I regularly give talks about Gloucestershire and Cotswold folk music, which has led me to concentrate on what I mean by that. The vast majority of the songs that have been collected in this area are general English folk songs that could have turned up anywhere, such as John Barleycorn, Barbara Allen etc. However, when you look at the total body of the song, you find that a) regional dialect sometimes creeps in, b) local placenames creep in (e.g. Stow Fair for Widdecombe Fair) and c) the subject matter reflects local interests to some extent (e.g. lots of farming songs but few sea songs). However, beyond that, there are a few true local songs - the Gloucestershire Wassail is a good example, where a song is firmly linked to a calendar custom. There are a few, but very few songs that reflect local events here, and although you can find them in broadsides, they generally they did not have a wide circulation. As for style - well yes you can talk about local styles. The songs collected here from the farming community are usually 4-square tunes sung in a 4-square way. The gypsy songs however, show more diversity of modes and the singing style is more developed.

So while it is difficult to generalise about regional song, in this area at least, when you look at the whole body of song from here, you can get an overall feeling of Cotswoldness (Oh, I've coined a new word!).

My other interest is my home county of Hampshire, where similar arguments apply.

Love you all

Tradsinger