By Rev. HERBERT PENTIN, M.A., F.S.A. (Ed.). 



(Read Feb. 21st, 1905.) 



Secretary of the Folk-Song Society of England 

 wrote to me a short while since to ask if the 

 Dorset Field Club would undertake to collect 

 the old folk-songs of Dorset. I replied that I 

 could not answer on behalf of the Club ; but 

 that, as a private individual, I would collect 

 all such songs and rhymes which I came 

 across in my own parish and neighbourhood 

 and bring them before the Club, with the 

 hope that interest might be stirred up in the 

 subject and other collections made. 



Of course, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the old 

 traditional songs are fast dying out. Boys educated at a 

 National School think it almost beneath their dignity to sing 

 the ungrammatical, unrhythmical, and unpoetical songs in which 

 their fathers and forefathers delighted. They do not know that 

 the bad grammar, the uneven rhythm, and the poor rhyme often 

 mark the most ancient songs songs composed, not infre- 

 quently, by villagers themselves and corrupted as the years have 



