I think the topic of masturbation was covered conclusively. I'm not sure I see the point of this in relation to folklore since it is so varied, comes from so many different areas, cultural points, a metaphor for figuring out the myriad formations of stars and planets. Besides, it gets old and what's the purpose of it?

Folklore is essential to understanding folk music, a background from a specific culture which engenders song and music, a roadmap to finding your way through the many rivers and tributaries of folk song and music, a discipline that makes available the history of song and music in the context of a culture, and without it you don't have folk music or song.

The inference that folk song or folklore is dead is incorrect, this suggestion seems to be weighted in favor of those who would like to further their own agenda in the promotion of their own pop songwriting excluded from the dictionary definition of folk music or lore, and a denial that such music needs to be studied. It's the same reactionary attitude that defines those who want to blaze their own trail and ignore or suppress the scholarly role of folklore.

Many folklorists today would say that yes, as people, each of us has our own folklore.

What differentiates folklore from the study of history is that it allows for the acceptance of myth rather than just historical fact.

As to the role of story and song, these are inseparable. Each ballad or song tells a story, sometimes complete and sometimes sketchy, tracing these stories and songs in their evolution give us insight as to their value which I characterize as follows:

History gives you the factual information about events of the past.
Folklore and folk music give you an index into the feelings and attitudes of people
from the past, including an insight into the culture that produces the song or folklore.

Folklore doesn't have to be factual recorded historical information as a result.

Folklore in music is a branch of ethnomusicology, sociology and anthropology. In this, it is a cross-discipline of these areas.

Folklore is broader than what you might encounter in the British Museum of Folklore, that being concerned with a regional or national approach to collecting and compiling data.

The limits of folklore are whatever is outside the methodology used by folklorists to study that field. What that is may be debatable but the methodology and study is undeniable as a discipline, a characteristic being the evolution of a story or song that is more or less culture-based over a period of time, generally decades.

Morris Dancing, it seems to me, is analogous to the evolution of square dancing in the US, in that it has been modified, redefined and codified by its participants, as has been the use of Tartans to reflect tribal history in the Scottish culture. Square dancing has its roots in the " hoe-downs" and "set-runnings", "big circle" dances associated with the Southern Appalachian culture of the US.

There was an attempt some time ago to introduce a Senate bill in the US, to make the Square Dance the national American dance. This was vociferously denounced by folklorists in the US, since other forms of dance could equally claim that title, such as African-American offshoots, Native American dances, regional ethnic Euro-American dances etc. Fortunately, it was defeated.

Folklore is always a part of the history of any cultural group, relying on evolutionary aspects such as a period of time to develop and is still found throughout the world.
What we consider folklore today may be different tomorrow as new forms of it develop, conceivably in areas that we don't associate under that title, ie: forms of rap,
African High Life, almagamates of various folklore and music, jazz expression, even artifacts such as doo-wop street singing, turntable scratching, and a communal approach to songwriting by members of a definable cultural group.

Mudcat is too eclectic to claim the role of folklore and song by folklorists at present although in fifty to a hundred years from now, who knows?

Mudcat though does have people on it who have the scholarship as folklorists and are able to define it through their research and introduction of materials such as references to the evolution of a song through time and its variants (how it changed).

There are people on Mudcat that know more about folklore than in most circles, even some of the scholarly ones that purport to have this discipline.

There are trained ears on this site that recognize the difference between a folkloric performance and a manufactured one made to simulate the real deal.

Folklore, like any academic discipline is mundane for people who don't care about it, in the same way that science is not interesting to those who find it boring.

But folklore is here to stay.