""pre-conceived notions are flapping quietly out of the window." sums this up perfectly. "
Steve and Steve Gardahm's claims, challenge the preconceived notions of Child, Sharp, Maidment, Bronson and virtually every researcher who has ever put pen to paper on the subjet over the last couple of centuries, including those who were working while Britain still had a thriving oral tradition and a prosperous broadside industry.
Unless more evidence than both the Steve's have put forward to date than hss been forthcoming so far, I certainly am not prepared to accept what has been put forward so far, simply because it does not make logical sense.
I still remember the feeling of wanting to find out more I came away with from Bert Lloyd's 'Folk Songs of England' - the enthusiasm generated still remains a part of my life half a century later
I came away from Roud's book in despair - "how could we all have got it so wrong for so long?" - or I would have done if I had taken the claims seriously.
For me, it was the same effect I felt when I read Harker's 'Folksong', though, luckily, then there were enough people around to question Harker's claims and reject them
I think it was Vic who put up the Guardian review - I was immediately impressed with how quickly one of the spokesmen for elitist Art Establishment leapt on the suggestion the 'The Folk' didn't make their 'Folk Songs' - "real" artists have always been uneasy that amateurs could produce what they make their living at - and the idea that illiterate or semi-literate peasants coul write poems and make songs.... welll 'who do these people think they are'
I feel that Roud's book would have been better named, 'English Pop Songs', because basically, that's what it was, with all the differing genres lumped together under the 'Folk' umbrella.
I sincerely hope that these claims do not do the damage to folk song scholarship that similar ones have done to the Folk Song Revival - we will know that they have when 'I Don't Like Mondays' is given a Roud number (given Roud's re-definition - why not?)
Jim Carroll