Fred Jordan can remember the days when sparks would fly as dancers in their hob-nailed boots strutted the night away in the pubs of South Shropshire. He is very much of the old-school, living a spartan life in his tiny cottage at Aston Munslow, after a lifetime of work with heavy horses. He had never realised that the folk songs he had collected in his head over decades were the surviving remnants of a slowly dying tradition.

Fred and the local poet and musician Dennis Crowther are the stars of folk music nights at the Golden Lion in the village of Knowle, where these two old-stagers are passing on valuable oral traditions to the next generation before they are lost forever. With Dennis, a veteran of the local stone quarries - with rough-hewn stories and songs to match, and Fred's encyclopaedic recall of old Shropshire rural life, a good night is to be had by all.