PB's politics were never directly expressed in the rhetoric of song, though if we take the human sentiments (though never sentimental!) found in The Transports together with his setting of Kipling's Humanist Hymn A Pilgrim's Way then I think we might be getting the picture. But what of that other Kipling/Bellamy oft-sung masterpiece The Land? This is generally supposed to reflect a left-wing bias, but in context it is, in truth, a celebration of the continuity of serfdom under feudalism with the faceless Hobden being a mere type, a patronising caricature of tradition rather than a flesh & blood individual. The irony of him somehow owning the land only because it is comprised of his dead forefathers is a bitter one. A bleak testimony indeed, but wholly analogous to the actual condition of Folklore as a subject perceived by the feudal masters of their lesser subjects.