This extract from Henry's Book seems relevent to this thread-
"In 1892-3 I lent my list of songs to Miss Lucy E.Broadwood (later Hon. Secretary and Editor to the Folk Song Society), and sang to her a large number of them, which she noted. Miss Broadwood left her old home, "Lyne", near Horsham, in 1893 and some eleven years later suggested to Dr. Ralph Vaughan Williams, a country neighbour, that he should come to see me. I sang to him such songs as he asked for, all of which he took down; some of them he recorded by his phonograph. This was the first time I had seen or heard one of these marvellous machines and I was amazed beyond expression to hear my own voice.
I am glad to know that in these ways have been preserved the words and tunes of nearly all those songs of mine that come within the objects of the Society, viz.: those that are "traditional survivals of songs expressive of the thoughts and emotions of untaught people passing between mind and mind from more or less remote periods to the present time"
A note at the foot of the page regarding the last paragraph says- " This definition of Folk Song (source unknown) meets with the approval of the Hon. Secretary of the Folk Song Society"