Hi Malcolm, Thanks for your extraorinarily ignorant comments about "The Elfin Knight". Perhaps you should purchase the recording--with the liner notes--and make up your own mind.

Malcolm's quote:
"Are there no sleeve notes that might provide some indication as to where the text and tune were got? 'Anonymous' doesn't really cut it any more; we have a right to expect more than that from professional singers nowadays. Although they rarely seem to understand much about the background of the songs they sing, they presumably do at least know where they got them from."

You must be a very "confident" person to write something like this online without doing an ounce of homework. On pages 23 through 32 of the very extensive booklet you will find the text in three languages, and the following information about Lord Darly (Darnly):
Imprinted at London by Thomas Gossen dwelling in Paternoster Rowe, next to the signe of the Castell, [1579?]; Text transcribed from the facsimile in Carol Rose Livingston's book, British Broadside Ballads. Melody suggested by Ross Duffin in "Shakespeare in Song". This is the earliest extant broadside ballad related to a Child ballad (no. 180--King James and Browne).

All of this information is included in the booklet--something which is, I believe, rare. And I did not mention the historical notes!

For a detailed discussion of "Blacke and Yellowe" please see my explanation in the liner notes.

As for the rest: I wrote me own harmony parts for "Lord Darly" and I do not apologize for other inventions of my own on the recording. I do not even claim that everything is from Renaissance England or Scotland--what shall I say? You have not "gotten it" and if you do not wish to that is certainly your business. Do you understand that there are three versions of Child Ballad #2 (The Elfin Knight) on the recording? If you did you would see that one was collected by Cecil Sharp in the Appalachian mountains (no secret!). But please, since you are apparently interested in making grossly inacurate comments about a recording that you know nothing about I would ask you to really do a bit of homework or do something else.

How dare you, Malcolm!!
"Given Frederiksen's grossly anachronistic use of the wrong tune for 'Willy o' Winsbury', there is every chance that the tune he used for this one didn't really belong to it either. More information would be welcome."

I hope this is a bit of information for you, Malcolm.