It was Jamie Telfer O The Fair Dodheid, only last Autumn, and came about through a convergence of life-threads - friendship with fellow piper Bill Telfer of Langholm who may be Jamie's descendant, going to the ballad competition at Newcastleton last July, knowing the places referred to in the sang, investigating the conflicting theories about the ballad's origins by earlier scholars (more ink has been shed in arguing about it than blood was shed in the events it describes) and reaching my own conclusions, and the challenge not only of learning it but singing it - I play instruments in public but have scant experience of singing.

I now have the joy of not only one, but two (or barely three?) obsessions with deeply unpopular forms of music. Rock on!