Whilst these interviews with source singers are very valuable and interesting in a number of ways they can only give us a small amount of information regarding the origins and evolution of the songs. Of course differentiating between different genre types would be quite easy as it is for all of us by and large. The vast majority of Music Hall songs are easily distinguished from the ballads both in structure, musical style, even content, but a surprising number did slip through the net set up by the early collectors. The collectors also tended to include quite a lot of pieces that were obviously products of the eighteenth century theatre, though happily very few of Dibdin's got through; too well-known I suppose. I had 2 source singers who happily sang me Tom Bowling and I know people even alive today who love the song despite it being an art song of over 2 centuries ago.