Frank, can I say "bollocks"? Yep. Good. I suggest you re-read Declan's first post - he said that he was OPPOSED to ppl complaining about the Irish "stealing" songs, and that the fact some songs are popularised as "Irish" is just a part of the folk process.

I can understand why serious music researchers would get annoyed by CDs like "20 favourite Irish songs" though. It's rather the same way that films like "Elizabeth", "Braveheart" or "U571" annoy historians - they give the public the impression that the songs originated in Ireland or were written by Irish people, which is provably false for some of these songs (eg. Wild Rover). Whether it's a big deal depends on how much you care.

I'm not sure how you bring all this back to the Troubles - does everything ultimately come back to that for you, like Freud says it all comes back to sex? FYI, folk music hasn't been Britain's "national music" for ages, Britain's national music has been whatever the latest (American-inspired) pop music is, for over half this century, from American dance-hall jazz forwards. There sure as hell isn't anything "sacred" about it - just check out Shambles' threads about local councils shutting down folk clubs to see how much anyone non-folky cares about it!

For the record, many folk songs popularised by Irish bands (and sometimes labelled traditional) were actually written by English, Scottish or American authors. And many folk songs popularised by English bands were actually written by Scottish, Irish or American authors. Big fat hairy deal.

Graham.