La Sauce

The Merrie Englander Cecil Sharp collected folksongs, mostly in Somerset and the Appalachians. Quite how folky these folksongs are is moot. David Harker, Sharp’s sternest critic, believes that the majority derive from ‘broadsides’, simple songsheets, and that ‘the oral tradition’ is chimerical. It is indisputable that someone created these songs, whether as broadsides or in some other form. They do not appear out of the blue. (Anon) was a person.

Sharp was almost ce