Amos - Thank you for saying what I wanted to say but didn't dare try for fear of saying it so emphaticly that I'd get all these hypersensitive new age PC folkie types so p*ss*d off at me that I'd be drummed out of the Mudcat.

If we're going to be folk musicians, we have to realize that the majority of traditional songs are offensive to some racial, ethnic, or sexual group. We can try to bowdlerize them, and in another generation or two we'll look as foolish as the people who tried to clean out the "dirty" words in Shakespeare's plays do now. Or we can not sing them at all, and we won't be folksingers any more. We'll be sensitive singer-songwriters, and the world needs more of them like Custer needed more Indians, I mean Native Americans.

So what do you do? Be careful where you sing what, I guess. I also like to get terribly offended when someone tells a lawyer joke. Then tell them I'm kidding after they get embarrassed and try to explain....

Peter.