"Ask the likes of Jez Lowe what he is doing with songs like 'Taking on men' and 'Black Trade' "
I know what Jez, and others like him do, and respect that - it's not un-similar to what Ewan, Peggy, Leon Rosselson et al, have always done.
This does not make what they do folk songs, and to my knowledge, none of them claimed it did.
The songs I'm talking about were made within the communities, not to please an audience but to reflect their own lives - not un-similar to sitting in the pub or at the fireside talking about it.
The songs survived in the memories of the people who passed them on because they were important enough to remember, not because they were regularly performed or marketed, but because they lit a spark within the community itself - they became the property of the community - no copyright, no performing rights - more often than not nobody could remember who made the song in the first place.
One of the first of these that came to our notice was entitled The Quilty Burning.
During the Irish War of Independence in the 1920s, local people carried out protest harassing attacks on local police stations and particularly the hated Black and Tans - usually graffiti or minor damage.
One such attack took the form of piling up bundles of paraffin soaked rags against the doors of the empty police stations (barracks) at night and setting them alight.
The Quilty Burning was a comic song about such an attack, it mentions a number of local people and describes their various reactions to the event - I remember playing it to an elderly friend in London who originally came from the village and when it reached verse four he grinned and said "That's my father he's singing about" - one of the magic moments of collecting.
We were told that the song was made by "four local lads, standing at Quilty Cross(roads)" who threw verses among themselves until they had the song - the singer couldn't remember any of their names.
One of the best of these we ever recorded was one entitled 'Paddy ******' (name excluded at request of singers) about a 'made match' (match-made marriage)
It told how a Travelling man selected his wife because of her ability to buy, prepare and re-sell feather mattresses and how she gradually gets to "wear the Trousers"
We were told the song was made by "a bunch of lads sitting on a grass verge outside the church on the morning of the wedding" - a prediction of how the wedding would develop.
None of the singers could remember who the "four lads" were.
By the way Bounty - you didn't respond to my question - would you be willing to forgo your royalties and withhold your name in order to make your songs 'folk'?
Jim Carroll