Kodaly, working at about the same time as Sharp, had a phrase "the hundred steps". People who wrote about Hungarian music before his time did it from the comfort of a castle or country house, getting their information from visiting professional musicians (who, unlike in the British Isles, would often have been Gypsies). Whereas the farmworkers on their estates had exactly the sort of vital and autonomous musical culture any collector would want - but it was outside the courtyard. All the would-be collector needed to do was take 100 steps out through the gate and listen - but just about nobody did.

This is not to say that the situation Sharp worked in was really very comparable to that, but he bet a tremendous amount of labour on the guess that it was.