Thank you Brian for bringing a bit of sanity to all this.
Cap'n,
Can we please stop this now?
Brian and Wendy are right; there are far more important things to be spending our time on than "tearing lumps out of each other".
If all it takes is an apology - I apologise unreservedly; now let's get on with the rest of our lives.
To save your wasting further time, perhaps I could offer the information that I am never embarrassed by anything I've written. I wrote what I wrote because I believed them and thought them correct at the time; if I was later proved wrong, as far as I'm concerned it's all part of the learning curve.
So you won't have to search through the various archives, and by way of a peace offering, perhaps I could be of some assistance. In Jan. 2000 Pat and I wrote a long letter to The Living Tradition entitled 'Where Have All The Folk Songs Gone"; that ruffled a few feathers (I'm proud to say). (I'm afraid somebody rather spoiled the effect of this by writing an article saying nice things about us in either the next issue or the one after).
If you search the Musical Traditions archive you will find my comments on the story that Ewan MacColl stole Shoals of Herring from a traditional singer (this was round about the time of the CD re-issue of Singing The Fishing). More recently there was the set-to about our involvement with the Walter Pardon CD World Without Horses produced by Topic.
Somewhere in MTs letter archive you will find and extremely acrimonious exchange regarding a poison-pen campaign by 2 MT reviewers on the Mudcat and Irtrad forums (last year I think - sorry I can't be more specific).
I think the last contentious article I wrote (somewhere in Enthusiasms section on MT) was 'By Any Other Name', a reply to Mike Yates' 'The Other Songs' (might have both of these titles wrong, you'll have to check.)
I was a little embarrassed by an article I wrote for The Folk Song Journal back in 1975 on Travellers, but it was a long time ago and I was a little náive in those days.
Now can we agree to differ and get on with discussing important things
Best wishes,
Jim