I remember one night at the folk club that I run in Lancashire, a lady got up to do her spot and announced that she was going to sing a traditional song and proceeded to give us "The Green Fields of France". I don't know where she got her information from but she'd either never heard of Eric Bogle or realised that he wrote the song. I gave her the details later on but how many other people get up and sing what they believe are "traditional" songs that turn out to be written by Ewan MacColl, Keith Marsden, Eric Bogle, John Conolly, etc? You can't blame them for not doing hours of research into what they do especially if they're only singing for a bit of fun and got the words off someone they'd heard singing it or a tape of the song with no recourse to sleeve notes (assuming the sleeve notes are of any help!). Pointing them in the right direction is one of the benefits of being in the folk music movement - if we can help someone to learn more about the songs they sing then that's OK by me.

Cheers
Mark