Essential? Those which are so to me are those which I love to sing the most, & which people have said they liked my renderings of — especially my late wife, no musician or singer herself, but my severest critic who would not hesitate to say so if she thought me out of voice or useless at a particular song or on a particular occasion. Which meant that if ever she said she liked my performance of a particular song I knew it meant something. So here, for my list, a few of those to which she reacted most positively over the years. It seems to me a reasonable criterion:

Queen Eleanor's Confession; Spanish Lady; Willie More; The Tailor in the Teachest; The Devil & the Feathery Wife; The Days of '49; Butter & Cheese & All; Boston Harbour; Fanny Blair; The Band Played Waltzing Matilda; In Praise of John Magee; On Board the Victory; Roll the Old Chariot Along; Going Down Town; Bowling Green; April Morning; Star of the County Down; The Bonnie Wee Lassie's Answer Was Don't Come Again; The Besom Maker; The Little Skillet Pot; Red Apple Juice; Lord Thomas & Fair Elinor; Squirrel Is A Pretty Thing; The Red & Green Signal Lights; Valentine O'Hara; Here's Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy; Ratcliffe Street [London version of Jack-All-Alone — I'm a Londoner]; Katy Cruel; Cotton Mill Girls; Santa Fe Trail; I'm Bound To Follow the Longhorn Cows; Cold & Raw; The Magdalene Green; Follow the Drinking Gourd; The Black Cat Piddled in the White Cat's Eye; On Monday I Never Go To Work; The Treadmill Song; The Prickle-Holly Bush; The Wild-Goose Shanty; Peggy Bann ...

That'll do for now.