When is a folk song not a folk song? When it’s accompanied by someone on the piano? When its origins lie not in a ploughed field but on a music hall stage? When it's written not by "anon" but by a person with a proper name? When Vaughan Williams decides to riff on it using the full resources of a military band? When it could equally accurately be described as a madrigal, a ballad or a nursery rhyme? These are the questions over which clergymen, antiquarians and ladies of a liberal bent fretted at the end of the 19th century as they set out to recover the precious remnants of England's vernacular musical culture. Armed with notepad, pencil and even the occasional phonograph, they cycled out into the shrinking countryside, determined to catch the tail end of a song culture that they feared was about to go for good.

[...] Sharp has long been an easy figure to mock, and historians in the 1970s and 80s, especially of the Marxist persuasion, had a high old time suggesting that his efforts to conjure a Merrie England of perpetual song and dance were really an attempt to reconcile the urban working classes to the injustices and disparities of mature capitalism. To the familiar accusations of Sharp's fakery, appropriation and profiteering, Roud mounts a compelling yet proportionate defence. In particular he points out that it was thanks to Sharp's strenuous efforts in publishing song books for use in schools that generations of children grew up experiencing a popular musical culture that was not exclusively shaped by commercial interests. Anyone who has ever been a Brownie will probably still be able to mouth along to "John Peel", "Bobby Shaftoe" and "The Lincolnshire Poacher" should the need arise. These catchy tunes with their satisfyingly repeating choruses – the correct term is "strophic" – are part of a landscape that is recognisably communal without being nationalistic. And as for the fact that many of them turn out to be as arriviste as Sharp himself, it’s not clear why it should really matter.