Dear Grabby Graham,

Can I say bollocks yerself? And now I'm quite sure we'll all just get along.

The English folk scene is where you will find English people claiming Britain's folk music as the national music, even today. Just ask the illustrious editor of Folk Roots magazine about it. He can wring his hands and bitch about the Celts, particularly the Irish Celts, with the best of them. For examples of English begrudgery towards Celts/Irish, see uk.music.folk newsgroup just about any day of the week.

My point is that the complaints about the Irish stealing English folk songs and taking credit about them is rooted in anti-Irish begrudgery, not fact. It is an urban myth, fueled by (some/many--take your pick) English people's anti-Irish tendencies. Why do they have anti-Irish tendencies? 30 years of being at war with the Irish does have an effect on the English national psyche. English people view the relationship between themselves and the Irish in many different ways. Of course many of them are positive. But many of them are quite negative, and I view the anti-Irish begrudgery so common on the English folk scene in the latter context, not the former. Others have a right to view the context differently of course, but that doesn't make my interpretation wrong, now does it?

What I'm saying is, the complaints Declan speaks of are, IMO, rooted in anti-Irish sentiments among English and some Scottish nationalist leaning folkers. I simply don't see these attitudes expressed when I am in the company of people who have little interest in the English and Scottish nationalist wings of the folk scene. It seems to me to be a phenomenon peculiar to the nationalistically inclined.

Cheers.