Cecil Sharp worked on the assumption that the rural population he collected from were too base and lowly to innovate,adjust or amend - therefore the dances, tunes and then songs he collected must per se be ancient holdovers from olden times, preserved in their true form, passed down from generation to generation.

In other words, the Headington Morris side Sharp saw on Boxing Day 1899, and the gardener John England singing 'The Seeds Of Love', were, in modern parlance, hereditary cover bands to Sharp's way of thinking ...