I'm going to stop refering to the old songs I'm interested in as 'traditional folk' because the term seems to cause too much conflict amongst people and it seems to distress singer songwriters in particular - so I'm going to follow D of E's example and simply call them "Samantha" from now on.

If everyone is smart and follows suit, then there will never be any more need for threads debating 'what is folk'.
Sorted!