The Chime Child: or Somerset Singers Being An Account of Some of Them and Their Songs Collected Over Sixty Years (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781138122321)

I am not a musician, nor an expert, nor an academic student in the matter of these old songs. I sang them myself for my own enjoyment and therefore they comprise a cross-section of rescued melodies dating back to medieval days and up to the Victorian early ballads. Very few can be less than a hundred years old, many of my fellow singers reaching back to a youth spent in George IV's reign, and I do not think they have been collected before. To those who love old songs and their singers I hope they will give as much pleasure as I found in sixty years and more of listening to, and singing, their songs and sharing their company.Among many country people there still lingers the age-old dislike of being mentioned by name. 'I'll sing for 'ee gladly but yew mustn't put my name to it.' I have, therefore, out of respect for this feeling and those of friends and relatives, substituted other names for those of the singers described.