Banjo Tom asked me a couple of questions which I've only just caught up with:

I'm curious and maybe a wee bit confused, Howard, so here are a few burning questions: (1) What does folk music from the "British Isles" refer to specifically, in terms of style as well as geographical boundaries, in your good view?

Geographically, I mean the islands off the coast of Europe comprising Great Britain, Ireland, and assorted other smaller islands. I thought that was fairly well understood, although I realise that some have problems with the word "British", mistaking this for a political rather than a geographic designation.

Stylistically, I am referring to traditional music, where there is a great deal of variety throughout these islands, although there are also strong similarities and sharing of repertoire. There a few - not many - examples of piano being used to accompany traditional music. Daisy Bulwer from Norfolk is one of the best known, but I also have an album of Da Forty Fiddlers from Shetland with piano accompaniment. Furthermore, until fairly recently many homes and most pubs had a piano, and it's hard to believe this wouldn't have been used to accompany traditional as well as popular music.

There are very few examples of the guitar being used for traditional music - Peerie Willie Johnson, again from Shetland, is perhaps the best known - and its prominence in the UK as a folk instrument is almost entirely a product of the 1950s-60s folk revival, and was heavily influenced by American folk music.

I'm certainly not claiming a major role for the piano in traditional music in the British Isles, simply that the guitar had an even smaller role.

(2) What do you mean by 'authentic' in your statement that "the guitar is authentic" in American folk music? (Please say more about 'authentic' in the context in which you use this term.)

Again, I am referring to traditional music where the guitar was widely used, and along with banjo and fiddle is one the iconic instruments of American folk music. Its use in modern folk stems directly from that. The guitar in the forms we know it today, and in particular the steel-strung and electric forms, largely evolved in America.