We were driven from the station in the dark to a rambling house under the hills, and having dined were led to another room in which three elderly brothers were seated and one brother's wife. Two were shepherds, one of whom--Uncle Jonah--still retained the round, or smock, frock. This one, I am pleased to record, could not read, nor could his younger brother, the married one, but the elder brother and the younger brother's wife were "scholards." The elder brother was the chief singer, and while the others played a little at backwardness, he was always ready with whatever song he could remember: a tall man about sixty-seven, with a ruddy, rather mischievous face fringed with whiskers, and a gentle sly humour. He and the shepherd were the pick; the younger brother was slower and more stolid. It was a successful evening in that it yielded six or seven songs that the Director had not heard before, although the quality, he said, was not equal to that of the West Country. Why, when we all equally have the gift of speech, there is this capriciousness in the bestowal of the gift of song, is a problem and anomaly that have always perplexed and irritated me. Why should one human throat be melodious, and another--my own, for example--emit nothing but dissonance? Again, why should one human creature with a voice be willing to use it, and another hide the gift under a bushel of self-consciousness? But the Director has a way with the shy that sooner or later prevails. He too begins to sing, and by-and-bye the shy enter in, and then gradually the Director drops out and the shy sing on alone and never falter again. If the Director's methods were bewildering to me, what must they have been to these simple folk? For he takes out pencil and his little notebook ruled with staves, and the instant the singer has done he can go to the piano and play the song word for word, with all its peculiarities of movement, its hurryings and pauses, its unexpected cadences, its curious melancholy. Magic, surely! I can just begin to understand shorthand, but not this mystery. During the first verse he sits intent, with his pencil poised over the paper, waiting to strike. During the second verse he is recording all the time. During the third he makes little refining touches, and the tune is complete. The words, taken separately, were my department. The words of folk-songs without music are always far enough removed from melody, but the ditty which I copy here, which we may call "Winter's Signs," is, I think, the farthest removed of all, although as a piece of bleak impressionism it is good: indeed, rather like an etching; and yet, as sung by this old man, with his soft musical quavers, it was not only beautiful but hauntingly so. The words are exactly as he had them, all unconscious that they made contradictions and have neither scansion nor rhyme. Here they are: