Dartmoor, from others at Chagford, at Holne, and at South Brent. From others again at Menheniot, Cornwall, and at Fowey. Some songs taken down from moor men on Dartmoor, in or about 1868, were sent me by W. Crossing, Esq., who knows Dartmoor better than any man living; others by T.S. Cayzer, Esq., taken down in 1849. Miss Bidder, of Stoke Flemming, most kindly searched her neighbourhood for old women who knew ancient songs, and sent me what she obtained. We had several rare old melodies from Sally Satterley,[2] now dead, of Huccaby Bridge, Dartmoor. She had acquired them from her father, a crippled fiddler. [Footnote 1: I have given a memoir of this old man in my "Dartmoor Idylls." (Methuen & Co., 1896).] [Footnote 2: I have told the romantic story of the building of her house in one day, "Jolly Lane Cott" in my "Dartmoor Idylls." The old house has recently been pulled down and replaced by an ugly modern cottage.] Of the vast quantities of tunes that we have collected, perhaps a third are very good, a third are good, and the remainder indifferent. The singers are almost invariably illiterate and aged, and when they die the tradition will be lost, for the present generation will have nothing to do with these songs, especially such as are modal, and supplant them with the vulgarest music hall compositions. The melodies are far more precious than the words, and we have been more concerned to rescue these than the words, which are often common-place, and may frequently be found on broadside ballad sheets. The words are less frequently of home growth than the airs, and over and over again we came upon ballads already in print, but not to the tunes to which they are sung elsewhere. There are, in fact, only a few, such as "Cupid's Garden," "Bold General Wolf," "Lord Thomas and the Fair Eleanor," "Barbara Allen," "Outward Bound," "The Mermaid," that retain the melodies to which sung in other parts of England. But, "Tobacco is an Indian Weed," "Joans' Ale is New," "The Fox," and many others have tunes to which sung in Devon and Cornwall that are quite different and local. A remarkable instance is that of "Sweet Nightingale." This appeared in 1761 with music by Dr. Arne. The words travelled down to Cornwall, not so Arne's tune, and they were there set to an entirely independent melody. Then again, when a tune did travel West, and was heard by some of the peasant singers, if it did not commend itself to their taste, they altered it, perhaps quite unconsciously into a form more satisfactory to their minds. I have given a very curious example of this, "Upon a Sunday Morning."