Thanks for continuing this thread where it left off. It was very much unfinished (though I thought it was beginning to get somewhere by then).

I started the thread to try and have a mature informed discussion about Child. Admittedly, to attract some attention, I took a particular stance but nowhere have I denigrated Child. What I am interested in is the way he is perceived ... by many people as something like a god.

My perception is that, though he's important as an entry into folk scholarship, he had little effect on folk song (which continues mainly despite rather than because of collectors and compilers ... cf the comments of Hogg's mother to Scott that he had ruined a whole host of good songs by writing them down). Child also made a considerable effort in trying to make original texts available (particularly the Percy Folio Manuscript), for which he's not often recognised.

My main gripe at the time I started the thread was the way people were praising him up for being a wondeful collector of folksongs (which he never claimed to be) or for somehow making folk songs available to singers (his books were for a very small circulation at an enormous cost, whereas 87% of his source material was available on broadsides costing less than 0.5 cents). Subsequently, I've learned that his categorisation system was not his own and that he owes a considerable debt to others who are never even mentioned. None of this is Child's fault.

Perhaps this thread will have to die and be reborn 3 or 4 times before we have achieved something really worthwhile, I don't know. I'm more confident now that we will, though.

So thanks to all the people who have contributed usefully so far and I look forward to more!

:-)
Ian