The folk airs that we give in our collection may not please at first, certainly will not please all; but when once a relish for them has been acquired, then hearers will turn with weariness from the ordinary concert hall feebleness, as we turn from the twaddle of a vacuous female. We have found it necessary to take down all the variants of the same air that we have come across. M. Bourgault Ducoudray, in his introduction to "Mélodies populaires de Basse Bretagne," Paris, 1885, says: "When a song has been transmitted from mouth to mouth, without having been fixed by notation, it is exposed to alterations. One is sometimes obliged to collect as many as twenty variants of the same air, before finding one that is good. This is the greatest difficulty to the seeker; it is as hard to lay the hand on the veritable typal form of a melody as it is to meet with an intact specimen among the shells that have been rolled on the sea shore." When a party of singers is assembled, or when one man sings a succession of ballads, the memory becomes troubled; the first few melodies are given correctly, but after that, the airs become deflected and influenced by the airs last sung. At Two Bridges one old singer, G. Kerswell, after giving us "The Bell-ringers," sang us half-a-dozen ballads but the melody of the bells went through them all, and vitiated them all so as to render them worthless. On another occasion, we took down four or five airs all beginning alike, because one singer had impressed this beginning on the minds of the others. At another time, when this impression was worn off, they would sing correctly, and then the beginnings would be different. Experience taught us never to take down too much at one sitting. In a very few years all this heritage of traditional folk music will be gone; and this is the supreme moment at which such a collection can be made. Already, nearly every one of my old singers from whom these melodies were gathered, is dead. They are passing away everywhere. Few counties of England have been worked. Sussex has been well explored by the late Rev. John Broadwood, and then by Miss Lucy Broadwood[3]; Yorkshire, by Mr. Frank Kidson; Northumberland, by Dr. Collingwood Bruce and Mr. John Stokoe. Mr. Cecil Sharp is now engaged on Somersetshire, and Dr. Vaughan Williams on Essex. Who will undertake Lincolnshire, Dorset, Hampshire, and other counties? The purely agricultural districts are most auriferous. In manufacturing counties modern music has driven out the traditional folk melodies. [Footnote 3: The Rev. J. Broadwood, of Lyne, Sussex, printed his collection "for Private Circulation only," in 1843. It was reprinted later, with additions, by Miss L. Broadwood, under the title of "Sussex Songs." (Leonard & Co., Oxford Street.)]