When the songs and the ballads of the people began to be recognised as belonging, more or less, to literature, the editors of collections deemed it was essential that their crudities of style, rhyme, and diction should be amended, and that the whole should undergo a polishing process before being launched to the public. Bishop Percy, of course, naturally occurs to one’s mind in this connection, and we must grant that in the classic age when he issued his three volumes (1765) there was reason on his side, and he had some justification for the trimming he did—the world was not yet ripe for the folk-ballad collector. There is much reason to suspect the later editors of ballad lore did as much as Percy in the work of polishing, and even went beyond him by pure fabrication. No excuse for such work as this nowadays exists. People are quite prepared to accept fragments of traditional ballads or songs precisely in the state they are sung or recited. In a much lesser degree the same kind of thing held as regards certain earlier collectors of folk-music. This attitude was not one of deceit, but rather of ignorance. The modal influence on folk-music was not understood. As a consequence intervals were altered to conform to the harmony of another scale. As folk-music began to be better realised more scientific knowledge was brought to bear on the subject, and every nerve strained to obtain accuracy of notation. The phonograph at once suggested itself as a ready and accurate instrument for the work of noting traditional melody, and many collectors employ it for this purpose. There is, however, a section of workers in folk-song who rather mistrust its claim to give the best results. The motive that inspires the use of the phonograph is praiseworthy in the extreme, but those opposed to its use suggest that these results are sometimes not very satisfactory where transcriptions taken directly from phonograph records have been published. They are generally complex and confusing, and for examples of the excessively elaborate rhythms and shifting tonality from phonographic records, the reader is invited to refer to some particular Journals of the Folk-Song Society. The transcriber should certainly bear in mind that mixed rhythms (2-4 time changing to 6-8, 7-8, 4-4, 5-8, and so forth in one short air) can hardly belong to the original structure of the tune, but rather to the method of singing it. If the performance of any great singer were phonographed, and its actual note-value faithfully transcribed, this would scarcely be considered a fair way of treating it. It would show a complexity of rhythms of which both the singer and the audience would be quite unaware. The composer would most certainly repudiate such a notation, though he might be quite satisfied with the singer’s treatment of the piece. He would claim that the most legitimate method would be to indicate time-deviations by the ordinary accepted marks of expression.