I'd like to pick up on a detail that went past earlier.

Some Guest poster (I don't know if our GUESTs are all the same in this thread) was concerned about a tradition of social dance in pubs being pushed out by playing-only sessions. (Maybe the same) Guest posted later about the "loss of certain music traditions within the Irish national boundaries". Are these references to the same thing? In between, Peter from Essex also stated that social dance isn't part of the English session tradition.

I was in a session in a pub in Ballyvaughan (W coast of Ireland) about 25 years ago with local residents Chris and Ann Droney (concertina players both). After the music had got going and warmed up a bit, I was amazed to see sets of people from the village, who had been sitting round tables listening to the music and were just out for a social drink, suddenly leap to ther feet, forms into small sets between the tables and start dancing. It was quite clear that they were used to what they were doing and spontaneous dancing in pubs was alive and well then, but I can believe that such traditions may not be so healthy now.

In England, Peter is not entirely right. The Dorset four hand reel is an example of a traditional pub dance, and I'm sure that the sessions that continued into the 1950's in East Anglia included some social dancing as well as the song, stepping and pure tune-playing.

I'm all for this, as I see all traditional music as an accompaniment to (or integral part of) either dance or song, and I think if you take it away from those contexts for too long it dries up and risks turning into something different: refined, artifical, competitive and possibly elitist, that may sell CD's but is losing its traditional roots.

Personally I have been thrilled to bits on the rare occasions when I'm been playing a tune in a pub and people have spontaneously got up and danced. It's actually happened to me twice in what was normally considered to be a folk song club.

Anahata