This thread started with a question which carried some "passengers": implied definitions which were not clearly stated. Within a few posts, definitions of words were being asserted. It's an old game: write out some labels and then argue about what to label with them - whilst someone else argues what the labels should say. It's all good clean fun, but not particularly enlightening.

I taught myself to play harmonica. In fact, I've heard very few folk harmonica players (as opposed to blues). I picked up some folk melodies by ear, from listening to friends playing other instruments. I've written a few tunes, strongly in the "idiom". Are they folk? If they're not folk, then what are they? I assert my right to be just as much a product of my society and background as Willie Atkinson was of his.

But are they "traditional"? I think they'll be traditional the day I walk into a pub and hear a stranger playing them.