Another way of looking at it: Cecil Sharp is a legendary figure, and the stories attached to him have taken on the characteristics of myth. Ironically, he has become part of our folklore.

For example, as every skoolboy kno, Cecil Sharp first saw Headington Quarry Morris Men on Boxing Day Morning 1899, busking outside the vicarage. He immediately fell in love with the tradition and rushed out and single handedly saved the Morris tradition. ("Burn him in effigy!" I hear you cry...) Yet I've been told by people whose knowledge I trust that Sharp didn't start seriously collecting Morris dances for some considerable time after the mythical incident. (I say 'mythical', not 'fictitious'. The difference is important.)

Note also that those quarry workers busking for money on Boxing day were Sharp's first sight of what we now "know" to be a pagan May Day custom to promote the growth of the crops... Can't blame Sharp for that, but it's clearly a late Victorian overlay of whimsy.

All of us involved in the Morris, and in folk song, owe Cecil Sharp a real debt of gratitude for what he did. However, there's part of me which says he 'saved' the tradition by changing it forever.

Folk song / dance becomes something else when it is written down, deliberately preserved, archived and taught; when it is learned and performed by people from other sections of society.

To my mind, Sharp (and his like) preserved the material, but changed the context in which is was transmitted and performed - and I think the context is the defining characteristic of 'folk' or 'traditional' music and dance.

A century later, 'folk' has become a niche market - one music/dance/ethic among many. The 'folk' (the great unwashed, the every day people, the majority of the population, call 'em what you will) have no meaningful connection with what WE call 'folk' music.

And even within our 'folk' ghetto, we have come close to losing contact with 'tradition'. To me, a song about a jolly ploughboy, or factory girl, is an (entertaining) historical relic, with no direct relevance to my everyday life. On the other hand, I see a gradual crossover from other genres of music, so that in a Morris pub session, it is not unknown for a bit of Buddy Holly, or Lonnie Donnegan, to be sung. Also, several songs written during (or after) the 'revival' have become standards. So there is now a new context, new material, and a new tradition developing. Good.

None of which could have happened without Sharp. So, imperfect or not, his legacy is a great one.

And The Seeds of Love? A nice first verse; the rest is barely comprehensible nonsense - although the unkind might suggest that this is a defining characteristic of folk song. ;0)    I wonder whether it really was the first folk song Sharp heard? The surname, England, is too good a coincidence to be entirely above suspicion.

Nice story though.