FOR centuries humans have put things which are important to them into song and now a group of Dales residents are continuing the tradition.

Settle Voices is a community choir born out of a series of workshops run in partnership between the Yorkshire Dales Workshops and Craven College.

Formed in 2003, the choir is led by professional singer and tutor Janet Russell, who also works with Silsden Singers, and has a central core membership of between 15 and 25.

In October of the same year the group was awarded a Lottery grant of £5,000 to assist in researching local songs. The hope was that any songs discovered would then be added to the choir's repertoire and would be brought back to life through performances and teaching workshops across Craven.

Research began and one member, George Gooch, found himself heading to Glasgow on the trail of a set of songs collected by Frank Kidson (1855-1926), a recognised authority on early English music, particularly folk song, which are now in the city's Mitchell Library.

"While we were researching all these songs, we also did workshops and talks in local schools about what the project was about," said George.

Other members visited old folks homes, libraries, museums and archives in search of songs, while some put pen to paper and came up with their own songs following in the traditions of Dales tunes.

One of them was Pip Grimes. Her husband had just finished a course in dry stone walling and she realised that in all the songs of the Dales they'd found, there hadn't been one about this Yorkshire art.

"The project was about the Dales and its people and occupations and we came up with all the obvious ones farms, shepherds, horse dealing, railway navvies, and we could find something for each of these. But there was a general lack of songs about walling and so I had a go. I had written poems before and I got a tune and a rhythm in my head and the words just came along."

Janet took the song and added notation for it and then former choir member Betty O'Malley made a three-part harmony of The Dry Stone Waller, a song which now features regularly in Settle Voices' repertoire.

The songs collected often reflected significant events, including the building of the Settle to Carlisle railway.

Settle Voices chose Mike Donald's Settle-Carlisle Railway song, which tells the navvies' story, and some harmonies were added to adapt the song for a choir, rather than solo singer.

A poem written by the Arncliffe gamekeeper in 1915 was found among old family papers and is now set to a traditional tune. And another poem written more than 20 years ago by Dr Buckle of Giggleswick has been set to music for the first time.

"New lyrics have been written by choir members, and traditional songs have been adapted for choral singing," said Janet.

Member Lynn Taylor said the beauty of the choir was that it showed anyone could do it.

"When the workshops stopped we decided to carry on ourselves because everyone had enjoyed it so much. We asked Janet if she would teach us.

"The great thing is we learn by listening. Janet will sing it to us and we sing it back. Members don't have to be able to read music," she added.