I'll try to watch on Friday, Jim.

You should definitely read Carrie Grover's account of the vital importance of singing in rural Nova Scotia in the early 20th century. I'll send it (it's a bit long to past here) if you tell me whether your gmail address or the eirecom on is the best to use.

And here's more. Frank and Anne Warner were very keen to note down singers' comments, and I recommend their book 'Traditional American Folk Songs' if you can find it anywhere. Some of the best stuff is from Frank Proffitt. Here he is talking about 'Bolamkin' (aka Long Lankin):

"I want to say that I never gave much thought to Bo Lamkin's feelings until I too got to building. It seems he got angry because 'pay he got none'. I have had a occasion or two of this kind, not much I am glad to say. I don't claim that I had murderous intent, but how I would have liked to take a big stone hammer and undone the work that pay I got none for. Old Bo, if he had only done this to his work would have had my admiration very much. Perhaps we would not have heard of him, then, which perhaps would have been just as well. I like to think of just where the place is now where he built the fine castle. For I believe it really happened as all the old ballad things. The older folks wanted a fact, then they went all out in building a legend around it, but never to destroy the fact that planted the seed. They kept it intact and thank God for it."

Proffitt's backstory to 'Love Henry' (which he called 'Song of a Lost Hunter') is really quite strange. He says he's used some phrases of his own (oral process at work!), but the interesting thing is that there's an even more horrible story sitting behind his ballad:

"I wonder if this should be a ballad that would be known anywhere. In trying to recall the way the song went, it is possible I use a rhyming word of my own here and there. It was sung to me at an early age. As with many other ballads, a tale went with it, but only as I grew up I learned the tale, which gave me more insight into its meaning. It seems the hunter, Heneree, was lost, and he come upon this evil woman's castle. She had had the paths filled up to make young hunters lose their way except for the path leading to her lands. She was not a beauty - therefore her demands for bed sharing. As I remember, she had a hole dug where each time she would dispose of her unwilling lovers. However gruesome it may sound, she took Heneree to her bed to make love after stabbing him. This part may have been in the song too, but it was not of the kind to be sung to me in my early years. Only in the tale did these facts come out. I seem to remember there was a part of the song where she too was put in the deep hole, but this part I do not have words for."