I asked a market trader where his fruit had come from. He reassured me that his oranges were not from there. "It's not nice to think of all those black hands all over them", he sympathised.

I've heard this same story from so many sources over the years that I've always assumed it to be an Urban Myth. I'm not doubting your word, Diane - after all, this is the first time I've heard it in the first person - but it's an oft told tale, a classic of Foaf-lore indeed, as it was back then too as I recall.

do you think that just anybody would be asked to edit the revised edition of the Penguin book of English Folksongs?

What follows is from the introduction to the 1959 edition. The fact that it remained as part of such an important part of the English Folk Song revival has always made me feel at a tad uneasy about the whole business.

A search for the roots of jazz leads to American folk song, and a search for the origins of American folk song leads the astonished enthusiast back home to his own traditional music. (RWV & ALL)

Astonished indeed! Is it in the revised edition I wonder? Let's hope not, no matter who's on the cover... Who is on the cover anyway? The cover of my 1969 paperback shows The Dancing Bear by W F Witherington which I chanced upon recently in a visit to the Walker Gallery in Liverpool, having no idea it was there. Certainly put a smile on my face, which was wiped when I realised in my haste to get to to Medieval Manuscripts I'd walked past Waterhouse's Echo and Narcissus without noticing it.