Earlier this year it was announced that this project had been awarded its third tranche of grant monies by the American funding body, the National Endowment for the Humanities. This means that the six scholars working on the critical edition of this enormously important collection of British folk performance material can continue with their work until June 2010. It is expected that by this time, the first four volumes of the printed version of the collection will be nearing completion. One of these volumes, edited by Bob Walser, will be on sea shanties. The other three, edited by Eddie Cass and Elaine Bradtke, will be on folk plays, customs and the songs associated with plays and customs. The volumes on folk plays will be the most important texts ever published on the subject. Since the time of T. Fairman Ordish at the turn of the twentieth century, there have been discussions on a possible history of British folk plays. The planned volumes in this series will be the nearest to this objective we will achieve for some time.
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