Oh dear a little bit of sweetness and light breaks out and straight away two size ten boots jump in. Actually, I was an academic all my working life, and of course respect academic integrity. I also applaud political integrity... If I could have mangled some references and allusions to score a telling point against Thatcher, or Hitler, of course I would have done. I would have expected my scholarly folkorist
colleagues to have rumbled my interventions, but would also have expected, at least some of them, to have applauded my actions, knowing that the oppressed folk whose stories the songs tell, needed all the help they could get.