As a semi-outsider in the matter of the history of folk music, except in the narrow field of Irish traditional instrumental music, I find myself thinking that there's an awful lot of up-your-own-bum stuff in these discussions (ever the diplomat). I remember that Woody Guthrie said that he "made up" songs (I suppose as opposed to "composing" them or "writing" them). Well I guess that somebody, or a bunch of somebodys, "made up" every single piece of music way back in the mists of time, so it seems odd to me that a major qualification for a song being a folk song is that its origins are lost or that it's "anonymous." That's just accidental. Somebody or other still "made it up" and, qualitatively, it should be no different, say, from a song of similar era whose maker-upperer we DO know the name of. To me, that anonymity thing is a cod-qualification. There are loads of Irish tunes that I've played for years, assuming they were traditional, only for me to find out by accident that a named fellow had composed them. Could have fooled me, but then to me "scholarship" doesn't sit easy with my need to go out and have fun of a Friday night, and I'm damn sure that for every "scholar" laying down the lines there are a hundred people playing the music who give not a damn. This "folk process" malarkey simply means that we don't look at written-down versions or learn stuff rigidly by repeated listening to records. It's a rather haughty (and somewhat forbidding) expression which attempts to formalise the cheerful and chilled and casual approach to tunes or songs we've heard our mates or our dads and mums or their mates doing and we've copied them fortuitously imprecisely. You can't do that unless you're having fun...

They played Ewan singing Manchester Rambler on Radio 3 (!) this morning. If that isn't folk music well I'll eat my hat. But it don't qualify, do it? So what is it then?   

Enough. I'm going back in me 'ole...