This volume studies the status and reception of the professional, semi-professional and amateur singer in England from the earliest time for which records are available, the later Middle Ages, up to the present. It also offers a principled examination of their songs and why particular songs were taken into singers' repertoires while others remained printed street ballads without ever becoming part of the oral tradition. The structure is broadly chronological, although the nature of evidence from oral and ephemeral sources makes this impossible to adhere to strictly.