Funny how PB's Kipling / Folksong thesis doesn't work too well when he sets them to actual traditional melodies (with the exception of Danny Deever). The real magic happens when he composes his own tunes in the traditional idiom, making the pairing of Kipling / Bellamy quite the dynamic song-writing team.

Both RK & PB were concerned with an idiomatic creativity in which they drew on a common heritage, however differently they might have perceived it. Sadly, I don't think Kipling left us his feelings on the matter, but we're in no doubt about his cultural imperialism as it comes over in the patronising verses of The Land and The Barrack Room Ballads.

The latter were still popular with common soldiers in my grandfather's day - he served in India during partition and thought of Ghandi as the greatest man he'd ever met. Interestingly, he wasn't impressed at all when I played him Bellamy's settings, even though Keep Your Feet Still Geordie Hinny was a favourite of his, as was Gunda Din, so I naturally thought he'd be made up by Bellamy's pairing of the two. He wasn't, and I can't say I am either to be honest, BUT then again, few Kipling people are in my experience.

Well, two others. The first was an English tutor who'd done his PhD on Kipling, and the other an old woman I once knew whose favourite books from her childhood were Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies. Neither were convinced by Bellamy's thesis, settings or performance, but, to give them their due, both were non-folkies, entirely unprepared for our hero's abrasive bleating, however so meticulously contrived. Though old Doris did enjoy Dik Cadbury's counter-tenor to Dolly Collins' flute-organ on The Queen's Men.