Re lack of recordings of traditional fiddlers: a lot of people forget that Fellside put out an LP of Geoff Purvis and his band called "Border Fiddler", and it is out on CD again.Just because Geoff was young at the time(1970 maybe) doesn't mean that he wasn't traditional! That sort of fiddling didn't become part of the canon of "English country music" when that genre got going in the 70's....Cumbria and Northumbria were written of as part of Scotland by that fraternity, as far as I could judge. But self-evidently traditional music in the north is surely just as traditional as music in the south.
Isn't it a shame there isn't much recorded trad English fiddling? And, as far as I am aware, no recording whatsoever of trad Welsh.Maybe somebody could point me in the right direction if there is any, but I've never heard any yet. (I mean trad, not reconstruction trad, there is loads of that getting going now, and very good too).