Picking the Ballad's Bones

From the back cover of the Bantam first edition: "To hell with folk songs - The forces of evil have made great gains in their war against music. After all, how can they fail when they have the lawyers and the bureaucrats to legislate folk songs our of existence? and the devilish hit men who can arrange accidents for all the living legends of folk music. But the ragtag band of folksingers struggling to save the music have one thing on their side: an enchanted - perhaps haunted - banjo. Once the band sets foot on the soil of Great Britain, they've got something else to help play the scales, for the banjo's unearthly music has stirred the ghost of Sir Walter Scott from his eternal slumber. The centuries-dead writer and collector of ballads has a stake in saving the last of the folk songs. He enlists the help of an even older Scott, the wizard Michael. And on, well, someone's side is the unpredictable siren Torchy Burns: known to some as the Debauchery Devil, others as the Queen of Faerie. She has a plan - but not even the devils know if it will orchestrate the salvation of the songs... or the damnation of the singers."