The old folk songs I heard Pentangle perform that night felt haunting and ancient, yet comforting somehow; they spoke to a unnamed longing within me that felt as old as time. I remember being particularly moved by their version of The Cuckoo, a mournful, 18th-century ballad about the migratory bird whose song signals the coming of the summer. I downloaded it as soon as I got home and communed with the song in private, and was instantly transported back in time; not just to the late 60s, when it was recorded, but what felt like even further, to an enchanted British past.