”It looks to me as if nobody knows where 'The Wild Rover' came from and for me the right thing to do is to make it clear if you prefer a particular theory that it is a theory. Don't present your theory as if it were fact.”

It “looks to you” on the basis of what, exactly? Have you read my article (peer-reviewed and published in the FMJ)? If so, where do you find fault with the research or the conclusion?

”And the evidence presented on this thread to 'disprove' his ideas was precisely a selection of mediated accounts, one of which seems to have been a review of a commercially available product, a free copy of which was supplied to the reviewer.”

Assuming you’re referring to the online review I wrote about a CD of Sam Larner, Jim did not link this to ‘disprove’ Harker, and I wouldn’t consider it evidence in that respect either - he was using it as an example of a piece of writing which concentrated on a singer's performance, rather than a theoretical position. But, ooh dear, I got a free copy! Scandal! Bias!

There is a wealth of interview material from Sam Larner, as provided by MacColl and Seeger. Since your default position now appears to be that the testimony of the actual singer can safely be disregarded, because he probably only said what the collectors wanted him to, you may choose to disregard this, as you disregard the interview material with Walter Pardon. But you are ploughing a lonely and rather Quixotic furrow here, if you’ll allow me a flagrant mixed metaphor.