FOLK SONGS OF ENGLAND, IRELAND, SCOTLAND AND WALES

This is more than an anthology for it is a song book for the many people who delight in a chance to sing songs familiar to them from childhood - or picked up as their interest in folk songs grew. Those folk songs of the British Isles are peculiarly our own. They are largely the poetry of the people; they celebrate nature and love, heroism and pride of land. Perhaps many came from one man's emotional overflow- but the end result is universal. A few are identified with specific writers (Robert Burns, Thomas Moore) but most of them are unidentified. In both the text versions used and the arrangements for piano and guitar, the aim of the editors has been to make them playable and singable, while soundly rooted in research and consultation with the classic compilers. But first and last, they come from twenty years of personal enthusiasm. The discography, too, which follows the songs, is personal and not exhaustive. All in all, this aims at the middle ground between traditionalists and Tin Pan Alley.