Cecil Sharp

Cecil James Sharp (22 November 1859 – 23 June 1924) was the founding father of the folk-song revival in England. He gathered thousands of tunes both from rural England and the Southern Appalachians region of the United States, and wrote an influential volume, English Folk Song: Some Conclusions. He also revived the extinct tradition of English country dance, based on his study of surviving rural folk dances as well as written sources; this form of dance as Sharp revived it has by now been actively maintained by enthusiast participants for over a century. Sharp promoted Morris dancing, and in 1911 founded the English Folk Dance Society.