saw this last night also.

I'm sure Martin Carthy will be glad of your instruction on how to sing folk songs. He has obviously given the matter too little thought.

However he was appearing as a member of the revivalists - rather than masquerading as 18th century ploughboy on this occasion. Perhaps we can forgive him for demonstrating his own unique contribution, which honours the rhythmic complexity of English folk music - as opposed to the Joan Baez version of that song which captured the imagination of folk club audiences - in the years when people actually bothered attending folk clubs in any number.

Personally I still think the 'English' only policy that was seized on with delight by some many trad club organisers, had much more to do with the fact that working class oiks were starting to take an interest in folk music. All the gurning, outlandish harmonies, and dull as hell ballads of little interest effectively ringfenced the folk clubs for middle class twits.

And it worked.

Elsewhere on this page you will find people speak with affection of The Fitters arms in Walsall. On the night Barrie Robberts opened that club there was a queue round the block from about 6 o'clock. And that is measure of the hunger and thirst that exists in England for people to find a music form that offers a degree of self expression - and which skiffle tapped into.

The traditionalists fed that thirst with the vinegar of middle class pretension.