"your stuff is music that used to be folk music, before the folks got pissed off with it."
Thanks for that lucid summing up of your understanding of folk music Al - it seems to go for a number of people here.
You have mine.
We spent a glorious week-end staying with Bob and Ella Cann on Dartmoor many years ago, in the company with two of Ireland's finest musicians, piper and concertina player Tom McCarthy and fiddle player Bobby Casey.
Thousands of Ireland's Ireland's young musicians and now coming to traditional music on the basis of their playing.
Toms children and grand-children are playing like veterans, his grandson Padraig won the Gradam National television award last year for musician of the year and the rest of the family are now in their third generation of representatives of Irish culture at its finest.
Happily, Ireland hasn't "got pissed off" with its heritage, I really am sad to learn England has.   
Perhaps we should leave it there before we really fall out. eh?
"I've never been entirely comfortable with the Irish notion of making playing of certain instruments competitive"
We are it total agreement on this one Muskie - competition should never be an incentive for involvement in music - I've seen too many youngsters driven away from music be not winning 'the glittering' prizes.
Ireland has now risen above all that, though there is one organisation which persists in making it their raison d'etre, happily, their influence appears to be very much on the wane.
Jim Carroll