"Over the last thirty years, there have been very few volumes published in the UK devoted to the study of folk song and the folk song revival, much of the research in the field appearing in the pages of the Folk Music Journal or coming from North America. This extensive collection of papers, while not comprehensive, is intended in part to fill this void and to make a contribution to the field of study. It is the unashamed product of a major conference to mark the centenary of the founding of the Folk-Song Society, held at the University of Sheffield, 10-12 July 1998, and organised jointly by the University's Department of Music and National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, together with the English Folk Dance and Song Society, the successor to the Folk-Song Society since its merger with the English Folk Dance Society in 1932."--p.1.