lost my grip on this weighty tome (me - lazily semi recumbent and reading in the Sussex winter sunshine). I'm about one third of the way through and so far finding it fascinating. Much musical stuff goes way above my head of course but there's tons to stimulate the grey matter. Steve reminds us, and we've known for years that 'The Shepherd Adonis' clearly written by someone with more than a smattering of education, transmogrified into one of our favourites 'Shepherd of The Downs' and mysteriously gained a final verse - that's what makes the whole damned thing so intriguing. Unless there were a plethora of 'Peasant Poets' like John Clare knocking about the place I'm inclined to believe that your average farm labourer or industrial worker was not responsible for a lot of original composition, not because he or she didn't have the imagination or intelligence, but because illiteracy was pretty common. There again Steve tells us that we shouldn't underestimate just how literate people were back then...oh dear a lot of my pre-conceived notions are flapping quietly out of the window.