I could probably confess to the odd occassion on which I've sat through a long succession of performances of non-traditional material and muttered in curmudgeonly fashion, "it would be nice to hear some bloody folk music for a change", but generally I simply avoid the term as a useful descriptor.

If I were attending a conference on folklore or balladry, I'm sure that everyone in the room would share the older, narrower definition of 'folk'. For the rest of the world (and believe me, Tom B is not making it up), that train has left the station.

Thanks, Brian, for that outbreak of common sense. Been there, done that (first paragraph) and reluctantly agree (second graf).

I'd still like to know how MacColl is more acceptable than a load of other idiomatic, folk-lite material.

The thing that gets me about an awful lot of 'revival original' material (McTell, Harvey Andrews, the Corries, that class of thing) is how dated it now sounds. It's similar to the way that the first few Steeleye albums sound less dated than those of the Mike Batt period. Trad songs aren't so much timeless as pre-dated - they don't get any older. That's the effect people writing 'in the tradition' are shooting for. Hardly anyone hits it. Some of MacColl's songs, to my ear, bring it off - although of course I've only got my own contemporary perception of what does and doesn't sound dated to go on.