Plants can be carefully cultivated or can spread naturally. Songs, too, can spread deliberately or accidentally. Here’s a small sampling of just a few of the song collectors who helped preserve gardens of old English, Scottish, and Irish ballads that travelled to North America. Alex Cumming and Catherine Crowe help untangle a few strands of the bountiful musical harvest of folk history and culture preserved by Francis Child,  John Lomax, Helen Creighton, Elisabeth Bristol Greenleaf, Anne & Frank Warner, and Olive Dame Campbell (whose grave I’m determined to find by the end of the episode).

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Thanks to everybody for listening. And a special thank you to this month’s underwriters: Gašper Šinkovec, Sheila Worrall, Brian Benscoter, Marc Gunn, Suezen Brown, Paul DeCamp, Paul Grajciar, Elisabeth Carter, Jen and Bob Strom, Rick Rubin, Susan Walsh, Ken Doyle, Chris Armstrong, John Ploch, Benjamin Ruth, Joel DeLashmit, Finian McCluskey, Jon Duvick, Gerry Corr, Mike Voss, and Ian Bittle.

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