To be a real folk-song singer you have to collect the songs straight from the horse's mouth.

To be a real folk-song singer you have to collect the songs straight from
the horse's mouth. The way to do this is to go to a village and find the
oldest inhabitant and ask him to sing you the songs his mother taught me.
Him, I mean. Well, you'll probably find that he's deaf, and if he isn't
deaf he can't sing, and if he can sing he doesn't want to, and by the time
you've persuaded him and he does sing, you won't understand a word of what
he's singing about. This is how folk songs have been passed down from
generation to generation.
-- Anna Russell