The whole thing took rather longer than I'd expected when I first got involved -more than a year ago- but the nature of the project changed during that time. It was originally intended as a straight reprint, but it quickly became clear that there was an opportunity to tie up loose ends and to add background material in order to make it a genuinely new edition. Although Bert Lloyd promised in his Introduction that editorial intervention in the texts would be indicated and sourced, in the event that didn't always happen, and I spent quite a lot of time pinning down those details. Some questions remain unanswered, inevitably: where did the blacksmith's "good black billycock" come from? How did Robert Jackson wind up on board the Ship in Distress? Obviously, thinking has changed on a number of things since 1959, and I've tried to take that into account where possible. There are a lot of references to broadside examples, for instance, which simply were not available to the original editors but which can now be found, with patience, from a comfy chair at home.

It wasn't until the early Summer that I was able to spend time at the Vaughan Williams Library, but that time was invaluable, as was Malcolm Taylor's advice and encouragement. Whatever people eventually think of the book (I have, after all, really only increased the size of the boring stuff at the back that nobody reads) it is a great deal better than it would have been without his help. David Atkinson's new Bibliography is a vast improvement on the original one, but that's the only instance where we've dropped any part of the original; for the rest, we've just added to what was already there. There are biographical details of the majority of the singers, too, which reflects contemporary interest in placing traditional song in a wider and more meaningful context. Some of those are a bit sketchy, of course, and there is room for a lot more work on that.

Still Growing and Classic English Folk Songs (and the Mummers Play book of last year) represent a significant move back into publishing for EFDSS, and this time around they've gone for professional production values; it makes the books a little more expensive, but they are also attractive, well-designed and properly made. The pages won't go yellow and fall out. We'd hoped to have it out in good time for Christmas, but Julian, our music-setter, had a heart attack at a crucial moment and we missed that deadline. Fortunately, he is well on the way to a full recovery. He spotted some errors in the original "Penguin" notation, incidentally, that I hadn't been aware of; and those have been corrected.

It's a relatively small print run in the first instance (1,000). If we can shift that lot, it will encourage the Society, which has very little money, to take the risk on further projects. Malcolm Taylor would like to produce a second selection from Sharp's collections, this time concentrating on the Appalachian material; and I haven't given up on the proposal to reissue Frank Purslow's selections from the Hammond-Gardiner MSS (which is how I got involved in all this in the first place), though that would have to be a two-parter. We'll have to see. There's a genuine will at EFDSS to make more material available, but financial practicalities inevitably loom large.

I haven't actually seen hard copy of the book yet (I gather that the consignment has just in the last day or two arrived at Cecil Sharp House) and will probably spend Christmas spotting mistakes that we missed during proof-reading, and wishing I'd said certain things differently. Oh well. I've put up an image of the front cover (the next-to-last version; the final print will be cleaner) at the South Riding Network site for anyone who is interested. See if you can spot who all the people are.

http://www.folk-network.com/products/penguin.html