Ron, I am not a fossil and I am N O T   M I S S I N G   T H E   P O I N T, as you keep insisting.

Unconfined to the ivory tower you seem to think I inhabit, I am fully aware of what's been going on during recent decades and the changes that have taken place and continue to take place. Several songs I have learned recently, I have learned from singers on YouTube videos. That's certainly a new variation on "oral transmission." I wonder what Cecil Sharp would think of that.

To continue to call both a song that may very well have described a historical incident and has survived through centuries via oral transmission and has been sung by, perhaps, thousands of people over the generations, and a song about teenaged angst written two weeks ago and sung by a breathy young girl, and which no one but her will ever sing, as "folk songs"--well, refer back to Dick Greenhaus's comment about Gresham's Law.

At the very least, there should be a qualifier added to the work "folk" in order to give at least a foggy idea of what one is talking about. If you insist on using the word "folk" for both of these songs, then some way of differentiating one kind from the other would most certainly be in order. Perhaps "traditional folk" for the one and "contemporary folk" for the other.

I don't think that's unreasonable to at least hope for.

Don Firth