Oh dear - read it how you will, you can't demonstrate the size of the Festival without analogy or example but of course - the minute you use a yardstick it is read a different way. Now read this wrong - if you can.

Shrewsbury is big, not the biggest but in 8 Festivals time at the present growth it will surpass Cambridge. A goal that is on the agenda in many peoples' estimation.

Big brings a different flavour and the clientele to go with it like the "me" generation and it only takes one or two to change the look and feel. It was said and I had to agree "I have not been to a folk festival where there are so many people I don't recognise" - One steward who did a lot of wandering the site on duties told me he didn't see a particular friend that he had arranged to meet with. There, are those betters definitions of BIG?

BIG, to big festival afficiandos is hardly a criticism, and to those that don't like BIG - it is information. But BIG is not an absolute - it needs some less vague quantifying or it is meaningless. ditto, ditto volume.

FWIW Red bodhrans are traditionally stained with the blood of those telling bodhran jokes and the next one needs a bit more dye.

Now - do we mention personal attacks as a purile answer to reasoned arguement or am I aiming too high?