Little Robyn wrote: The New Zealand Folklore Society never found it in 1969, when we sent Phil Garland on a hunt for the 'great NZ Folksong' and he travelled all around the South Island looking for songs. Mostly he found poems.

As is indeed evident from the contents of Shanties by the Way, which printed the outcome of a lot of those searches.

On the other hand, Garland's definition of "folk song" is not exactly what we would call a "traditional folk song," as is illustrated by Faces in the Firelight. From the outside, it feels as if no one in New Zealand in the 1960s quite knew what they were trying to do. In a very real way, it reminds me of what Percy and Ritson had done in Britain two centuries before, with Percy heavily retouching his stuff but at least putting it out there, while Ritson was a purist but not so much of a competent collector.