The Singing in the Dark event at Ledbury's Market Theatre began with minor sound problems.

Folklorist Roy Palmer, the chairman of the Friends of the Dymock Poets, quipped: "The man upstairs will be adjusting it as we go on. I don't mean God."

Most genuine old recordings of folk songs come with their own permanent hiss and distance.

Poet Alison Brackenbury played a 31-second snatch of Brigg Fair from 1908.

Despite the technical inadequacies of Percy Grainger's wax recording of George Taylor, it was just possible to hear a unique voice of rural authenticity and control.

Brackenbury argued that, in some respects, Edward Thomas is becoming as anonymous as the writer of "the old songs" and she spoke of a friend who knew Adlestrop, but not its author's name.

For Brackenbury, her chance to "brush the fingers of time" and glimpse Edward Thomas came through her friendship with the poet's daughter, Myfanwy.

Shortly before her death, Myfanwy listed a number of folk songs that her father knew. All Around My Hat, The Lincolnshire Poacher and The Whale were sung well by Roy Palmer.

Thomas was influenced by folk music through its brevity of line, profound simplicity and lack of sentiment.

His attraction to the songs must have come from his sense of rootedness in the British countryside.

When once asked what he was fighting for, the soldier poet grabbed a handful of English soil and said, "Literally, for this."

Gary Bills-Geddes