and passed down in thousands of households from one generation to the next (which is what 'traditional' means in this context).

Vernacular musical usage was always a good deal more widespread than the prescriptions of Folk would allow. Back in the 80's I lived in mining communities and knew key singers & musicians in their 90's (and older) who would talk openly about taking their one-string fiddle quartets around the farms at Christmas time and the colliery band traditions which many of them had learned from their fathers, but on the subject of Folk Song Proper I invariably drew a blank. Even growing up as a kid we had a wealth of Traditional Northumbriana in our family but it was always just a part of a much wider picture. According to family tradition, my father played all sorts of music on the piano, as did his mother before him, and even sang certain 'Folk Songs' and shanties but my mother never remembered him being involved with Folk as such.

It seems to be the aim of Folk to filter out what it sees as the 'pure stuff' from the background noise of working-class culture as a whole. Maybe I'm alone in finding that a tad specious.