Here's another gem for everyone who arranges traditional songs (casts critical eye over her own work and grimaces) :

"The setting of folk-songs is so difficult that it may be almost legally assigned to the old hand. The master of the art does not flaunt his technique in your face or bejewel his Madonnas. He knows that here "beauty when undaorned is adorned the most" ."
I wonder what he thought of Lucy Broadwood's arrangements, Surreysinger?

I also like this bit about learning songs, which to my mind says something important about the strength of the songs passed down by oral tradition.

"Song deals with the great human emotions expressed inwords and the singer stands face to face with the audience. Hard work is no easy. Memorising is a work of extreme laboriousness but when that work is done it is in the singer's possession for ever. nay more, it has a power...of separating the sheep from he goats. To memorise a poor song is martyrdom... In the furnace of its refining fire the dross is burnt away and only the pure gold remains."

Saro