These songs were recorded in the kitchen of Dolores Fernández Geijo and feature her singing as well as that of her mother, Carolina Geijo, and her aunt, Antonia Geijo, in the village of San Lorenzo near Astorga, in the Maragato region. The Maragatos were known as muleteers on poor and difficult land and for their honesty. Dolores was one of the last great weavers of the area, and in 2001 she recalled that the payments Alan Lomax had had sent from the BBC enabled her, as a young woman with small children, to keep her loom. Eventually she not only was able to earn her living with it, but became well-known to many visitors, both local and foreign, who came to see and buy her work. She continued singing and playing tambourine all her life, dying in 2002. —J.R. Cohen