Backwoodsman and Folkiedave: surely there is room for compromise? BWM is quite right that performing in front of an audience is a quite different point along the learning curve from practising at home. I've always believed that, no matter how perfectly-practised a new song or tune is, you've only ever learned it when you've 'sung it out'. However, Dave is equally right that a standing-up-at-the-front floorspot is a less suitable place to be rehearsing your new material than an informal singaround. Also - going back to Brian the Snail and the Lewes Arms - a single song in a round-the-room progression is less of a 'performance' than a three-item floorspot.

So why not learn new skills in workshops, practice them at home, try them out in a singaround or session, the perform them as a 'floor spot' when ready? Hey, this is what actually happens most of the time! And folk club MCs presenting an evening in which formal floorspots are the warm-up to a guest performance usually have the sense to pick and choose from the available talent, and to quietly overlook those who would bring the evening down. Yes, we have all witnessed occasions on which this self-regulation has failed horribly, but if we want to retain any semblance of democratic music-making, we're stuck with it.

Weelittledrummer wrote: "....if you ever saw Ewan MacColl sing [Tam Lin] you saw somebody apply himself with the same committment as a great shakespearian actor doing one of the "big" speeches."

And, in the same post: "What exactly are you suggesting that trad folk songs become like Beowulf and Chaucer - and the province of academics?"

Leaving aside the point that any kind of popular music, from the Beatles to punk and beyond, is the province of academics these days, the whole point about big songs like the Child ballads is that they work on many levels: as epic drama (your Shakespearian analogy is bang-on), as grist to the mills of academia, and also as gripping, in-your-face entertainment - best presented in a relatively intimate setting.