The most important of the remaining examples of English musical composition in the five centuries before Dunstable have been fairly well explored by musical historians and are known, at least by name, to our educated musicians of to-day. Such are the Winchester Troper, the Reading Rota, the theoretical work of Walter Odington and many others, the Agincourt song, the Selden Carols, and the Old Hall MS. But no one can yet claim that our musical history up to 1226, and from 1226 to 1415, is anything but a series of missing chapters. It is a period of mystery, and for that reason we might have expected that more serious attempts would have been made to explore it. Not that a good deal of efficient work has not been already done, but it is sadly little when we compare the abundant supply of specialised literature available in other departments or ages of English history, and we have only to look at the lists of the Henry Bradshaw Society, the Early English Text Society, and such bodies to realise what might have been done for our English Mediaeval Music.