I looked up the Newfoundland song, Sarah, mentioned above and the notes suggest that it goes back at least three generations of singers so ... you're right there, Barbara.

Your comment about the *minor* brings to mind a point often raised in the Cymdeithas ... today we hear a minor key in what was once the Dorian mode - which is the scale for Bachgen Bach o Dincar. People often complain that a lot of Welsh music is in the *minor* key when it isn't. I even read, recently, an article written around 1910 about a key which wasn't quite Dorian, and popular in Wales - but it's dissappeared because it couldn't be noted down accurately by the collectors of the time using the standard Western European style of notation.

Is this thread creep?

sian