My main problem with the book 'so far' is that folk song is treated as literary fiction rather than what I believe it is - poetic interpretations of actual experiences by those who lived them.
This appears to be the basic difference between how Lloyd and Roud approached the same body of song - Bert presents folk song as being 'of the people', Steve gives them as being 'for the people'
I remain unconvinced that literary hack incapable of producing singable songs
Our researches have found hundreds of anonymous songs in Ireland which were made during the lives of the singers but whose parochial nature and subject matter caused them to die out shortly after the events that inspired them faded from memory
If 'the folk' were capable of song making there is every reason to belive that it was they who made our folk songs
I take Vic's point about collectors being selective and I believe they missed a great deal of vital material in doing so, but I don't count Victorian Parlour Ballads or Music Hall compositions among those - they were literary compositions and had no part in 'folk expression'
If you counted them as folk songs you would have to include the operatic arias sung by Welsh miner's Operatic Societies
Jim Carroll