Roud Folk Song Index The
Roud Folk Song Index is a database of over 240,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It began in around 1970 as a personal project, listing the source singer (if known), their locality, the date of noting the song, the publisher (book or recorded source), plus other fields, and crucially assigning a number to each song, including all variants (now known as the 'Roud number'). The system initially used 3x5-inch filing cards in shoeboxes. In 1993, Roud implemented his record system on a
computer database, which he continues to expand and maintain and which is now hosted on the website of the
Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. In the past few years the numbers have been widely accepted in academic circles. 2006's
The English Year, which summarises the calendar customs of the British ritual year, was hailed by
The Independent as "a rich and wonderful compendium."
The Lore of the Playground, Roud's 2010 exploration of the way children's games evolve and transmit through an oral tradition, was praised in publications including
The Spectator and
The Yorkshire Post, with
The Sunday Times describing it as "a delightful compendium". Roud's later works on folk music, which build upon the deep research embodied in the Roud Index, have also met with strong reviews.
The Daily Telegraph called 2012's
The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs (co-edited with music specialist Julia Bishop) "(a)n impressive and nourishing book, with an appeal far beyond the folk aficionado", with similar praise coming from
The Times,
Record Collector and
The Independent. Writing in
The Guardian,
Kathryn Hughes described
Folk Song in England (2017) as a "monumental history of the English folk song".
Awards In 2004, Roud was the winner of the
Folklore Society's Katharine Briggs Folklore Award for
The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland. In 2014, Roud was given the Walford Award by the
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals' Information Services Group. His 2012 book with Julia Bishop,
The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, had won the Reference Award the previous year.
Personal life Roud lives and works with his wife in
Somersham, Cambridgeshire, England. ==Books==