BTW - in a post of 06 May 08 0910a.m., Pavane drew a distinction, which seems relevant to this thread, between 'intellectual' & 'scholar'; Bert was much aware of this distinction, discussion of which forms a fair part of the theme of an interview I did with him for Folk Review (published in issue of September 1974 under title "The Donkey & the Zebra" [a phrase he used to illustrate how two kinds of song could have similar outlines but not be identical, part of the traditional/contemporary distinction]. The main theme of this thread obviously didn't explicitly arise as the doubts hadn't really surfaced then; but some parts of the interview might nevertheless be germane — Dave Arthur has commented to me that he found my interview helpful in the biog of Bert we know he is working on, though 'Bert chose to ignore huge areas of his life as he always did'. If anyone would like to read this interview but can't access it [I am not sure how accessible back numbers of folk review are after all this time], I should be glad to send a copy to anyone who requests & lets me have a steam-mail address - my email is - mgmyer@keme.co[dot]uk -

Michael Grosvenor Myer