Description: What Professor F. J. Child called the popular ballads were those which had passed through the process of oral tradition; classical, historical, dramatic, romantic, and even comic. On this album they follow each other with wonderful contrasts in vocal styles and dialects, with some short examples in Irish, and Scots Gaelic, Welsh and Norse. Some of the ballads are compiled verse by verse from various different areas. Contrasting voices follow in succession from the West Coast of Ireland to East Anglia, from Shetland to the Scilly Isles. The album is indispensable to all ballad scholars.