Here are the notes from the CD booklets:

• Priscilla Herdman (The Water Lily)
  The tradition of Morris Dancing had been performed exclusively by men for several hundred years. During the First World War, when the male mortality rate in some English towns and villages approached seventy percent, this tradition would have been lost were it not for the women who chose to carry it on. John Austin Marshall has written this poignant song as a tribute to the widows, sweethearts, sisters, and daughters of those men, who kept this tradition alive.
• Jean Redpath (self-titled):
  John Austin Marshall is responsible for this poignant text he set to a melody usually associated with the song The Week Before Easter. As I understand it, the song was his answer to the negative comments he heard aimed at the "little old ladies" who were performing traditional dances at Cecil Sharp House. Considering the toll taken by World War I (one village, Ascott-under-Wychwood, Oxon lost 80-90% of its male population), the role played by such women becomes something far removed from affectation.
• Bok-Trickett-Muir (Harbors of Home):
  In many places where ritual spring dances were done, women were a part of them; though when you think of the Morris, you usually think of men dancing. I'm told there came a time when England's men were fighting on so many fronts around the world that women had to step in to help remember and fill out the teams, to keep the tradition alive (Gordon Bok).

-Joe Offer-