Leveller makes a few good points and I wouldn't wish to disagree, the personal connection thing is what makes a song a folk song. Whether it be a traditional dirge about carrying a ruddy coffin over the North York Moors, Vin Garbutt singing about operating a lathe or a punk band writing a song asking what else there is to live for other than getting your tits off on cheap available drugs. They are all folk songs.

I do like leveller's emphasis on your connection.

My connection with what I think of when people say folk is my experience of the folk scene, same as many others have said. I could also talk of my connections with Rock & pop, having been a musician in that arena and how many songs keep the old nostalgia going. (A pop song from the '70s might relate to an old girlfriend, a rock song might remind me of a great time at a festival, or hearing a bloke I don't know sing a sing at a folk club might take me back to another place I connect that song to.)

That said, I have never written songs about the industry my community was associated with and I worked in. No reason one way or the other, just haven't. By some definitions here, that makes me a consumer not a feature of folk? Reading some of the above, you would have thought so.

For me, the thrust of this thread was perfectly displayed by M'Unlearned Friend four or so posts up. He said that Jim Carroll has every right to be "we" and I therefore don't belong. Mind you, being somebody who has had a smattering of legal training, he slips in the "Irish" bit in order to be technically if not morally right. Funny, I never said otherwise, and Jim's knowledge and expertise is far more than just Irish, (I'd be offended by his comments too if I were you Jim, as you like to sound offended.)

I pointed out that a few users of carbon fibre guitars have had a few snide comments, although Bridge's use of the words envy and lust are new ones to me. One person who said my new guitar doesn't fit in folk clubs had a Fylde, now that I can lust over but cannot justify the cost.

Thanks for sitting there proving my point with just about every post you put M'Unlearned Friend. Just keep looking for the monsters under the bed if I were you. I for one don't need a dictionary or other definition to be pissed off when some precious sod tests my performance against their idea of what it should be. Many have such thoughts in their head I suppose, and the nicer people keep them there. I learn from constructive criticism of my performance, but never from criticisms of my right to do what I do. I use my inbuilt clapometer for that, thank you very much. And I clap vigorously when I pop down to a singaround type club and hear people using the event to sing publicly, which is fun in itself, regardless of whether you have read the 1954 definition of something that cannot be defined.