Where they were

Jan Ling, talking to an audience at Skara Folk Museum, Summer 1982:

"Well, I can tell you where these fragments were, anyway: I was messing around in the University Library in Gothenburg one day, and librarian Torgny Hag came up to me and said, 'I've got an envelope here with some curious odds and ends which have been lying in a drawer for 40 years or more, and no-one has looked at them...'

"It was a little envelope, and written on it in a very elaborate hand - apparently by some librarian at the Dixon Library in Gothenburg around 1910 - was 'What the *** is this?'.

"Inside there were a few fragments of music, together with a bit of Latin text, finishing up with an attack on Calvin. There was an invoice for a journey made by horse from a parish called Åsocken, too.

"The worm had gone all the way through, so it was clear that the pages had been together a long time, and presumably they had been used to make book-covers at some stage. The bits of music turned out to be part of a larger collection, but they were page 102, and page 106, and there was one bit of an alto part and a different bit of a bass part, and I couldn't make it fit together, so I sent it off to David..."