More times than not good songs don't come out of nowhere. Someone takes a song that's there, and twists it aropund until it fits the way they feel, and the way they think - and at some point it's a new song.

That's what happened to this, with the McPeake version. One parent was the old song, the other parent was Francis McPeake. And it was a new song.

And the process still goes on. I've always loved the cynical/ realistic verse "If my own true love won't come, there will surely be another" - but then yesterday I heard a friend sing it in a session for the first time, and he had it "I will surely find no other", which completely changes it round.

But watch it Colin the Whistler - the one thing that means that at the end of the day you have to forgive England a lot of things is Morris Dancing. And the people who despise Morris Dancing most of all are the kind of English who it is hard to forgive anything. (BY that I don't mean folkes being rude about the Morris. We all know we have to say rude things about the dancers on principle, as a way of keeping them in check. But it's like being rude about banjos and bodhrans and squeeze boxes. Or step dancers.)