The Irish folk ballad "Schooldays Over" was written by Ewan MacColl as part of a larger work entitled The Big Hewer, which was broadcast by the BBC in 1961. Campbell and Cutler haven"t added to or fleshed out the original so much as zoomed in so close we"re practically inside the song"s heart, watching the world from inside a sepia-tinted diorama. Their achievement is not making the song their own, but excavating it, turning it into something for no one and everyone. That is, at the root, a folk song"s job.