I suppose once it gets a Round Number then the jobs a good 'un. Plenty new songs have these (Shoals of Herring, for example) having been subsequently collected from Bona Fide Traditional Singers - whatever the hell they might be in this day 'n' age; even in that day 'n' age the implications of pure blood cultural innocence are really too much to cope with. One would have thought singing such material would automatically disqualify them - innocence lost and the pure blood sullied.

*

Last night a bunch of us did a gig of entirely Brand New Folk Songs on board of a trawler as part of the opening stages of The Fylde Festival. All the lyrics were newly composed in various Traditional Styles on subjects of Lancastrian Folklore (Folk Dancing, Ritual Bonfires, Witchcraft, Visiting Royalty and Trawlers) by Ron Baxter and set / adapted to Idiomatically Traditional Melodies by the individuals in the band.

Any Fylde goers will have a chance to hear us do it again at The North Euston on this coming Friday noon and Saturday PM (look out for 'Lancashire Curiosities' in your programmes) and I trust no one will be in any doubt as to what qualifies the material as being Folk, however so recent in its composition. In terms of the 1954 Definition it's all bang on anyway - lots of continuity with the past and chock full of creative impulse & variation with the ultimate form determined by the community with plenty of unwritten collective remaking & remodelling to give it that all-important folk character which guarantees that it never comes out the same way twice.