The core values of real folk music are hidden within the music and words, not available directly for academic parsing. Analyzing Latinate influences in the language of "Bar'br'y Ellen" does not a folksinger make, and never even noticing those Latinate influences but being able to envision the emotions and turmoil colliding between Barbry and young Edmund, and actually feel the sparks, does.

That said, it is good to have academics edocumenting and tabulating the historical threads of folk music, and the more folk songs get presented the more people in and out of academe will fall under their mystique. So I suppose it is all for the good, even if the dissertation does kill a few musical souls cold!

A