Yer right Greyeyes, LONG before Monty Python. I had a friend who was a Morris Dancer and he only survived because he was a big burly construction guy. People just didn't take the piss out of HIM.

Some other reasons that bonfires are declining is because garbage collection is better than it used to be, hence less to burn, and because of 'clean air' laws against bonfires.

Regarding Englich folksongs: I think that schools must bear some of the blame. They teach highly Bowdlerised versions of songs to children when they are young but never give them the real versions as they grow old enough to appreciate them. So all that they know of English songs are trite children's versions.

The reason that we took to American Square Dancing and International Folk Dancing, instead of English Country Dancing, was because the people at The English Folk Dance and Song Society at that time were such a load of incompetant supercillious arseholes. We just didn't want to mix with people like that.