Fascinating to read about Irish immigrants and others in England in these songs. They reminded me of an overnight ferry trip I made in 1961/62 from Belfast to Liverpool (I think it was) when I sat in a lounge with many Irish men returning to their jobs in England, after Xmas in Ireland with their families. As we tried to sleep sitting up, one of the seated men sang a long sad song of many verses about a blind Irish girl in a village. Everyone listened with their eyes closed and when he had finished , no-one clapped which I think showed the singer had truly mirrored the men's feelings. One of the men in Michael's songs is named COTTRELL, a surname found in my Irish ancestry of Cork. I read it comes from the French surname COQUEREL (meaning rooster). As I have discovered good number of my Irish ancestors were originally Huguenots (some of whom had become Catholics by the late 1700's), that made sense to me. So Michael's "Renaissance" man had perhaps come a long way to England, maybe via Ireland, maybe not. My Tyrone ancestry consists of COTTINS /COTTONS from Killyman Parish, thought to be of Huguenot ancestry. If anyone is interested in that name in Tyrone (also appearing as COULTEN, COULTER, COUTER, COTTER in different parts of Tyrone or in the name WILLIS (Scottish origin), also in Killyman, please contact me. I am enormously grateful to the website accompanying this list for having my COTTER/WILLIS marriage of 1794 on it, as I had looked for it at PRONI twice on trips to Ireland. Barbara Holt, New Zealand