What makes a new song a folk song?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 01:38 AM

I would also quote the insert note to my 'Butter&Cheese&All' album [Brewhouse 1989], which I began: "All these songs are traditional; but I suspect that every one will have been more or less consciously modified from original sources in the course of making it my own". That, surely, is what one does.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 01:35 AM

Thank you for the puff, Al. Two of the tracks on my Youtube channel, Band Played Wltzg Mtlda & Farewell To The Land are indeed non-traditional; but written by singers themselves steeped in, & experienced performers of, traditional song -- which, as I have often said [eg in my article on The Folk Revival in The Cambridge Guide To Literature In English, where I cite Ewan MacColl, Cyril Tawney, Peter Bellamy, Bob Pegg, Peter Coe as examples], pass & fit fairly smoothly into the context of traditional performance.

How much 'support', to be established by counting of heads, my views may attract is of no concern to me; I am reasonably confident in my judgments, as they affect my own tastes and practices. I daresay Jim might feel much the same. I repeat, for the umpteenth time: in a free country there is no bar to anyone calling anything they wish to 'folk', any more that I can be prevented from saying my cat is a dog if so minded; but [& so ad ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞........]. Why anyone should wish to is another ?, which nobody has so far answered to my satisfaction. Why, once again Al, do you want to call your songs folksongs, & the places you habitually perform them in, folk clubs? I really do ask purely for info and satisfaction of curiosity. Like that guy in Dickens I am always citing, "I do want to know, you know".

All best
≈M≈

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 12:40 AM

perhaps you two should start a Campaign for Real Folkmusic.

that way - you could see how much support your view of folk music attracts. no offence - but everybody i know thinks that folk music consists of more than the stuff, you seem to recognise.

actually Jim, have you ever taken the trouble to research Michael's considerable Youtube archive of performances.

Then you could set him right - make sure he's not telling the world something is folksong when its not. After all you've sorted out the rest of us.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 07:19 PM

"He calls folk singers morons...."
No I don't - that is reserved for people like you who make the incredibly insulting remarks abut real folksingers that you do.
There is really know need to share your medal with others - you are the one who hads earned it.
"The Durham Strike [tommy Armstrong] was recorded by MacColl on Second Shif"
You've just said that and I'm well aware of that fact
I repeat, the poetry of Tommy Armstrong was relatively unknown, certainly outside his native Durham, until the High Level Ranters recorded 'The Songs of Tommy Armstrong'.
It was quite possible that he was well known befor MacColl was the twinkle in anybody's eye. but not to the national public
26 of his songs were published loacally during his lifetime, but it is belived the bulk of his songs were lost altogether
One poem doesn't make a well-known swallow!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 06:28 PM

For once?

He calls folk singers morons....

Sporting and playing, (in the oral fashion.). Now there's a traditional image..

🙀

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 06:25 PM

and The Durham Strike [tommyArmstrong] was recorded by MacColl on Second Shift in 1958,MacColl was popularising his songs six and seven years before the High Level Ranters were conceived

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 06:23 PM

"SO JIM,MacColl Recorded an Armstrong song in 1957 and was happy they were described thus"
Both MacColl and Lloyd were taking songs from industrial backgrounds in an effort, on Bert's part mainly, to prove there was an industrial tradition -
Many of those songs were of known authorship - you have taken great glee in the past in claiming that Lloyd faked songs, now you are holding hi up to prove the opposite, that the songs he "faked" are part of a tradition.
Albums such as Shuttle and Cage, Second Shift and the Iron Muse were displays of songs for and about Industry, not examples of a folk tradition
Some of them were new songs written by writers like Matt McGinn - no claim was ever made that they wer part of a folk tradition - just used to produce feature albums around a theme.
MacColl's work was based on helping develop singers and creating an environment in which they could sing.
Bert's scholarship was, as people have said, somewhat flawed due to his tendency to create what he could not find to make his case.
You seem very anxious to discredit my "scholarship" (I make no claim to such), yet all you provide are huge, meaningless and largely irrelevant cut-'n-pastes - largely from articles you apparently sought out to make a point.
So far you ahve failed to say where "Lowe and Grainger" fit into all this.
By the way, as said, the works of Tommy Armstrong remained relatively unknown until the High Level Ranters placed him on the map - I am unaware of any of his songs entering the tradition.
He may have been 'The Tanfirld Colliery Poet - as Joe Corrie was a Collier Poet in Ayreshire and Thomas Axon and Edwin Waugh were weaver poets in Lancashire - that doesn't make any of their works necessarily 'folk', even though they all borrowed from their various traditions to make songs - that is not to say that some of their works could not have become folk songs..
All this is a far cry from what is being argued here - basically that anything that happens in a folk club is folk.
Would that some of today's singers had the respect for the folk traditions that these poets had.
You keep crying checkmate as if this is one of your CCE competitions, yet you keep knocking your queen over.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:41 PM

Jims scholarship is for once found faulty.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:34 PM

Indeed -- BECAUSE categories matter, for all your question-begging assertiveness. Once again, no idea of what you are on about, what point you think you are making.

Console myself with the conviction that you don't really know either. You are one ever-so-confused ickle Popgun, I greatly fear...

☺〠☺~M~☺〠☺

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:34 PM

SO JIM,MacColl Recorded an Armstrong song in 1957 and was happy they were described thus
"Unquestionably, North East England was the richest, most indisputably authentic home of industrial folksong and of coalmining ballads in particular. And Thomas Armstrong (1848-1919), 'the Tanfield Colliery poet', was its great hero"
considered them folk songs as did Lloyd in 1963 below
The Iron Muse (A Panorama of Industrial Folk Song) arranged by A. L. Lloyd is an thematic Industrial folk music album,.check mate again Jim.   
are yOu trying to say that EWAN ANDBERT WERE WRONG AND YOU ARE RIGHT.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:28 PM

Michael - "categories do matter."

He says, dismissing the majority of folk music as not being folk....

😹😹😹

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:27 PM

Jim gets it wrong again,MacColl not the high level ranters popularised one of Armstrongs songs in 1957,before The High Level Ranters were not founde until 1964, I am surprised you did not know that Ewan recorded 0one of his songs 7 years before the existence of the Ranters,         

BFI
Main image of Mining Review 11/1: The Row Between the Cages (1957)                 
Mining Review 11th Year No. 1: Songs of the Coalfields 6 - 'The Row Between the Cages'
35mm, black and white, 2 mins

Production Company        Data Film Productions
Sponsor        National Coal Board
Show full cast and credits

Ewan MacColl performs a nineteenth-century Newcastle song by Thomas Armstrong, the colliery bard.
Show full synopsis

Unquestionably, North East England was the richest, most indisputably authentic home of industrial folksong and of coalmining ballads in particular. And Thomas Armstrong (1848-1919), 'the Tanfield Colliery poet', was its great hero. Come All Ye Bold Miners, 1952's great anthology of coalfield ballads, concluded with Armstrong's "The Row Between the Cages", justly implying that this was as good as mining songs could get. The tale of two fightable colliers who don't always play by Queensberry Rules, has the lot: demotic language, humour, an affectionate humanity, an artfulness that's entirely self-effacing but absolutely there. Above all a sense of real, lived experience shared by singer and listener: as fine a pragmatic definition of folksong as you'll find.

So when Mining Review came to do its own six "Songs of the Coalfields", the song was the only must-choose. Rather like the book, it was the last of the six to be released. As the concluding item in Mining Review 11th Year No. 1, it followed some rather more typical stories, about hydraulic props, a Scottish mine's in-house hydro-electric plant and the printing and photographic departments at Hobart House, the NCB's London HQ. With Ewan MacColl at the microphone, and a cast of on-screen Geordies who'd have been deeply familiar with the song, it's done with the grace, good humour and casual, almost careless craftsmanship it so deserves.

Patrick Russell
But he was not the only one, oh no there were others BEFORE THE RANTERS in I964,The Iron Muse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    A book of poetry of the same name by John Curtis Underwood was published in 1910[1] by G. P. Putman's Sons as The Knickerbocker Press.

The Iron Muse (A Panorama of Industrial Folk Song)
Studio album by Anne Briggs, Bob Davenport, Ray Fisher, Louis Killen, A. L. Lloyd, Matt McGinn and The Celebrated Working Man's Band
Released         March 1963
Recorded         November 17, 1962
Genre         Industrial folk
Label         Topic

The Iron Muse (A Panorama of Industrial Folk Song) is the title of two albums released by Topic Records, the first as a 12 inch Long Play vinyl record and the other as a CD.

Contents

    1 The Vinyl album
       1.1 Album Details
            1.1.1 Side One
            1.1.2 Side Two
            1.1.3 Personnel
    2 The Compact Disk
       2.1 CD Tracks
       2.2 Personnel on the CD release
       2.3 Source Topic Albums for tracks on the CD release
    3 References

The Vinyl album

The Iron Muse (A Panorama of Industrial Folk Song) arranged by A. L. Lloyd is an thematic Industrial folk music album, widely regarded as one of the most influential albums of Topic's catalogue from its release.[2] The featured singers and musicians are Anne Briggs, Bob Davenport, Ray Fisher, Louis Killen, A. L. Lloyd, Matt McGinn and The Celebrated Working Man's Band.[3] John Tams considers it a Radio Ballad[4]:31. The album was recorded at Champion's in Hampstead, London[4]:30 by Bill Leader and Paul Carter in an ah hoc studio set up a large room. Colin Ross said that they had to wait for the coke fire to stop crackling before they could record the tracks[4]:31. The album had a sleeve note commentary and a 4 page accompanying booklet with tune and song details together with the words of the songs, both written by A. L. Lloyd.

Side 1 consists of music and songs from coal mining, the majority of which are printed in a book of coalfield songs by A. L. Lloyd.[5] The second side starts with a weaving tune and continues with songs covering weaving, foundry work and shipbuilding ending with a final coal mining song and a set of coalfield tunes.

This album was Anne Briggs's first recorded work. This was also Matt McGinn's first recorded work having won a song-writing competition with The Foreman O'Rourke.[6]

In the booklet for the vinyl album A. L. Lloyd writes that The Poor Cotton Wayver has a version to a different tune on Ewan MacColl's album Shuttle & Cage(1954) and was published in MacColl's book The Shuttle & the Cage .[7]:4 as The Four Loom Weaver.

The record was issued in America by Elektra[8] in 1964 in a different sequence and without The Collier's Daughter.
Album Details

The numbers in superscript brackets refer to the track number on the CD release. All songs and tunes are traditional except where the author is identified following the title.
Side One

    "Miner's Dance Tunes(Newburn Lads, The Bonny Pit Laddie, The Drunken Collier)"
    "The Collier's Rant"
    "The Recruited Collier"
    "Pit Boots"
    "The Banks of the Dee(22)"
    "The Durham Lockout"
    "The Donibristle Moss Moran Disaster"
    "The Blackleg Miners(6)"
    "The Celebrated Working Man"
    "The Row Between The Cages - Tommy Armstrong(23)"
    "The Collier's Daughter""

Side Two

    "The Weavers' March(11)"
    "The Weaver and the Factory Maid"
    "The Spinner's Wedding(12)"
    "The Poor Cotton Wayver"
    "The Doffing Mistress(14)"
    "The Swan Necked Valve"
    "The Dundee Lassie(17)"
    "The Foreman O'Rourke - Matt McGinn"
    "Farewell to the Monty(26) - Louis Killen"
    "Miner's Dance Tunes (The Jolly Colliers, The Keelman over Land, Sma' Coals an' Little Money)"

Personnel

    Anne Briggs - Vocals (Songs side One 3,side Two 5)
    Bob Davenport - Vocals (Songs side One 2,7,10)
    Ray Fisher - Vocals ( Songs Side Two 3,7)
    Louis Killen - Vocals (Songs Side One 5,6,8 Side Two 9)
    A. L. Lloyd - Vocals (Songs Side One 4,9 Side Two 2,4)
    Matt McGinn - Vocals (Songs Side Two 6,8)
    Celebrated Working Mans Band - (Alf Edwards Concertina, Colin Ross Fiddle, Jim Bray Double Bass) (Tunes Side One 1,11 Side 2 1,10 Songs Side One 2,10 Side Two 6)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:26 PM

Ha -- cross-posted. Well well...

I think my last post responded to your point. The word's function is to define the music. Categories matter, as I said previously. Without some limiting verbal definition, the music will be wallowing helplessly in a sort of vacuum, it seems to me...

Taxonomy conditions expectations -- surely an essential preliminary to the experience and appreciation of the ding an sich

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:26 PM

"All perfectly true but it doesn't affect my statement that - The word "folk" was being applied to newly written songs twenty years before 1954"
All of which has nothing to do with your claim that Folk was applied to a more general definition in 1954.
What Charles Seeger chose to define as "progressive folk" may or may not be valid considering the social system prevailing in the U.S. at the time he was referring to, when song became an essential part of the situation there
My point has been that at the present time there is no "significant number of people" who have any understanding of or interest in folk song, certainly not enough to redefine it the way people who are trying to here.
A small number of folkies on a dwindling folk scene are in no way a "significant number" - the rest of the world doesn't really gve a toss one way or the other.
There is no re-definition going on here, just an insistence that no definition is necessary.
Jim CarrollA

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:21 PM

Snail -- Further, slowburn, response to

"What? You don't agree that the music is more important than the word?"

.,,.

"Important", equally, in different ways & for different purposes. Invidious IMO to attempt to attribute degrees of importance to two such differing aspects of the topic.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: TheSnail
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:19 PM

MGM·Lio
anything-goes-doesn't-matter-what-you-call-it-if-the-music's-good

copout, Snail.

Whaaat? That quote does not come from me and bears no resemblance to anything I have ever said or ever would say.

Please address what I am actually saying.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: TheSnail
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:13 PM

Jim Carroll
The term folk song has been in use since the beginning of the 20th century - so Sao Paolo took picked up on something that was in existence for over half a century already etc.

All perfectly true but it doesn't affect my statement that - The word "folk" was being applied to newly written songs twenty years before 1954. unless you wish to deny the existence of Charles Seeger and Progressive Folk. This is the understanding of the word "folk" accepted by a significant number of people who have probably never heard of the 1954 definition.

Still working om my response to your post of 11 Oct 14 - 04:00 AM .

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 03:46 PM

"Jim Carroll, are Tommy Armstrongs songs Folk Songs"
You tell me - there is no evidence of Armstrong's poetry achieving wide currency prior to The High Level Ranter's popularising, but on the other hand, they may have done, as he as writing from the community which he chose to make song about - were they part of the folk tradition whish was never picked up.
As for Lowe and Grainger - I'm sure you are abot to tell me that they are definitely folk songs - why are they?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 03:13 PM

Jim Carroll, are Tommy Armstrongs songs Folk Songs , are Jez Lowes songs Folk Songs, are Richard Graingers songs Folk songs, this one was mistaken for a folk song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9k0HmPElec

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 02:48 PM

I disagree with the equvocational & evasive

anything-goes-doesn't-matter-what-you-call-it-if-the-music's-good

copout, Snail. Categories do matter. Accurate communication is impossible without them. Any so-called folk club that did nothing but play records of Lady Gaga would be a ripoff; but that seems to be what your refusal to discriminate is liable to lead to.

So oblige me by not trying to catch me out with false dichotomies, s'il-vous plait, M l'Escargot.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 02:40 PM

"Unfortunately (and for perfectly valid reasons), they chose a term for it which was already in use with a much broader meaning"
No they didn't.
The term folk song has been in use since the beginning of the 20th century - so Sao Paolo took picked up on something that was in existence for over half a century already - Sharp had already published, 'English Folk Song' and 'Folk Songs of the Southern Appalacians'.
All the other forms - lore, tales, dance, custom.... were related disciplines - song was added to include an aspect of folk culture not yet covered - so the term was not "broader", but in fact, yet another factor.
Fore-runners of Sharp et al, were The Grimms, Tytler, Tylor, Max Muller, Laurence Gomme... dating back to the middle of the nineteenth century
Far from the title already in use, it was the missing piece of the jig-saw, which is why any suggestion that we should abandon a term that is accepted world-wide and has a pedigree as long as your arm for something as meaningless as "World Music"
There's a story told of a veteran fiddler who went into a music shop in Dublin and searched for an album of his own playing.
On beig told to look in the @world Music' rack, he asked, "Do you have any music from anywhere else?"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: TheSnail
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 02:38 PM

MGM·Lion
But I now do respond to disagree with your last point.

What? You don't agree that the music is more important than the word?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 11:59 AM

I have read the last two posts to Cleo, who mews her thanks at being so appreciated.

Here she is now -- paws to keyboard.

Miiiaaaaooouuuwwww!

≈Cleo≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 11:17 AM

A singer from Donny called Kevin used to get up at folk clubs and say Hi Cats! at the audience. His folk songs were just about all Paul Simon songs, but delivered wonderfully I recall...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,Punkfolkrocker
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 11:03 AM

Imagining a feline with an identity crisis...

I think a 'barking cat' is positively a great way to describe an approach to making modern folk music...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 10:42 AM

But if you say folk, people know it isn't Bark. No need to get catty.

Or some such bollocks.

🐶🐱

Is Bob Dylan folk?

The world less two old codgers = yes
Two old codgers = no.

I think that's fairly conclusive..

Yes = 👨👩👵👱👼👸🙈🙉🙊😸👧👦👶💂👷👮👳👲

No = 👴👴💩

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 10:20 AM

Sorry didn't respond to your excellent points, Snail. My non-response simply expressed my acceptance of your points.

But I now do respond to disagree with your last point. Words, like all artefacts, have a purpose. In their case, it is to establish communication. Over-defined [ie too far broadened], this essential purpose is marred and frustrated . In a free country, you can go on calling Bob Dylan folk if you like -- or the Beatles or Lady Gaga, or whoever the hell you like. Just as, it being a free country, I am free to call my cat a dog if it will give me any satisfaction.

But she will still say miaouw and not woof-woof; and Dylan will still be a talented writer of original songs and Lady Gaga an agreeable pop-singer whom my wife admires.

What satisfaction is to be gained by anybody by this perversion of a useful artefact -- a word -- from its purpose -- communication -- I remain at a loss to identify.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: TheSnail
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 09:47 AM

Sorry to have been out of the loop for a few days. I've been helping to run a small folk festival, keeping up with folk club admin, running my monthly concertina practice session, preparing for the concerts of traditional Sussex carols we'll be running this Christmas, not to mention having a couple of teeth out somewhere in the middle of that. Never a dull moment.

Anyway, last week, in a discussion of MGM·Lion's claim that misuse of the word "folk" started with Bob Dylan I drew attention to the fact that Charles Seeger had been involved in Progressive Folk in the 1930s. The word "folk" was being applied to newly written songs twenty years before 1954. In case the penny hasn't dropped, Charles Seeger is father to Pete, Peggy and Mike (and various other little Seegers). Jim Carroll seems to think he's all right since he referenced him earlier in the thread. MGM·Lion responded to that challenge by the time honoured technique of totally ignoring it.

The Sao Paulo conference attempted to define a particular category of music; a worthy exercise. Unfortunately (and for perfectly valid reasons), they chose a term for it which was already in use with a much broader meaning. The 1954 definition does not give anyone rights over the use of the word "folk". Quite a lot of people have a different understanding of it. Learn to live with that. The music is more important than the word.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 09:10 AM

Have read your last post addressed to me, Ian. Then I have read it again. And again. And perhaps again, but I lost count.

And I still have not the remotest notion of where you are coming from, what you are on about, the nature of the point you postulate -- about where my newsagent enters the equation; or indeed anything else remotely comprehensible.

But please don't trouble yourself to explain. It really doesn't matter to me in the least.

All Best Regards, as ever -


≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 08:47 AM

The nature of broadsides

With primitive early printing presses, printing on a single sheet of paper was the easiest and most inexpensive form of printing available and for much of their history could be sold for as little as a penny.[1] They could also be cut in half lengthways to make 'broadslips', or folded to make chapbooks and where these contained several songs such collections were known as 'garlands'.[2]
An eighteenth-century broadside ballad

The earliest broadsides that survive date from the early sixteenth century, but relatively few survive before 1550.[3] From 1556 the Stationers Company in London attempted to force registration of all ballads and some 2,000 were recorded between then and 1600, but, since they were easy to print and distribute, it is likely that far more were printed.[4] Scholars often distinguish between the earlier blackletter broadsides, using larger heavy 'gothic' print, most common up to the middle of the seventeenth century, and lighter whiteletter, roman or italic typefaces, that were easier to read and became common thereafter.[5]

Broadsides were produced in huge numbers, with over 400,000 being sold in England annually by the 1660s, probably close to their peak of popularity.[6] Many were sold by travelling chapmen in city streets and at fairs or by balladeers, who sang the songs printed on their broadsides in an attempt to attract customers.[7] In Britain broadsides began to decline in popularity in the seventeenth century as initially chapbooks and later bound books and newspapers, began to replace them, until they appear to have died out in the nineteenth century.[6] They lasted longer in Ireland, and although never produced in such huge numbers in North America, they were significant in the eighteenth century and provided an important medium of propaganda, on both sides, in the American War of Independence.[8]

Most of the knowledge of broadsides in England comes from the fact that several significant figures chose to collect them, including Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (1661–1724), in what became Roxburghe Ballads.[9] In the eighteenth century there were several printed collections, including Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719–20), Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), and Joseph Ritson's, The Bishopric Garland (1784).[9] In Scotland similar work was undertaken by figures including Robert Burns and Walter Scott in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–03).[9] One of the largest collections was made by Sir Frederick Madden who collected some 30,000 songs now in the 'Madden Collection' in the Cambridge University Library [1].
some of them were folk songs some of them were popular, so some of them were folk songs some of them were pop songs some of them were new songs, for example the folkestone murder, the red barn murder,turpin hero,to name but a few.
then we have Tom Armstrong the pitman poet, His works were printed at the time on chapbooks and broadsheets which sold for a halfpenny or a penny each.
Armstrongs new songs includedThis material includes :-

Blanchland Murder, (The)
Bobby En Bet
Borth E Th' Lad, (Th') - (or The Birth of the Lad)
Cat Pie, (The)
Consett Choir Calamity, (The) – (of Saturday 26 August 1911)
Corry's Rat
Dorham Jail - (or Durham Gaol)
Durham Strike, (The) – (more correctly The Durham Lock-out)
Funny Nuaims It Tanfeeld Pit – (or The funny names of the folk at Tanfield)
Gateshead Poor Childrens' Trip To Stanley
Geordie Broon
Ghost Thit' Anted Bunty, (The) - (or The Ghost that Haunted Bunty)
Hedgehog Pie, (The)
Jack Reckonen - (or Jack's Reckoning)
Kaiser And The War, (The)
Kelloe Disaster
Marla Hill Ducks - (or Marley Hill Ducks)
Murder of Mary Donnelly
Neglectful Sally
Nue Ralewae Te Anfeeld Plane, (Th') - (or The new railway to Annfield Plain)
Oakey's Keeker
Oakey's Strike - (or The Oakey Strike Evictions)
Old Dolly Cook and Her Family
Old Folks Tea at West Stanley
Old Men's Trip, (The) - From the Victoria Club, West Stanley
Picture Hall at Tantobie, (The)
Poam To The Kaiser, (A)
Prudent Pitman, (The)
Row Between Th' Cages, (Th'), - (or The Row 'Atween the Cages)
Row I' Th' Guuttor, (Th')
Sewing Meeting, (A)
Sheel Raw Flud, (The)
Skeul Bord Man, (Th') - (or The Skuil (or school) Board Man
Sooth Medomsley Strike, (The) - (or The South Medomsley Strike)
Stanla Market – (or Stanley Market)
Summer Flies, (The)
Tanfeeld Lee Silvor Modil Band – (ot The Tanfield Lea Silver Model Band)
Tanfield Braike
Tantobie Wednesday Football Team
Tantobie Workmen's Club Oxo Banquet
Tommy The Poet Signed On
Trimdon Grange Explosion, (The) - (or The Trimdon Grange Disaster)
Trip From Tantobie Union Club to Jarrow Excelsior Club, (The)
Unhappy Couple, (The)
Wheelbarrow Man, (Th')

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 08:10 AM

Dunno. Folk music is popular in my house

😋

Excellent Michael! Granted, I would have expected a bit more wit, but you can't help my having high expectations of such a clever bloke.

Tell you what. You now have empathy if nothing else with your newsagent. You both know what it is like to be judged as a whole based on a feature you are stuck with.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 07:23 AM

Probably one of the best know songs of known authorship to have passed into the Irish Tradition is 'Patrick Sheehan' - still enormously popular among country singers

Patrick Sheehan (Laws J11; Roud 983)
Tom Lenihan, Knockbrack, Miltown Malbay, Recorded 1977
Carroll Mackenzie Collection

My name is Patrick Sheehan, and my years are thirty-four;
Tipperary is my native place, not far from Galtymore;
I came of honest parents but now they are laid low
And many a pleasant day I spent in the Glen of Aherlow.
My father died, he closed his eyes outside our cabin door;
The landlord and the sheriff, too, were there the day before;
And then my loving mother, and sisters three also,
Were forced to go with broken hearts from the Glen of Aherlow.

For three long months, in search of work, I wandered far and near;
I went into the poorhouse to see my mother dear.
The news I heard near broke my heart; but still, in all my woe,
I blessed the friends that made their graves in the Glen of Aherlow.

Bereft of home, and kith and kin with plenty all around;
I stayed within my cabin, and slept upon the ground.
But cruel as my lot was, I ne'er did hardship know
'Till I joined the English army, far away from Aherlow.
'Rise up there,' says the corporal, 'you lazy Irish hound,
Why don't you see, you sleepy dog, the call to arms sound?'
Alas I had been dreaming of days long, long ago.
I awoke before Sebastopol, but not in Aherlow.

I grouped [groped] to find my rifle, how dark I thought the night;
O, blessed God, it was not dark; it was the broad daylight;
And when I found that I was blind, my tears began to flow;
I longed for even a pauper's grave in the Glen of Aherlow.
Oh, Blessed Virgin Mary, mine is a mournful tale,
A poor blind prisoner here I am in England's dreary jail;
Struck blind within the trenches where I never feared the foe,
And now I'll never see again my own sweet Aherlow.

Dear Irish youths, dear countrymen, take heed in what I say,
And if you join the English ranks you'll surely rue the day,
Whenever you are tempted a-soldiering to go,
Remember poor blind Sheehan from the Glen of Aherlow.

Conversation after the song between Tom Lenihan and Jim Carroll:

Tom: Patrick Sheehan is a ballad I bought from Bully Nevin years ago.
Jim: Yeah, so it was on the ballads?
Tom: It was on the ballads.

Patrick Sheehan – (Roud 983, Laws J11) Tom Lenihan See also: Patrick Sheehan – Vincie Boyle

'Patrick Sheehan' was written by author Charles Kickham (1826-1882) under the pseudonym Darby Ryan Junior and was printed in The Kilkenny Journal in October 1857. It purpose was to protest the arrest in Dublin, of a veteran soldier of that name who had been blinded in the trenches before Sebastapol and had been discharged on a pension of sixpence a day; at the time of his arrest the pension had expired. The song became very popular and was soon to be heard all over Ireland.   It was said to have shamed the authorities into awarding Sheehan a life pension of a shilling a day. . It has been found in America and as far afield as Australia. There appears to have been only one English version, got from a singer in Portsmouth Workhouse in 1907 taken down by George Gardiner. We recorded incomplete sets from several Travellers and full versions from Vincie Boyle and Martin Reidy

Reference
Songs Of Irish Rebellion          Georges-Denis Zimmerman
The Constant Lovers;                Selections from the Hammond and Gardiner collection , Frank Purslow (ed)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 07:14 AM

"Jim, please answer these questions were broadsheets written with the specific intention of making money"
They were written to make money - full stop - for no other reason, the subject matter played no part in their production unless it was judged to be saleable.
No - they certainly were not new songs when they were produced - many of them were taken from age old ballads and songs.
The last knockings of the broadside trade in Ireland included 'Little Grey Home in the West', 'Smilin' Through', 'Terence's Farewell to Kathleen', 'Patsy Fagin'... and 'The Blind Beggar', 'Betsy of Ballantown Brae' and 'Early in the Month of Spring' (Sailor's Life)
Songs like 'Drummer Boy at Waterloo' which bear the signs of having been created by the hacks, were taken up and became folk songs.
Some of them became popular songs of the day certainly, others disappeared without trace almost immediately.
No - they were not the folk songs of their day - the vast majority were probably never sung by the folk, those that were almost certainly originated with the folk.
Those made by the broadside hacks that were taken up by the folk became folk songs via the process they passed though.
What's your point?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 06:55 AM

"Michael ... not exercised at all by your take on life. Possibly because I used to inspect care homes"

.,,.,

Have you the least idea what a vulgar, obnoxious, disagreeable little swine you come over as with such observations as that, Ian? If that's the sort of persona you wish to promulgate, then just carry on at will. Makes not the remotest difference to my life or wellbeing.

But I will just mention that you are a stinking young scoundrel; nasty little cad; foul piece of lowlife...

...trusting that you, and others, will note the avoidance in my animadversions of the sort of vile locutions you habitually make use of in such exchanges.

You really are quite beyond the pale, thoroughly unfitted for acceptance in any sort of decent society...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 06:44 AM

Jim, please answer these questions were broadsheets written with the specific intention of making money from news worthy events or not?were they written to be sold to folk as songs that the mass of folk would buy? are they not classified as folk songs?, and were they not new songs when they were written?were they not the popular songs of the day, if the answers to these questions are yes, they were in fact the pop songs andthe folk songs of their day.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 06:36 AM

"Hits aren't a genre. Folk and pop are"
Folk is a process by which a genre of songs comes into being - it is not a description of a type of song or an individual style - it is an analysis of how the song has established itself in our culture
Basically, that is what pop song is - popular - describing it's status within our culture
The same demands of acceptance applies to both
Sheesh indeed!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 06:01 AM

Hits aren't a genre. Folk and pop are.

Sheesh. 😾

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:41 AM

"why it is not possible to write one intentionally,"
For the same reason it is not possible to writ a hit song intentionally
You write a song which you hope might become a hit, but you have no say in whether it becomes one or not.
It would be stupid to go around claiming you have written a hit song before it becomes on - it's just as stupid to go around claiming you've written a folk song before it comes one.
" check mate jim"
??????
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:04 AM

Funnily enough Michael, I am not exercised at all by your take on life. Possibly because I used to inspect care homes....

(Just playing the crowd, nothing to see here.)
👴

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 05:00 AM

Nobody writes a 'folk song' - they never have - they become such via a process - very much a case of 'don't call us, we'll call you'            
nevertheless the song is still written by someone, it succeeds in becoming a folk song if it is taken up by people who assume its tradtional, examples that spring to mind are fiddlers green, shoals of herring,bring us a barrel.
all songs have been composed by someone, some like 3 score and ten get altered and improved by someone other than the original author.
it is possible that someone could set out with the intention of writing a folk song, by using certain modes and certain speech rythyms, whether they succeed is actually up to the people, but there is no reason why it is not possible to write one intentionally,
isnt that what broad sheet writers did, set out to write songs about specific incidents and then sell them, that was the intention of broadshet writers to deliberately write songs that would sell, broadshett songs are often considered folk songs, check mate jim

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 04:13 AM

" converge and proceed to tell me I am sadly mistaken, to put it VERY politely"
Mistaken about what exactly?
The only hostility towards songs on this thread, and all these discussions is not towards writing and singing new songs anywhere, but towards the older fol song 'living in the dim and distant past', 'irrelevant', ' out-of-date', 'dreary dirges'.
Nobody writes a 'folk song' - they never have - they become such via a process - very much a case of 'don't call us, we'll call you', whether a song is good or bad is totally irrelevant.
The hostility shown towards the older songs and to those who passed them on to us has staggered me - sewer level in some cases.
Each time this discussion comes up it is 'folk policed' out of existence by people who seem to resent the fact that is wrong to think about the songs we sing - take a look at the list of dead threads at the top of the page - several of them forcibly cloes by 'the management'.
Not onl;y 'folk police' but 'thought police', it would seem!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 03:03 AM

in my opinion it is a good song, I am sure woody guthrie and pete seeger would have bbeen pleased to have written it and sung it, as far as i am concerned it is a folk song.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: gnu
Date: 15 Oct 14 - 07:28 PM

And now for something completely the same. Well, same as when I first asked the question a few years back in an old thread. See, here is/was my point. A singer/songwriter creates a work of protest and I expose it to Mudcat and many "traditional folkies" (WTF is that?) converge and proceed to tell me I am sadly mistaken, to put it VERY politely.

Therefore and thereby, I shall not engage in yet another 'what is folk" thread. Simply, I will ask that you listen to the song and judge it for what it is. I believe it is "folk" even if it is a "new" protest song.

Pink... Dear Mr. President.

P.S. I took too much shit for this last time and I don't need that kinda stress anymore so don't shit on me after I leave. It's beneath all you "true folkies". Just listen and decide whether or not you LIKE the song and the message.... THAT is folk.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Oct 14 - 05:30 PM

Musket: "By the way Michael, another way of putting your last point, and perhaps more succinctly, is to say that sometimes you agree with me, sometimes you don't. To say that when you do I am somehow normal and when you don't I exhibit traits you enumerate, (sic) just means you have a rather closed mind."

..,.

Ian knows perfectly well, for all his disingenuously pretending not to take my point, that it is in no way a matter of my agreeing or disagreeing with him; but of the form & tone in which he elects to make his points. Very occasionally, he will state them in a rational & intelligent manner; but much more frequently he affects to take pride & delight in coming across in the persona of an ill-bred foul-mouthed uneducated yobbo. I am much exercised as to what the motivations can be for one of his intellect & antecedence carrying on in such fashion, & what possible satisfaction he can derive from this M.O. It is, apart from anything else, so ballsachingly BORING as to act, as I remarked above, as a strong deterrent to taking the trouble ever actually to read any of his posts at all.

That's all.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Oct 14 - 04:07 PM

At least one other contributor to this debate has accused the older singers of being dishonest attention-seekers, in order to promote his rather strange and often impenetrable agenda,

Whazzat? Er - yeah - er - not what I meant, old man - er - yeah - sure - whatever - just - keep it down, okay? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Oct 14 - 02:37 PM

Jim , have you ever lost the head?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 15 Oct 14 - 01:51 PM

Kick them? I made one a Godparent to my eldest...

For the record, I called Tom Brown "Tit trousers" on stage and at local clubs and he called me nappy features. At a festival, I introduced Fred Jordan as "another tit trousers."

Perhaps that's something we morons need to lose in order to conform to your rather strange take, a sense of humour.

Folk is everything you say it is. It's just a hell of a lot more besides. A pity your ostrich persona kicks in, I reckon you'd like folk music if you gave it a chance...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 15 Oct 14 - 01:47 PM

we're all elderly Jim. I've sustained more than a few stabs of your rapier wit, from your pit boots.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Oct 14 - 01:21 PM

As a matter of fact I wasn't Muskie - I gave a summary of your behaviour earlier which you are obviously not going to respond to.
Please don't flatter yourself that you are the only one who kicks elderly source singers at a pastime - you are just the crudest and most persistent
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 15 Oct 14 - 12:19 PM

No, the old fool is referring to me. Or at least, I hope he is, what with me being an attention seeking something or other.

By the way Michael, another way of putting your last point, and perhaps more succinctly, is to say that sometimes you agree with me, sometimes you don't. To say that when you do I am somehow normal and when you don't I exhibit traits you enumerate, (sic) just means you have a rather closed mind..

Sorry, a bit deep for this thread. Must dumb it down for fellow morons.

Nurse!! He's out of bed again!