Hang on, I thought we had a separate thread for Wales...?

I think I've made my feelings about 'The Oak and the Acorn' clear. I don't have the time to offer a full rebuttal here, but here's just one example from the article:

"The old, frail, crippled singers that Sharp seems to delight in are only present as anonymous shadows in his work: not once are we given a pen-portrait of a singer that can be remembered."

This is grossly untrue. I gathered together and quoted in full article a substantial number of Sharp's pen-pictures of singers from the Appalachian trips, which are all freely available online for those who care to look. There are also some vivid descriptions in the Karpeles / Fox Strangways biography of a gypsy camp at which he met Betsy Holland, who sang while breast-feeding her baby: 'Talk of folk-singing! It was the finest and most characteristic bit of singing I had ever heard! ... it was one of the most wonderful adventures I have ever had.' This and other quotes telling the opposite story from that presented in 'The Oak and the Acorn' can easily be found in a book that the author reference several times. Either his reading or his quotations are (to put it mildly) very selective.

Sharp didn't 'delight' in old and frail singers. Rather he bemoaned the fact that so many of the people that remembered the old songs in England were elderly. He was delighted, on the other hand, when he came across younger singers like Betsy Holland, or the many he met in Appalachia.