@ Jack, yes, Harker does seem to have found the work of Ritson better than the work of some others.

"I agree with Jim that ‘Fakesong’ is not the place to go to find out about songs or singers.   Concluding the chapter on Child, we find: “About the lives, interest and culture of the people who made, re-made and used [these] songs, Child like his predecessors can tell us almost nothing.” But 'Fakesong' tells us almost nothing about them either, except as non-speaking, walk-on parts in a theoretical narrative."

While I can see where Brian is coming from, I don't think this is quite fair in terms of Harker accounts of what ordinary people were doing. For example, Harker mentions Chartism, which ordinary people were involved with. He takes a broad historical perspective. This really did exist; some of my (Lancs at the time) ancestors were signed up to it. But even if it were fair, Harker has not set out to write a book about songs or their singers. He set out to write a book about selected mediators. We might wish that he had set out to write a different sort of book, but he didn't.

For me, I think Sharp was probably racist and also that he uses the word 'race' in a broader sense to mean something like 'national'. See page 12.