Thank you :) Yep, I managed to bring most of the videos back again. Well, I was careful to leave out all the ones with copyright issues, so it should be good this time. We didn't lose anything of real importance I think. Thankfully it was mostly the revival recordings that got claimed. I should've been more mindful about those. I want to upload field recordings again, I need to find the time to get around to it. There's still plenty of interesting songs I'd like to document. For example I haven't uploaded The Widow of Westmorland's Daughter yet. Eddie Butcher of Londonderry sang a really fine and pretty amusing version of it to Hugh Shields. It's the only field recording of that ballad known to me. Of course I like Bert Lloyd's version of it too. He did a great job with it and recorded it at least three times. But I may not be able to upload those recordings. Ah well, that's how it is. Better to be careful now.

Sounds like the tune of “County Down”

@@EatBakeSing It is indeed Star of the County Down. Stanley Robertson said that the tune is often claimed to be Irish, but his mother believed it to be an old Scottish one. It's been used for many songs, but who knows where it really originated. Some examples from the top of my head: Dives and Lazarus: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fNGjn8aEt53JfnU.html The Twa Brothers: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bd2li5Vmu5itop8.html Sweet William's Ghost: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/oNR5lLF4mtGrk4E.html Maria Marten aka. Suffolk Tragedy: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/b9hmnpti0ruacYU.html Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/l5tyo6R5mrLeko0.html It resembles an old Scottish balled tune, The Hanging of Gilderoy. So perhaps Stanley Robertson was right. Interestingly a faster variant of the Gilderoy tune has survived into modern times with the Irish song The Little Beggarman: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/q7h3oriat8-yeI0.html

Yes, the last few videos are all me singing. I'm not that good at it, but I try to get better. There are so many nice old songs to learn. Maybe I can get other people interested in them too.

Oh, I'm from southwest Germany actually. I got introduced to folk revival recordings from people like Martin Carthy by my father and later discovered field recordings and especially traveller singing and I fell in love with it. Absolutely admire the old fashioned singing and the songs and ballads. I started to collect recordings of traditional singing and shared my collection here on youtube. Now I'm learning to sing my favourite ballads myself. I'll try my best.

Do you know any sources for lyrics? Child's book or something? Anything with more of the story? Thanks

@@acapellapatrick This website has all of the ballad lyrics collected by Child: 71.174.62.16/Demo/LongerHarvest?Sort=By%20Child%20Index But they are old ballad texts from manuscripts, and most have no tunes. It's interesting to look at and shows you all the 305 Child ballads, but not very helpful if you want to learn and sing the songs. A very good source for information on Child ballads is this website: www.bluegrassmessengers.com/the-305-child-ballads.aspx It has many, many texts and tunes as they were sung by traditional singers from England, Scotland, Ireland, America and Canada. I also use the four volumes of "Betrand Bronson: Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads". Many of the songs I shared on KZfaq are included in Bronson's books: www.springthyme.co.uk/ballads/bronson_bronson.html

I'll take a look at your videos, of course. As for Germany, the ballad singing tradition here died out much earlier than in Britain and America. I have some field recordings from Russia Germans. They brought their singing traditions with them and ballad singing survived there while it had long disappeared in Germany. That's part of why I became so interested in English language singing traditions. Because there was actually a living tradition there that survived long enough to be recorded and documented. It's often the more isolated communities that had the best songs and singing styles. Whether it's Appalachia, remote fishing villages in Newfoundland, the Travelling People of the British isles or the Russia Germans. People that held onto their songs and traditions and kept them alive. It seems that being more isolated helped preserve songs that would've been lost otherwise.