Work-songs and blessings engage with something which is basic, fundamental; they go back to something which the earlier bards and minstrels knew: the close connection between music and religion. Both have at their heart rhythm. To move with this is to be in tune, literally, with one's self and the world; to lose it is to get cross-grained, to find alienation and disharmony.
— Esther de Waal, Every Earthly Blessing