Two points.

First, the 1954 definition seems to me perfectly reasonable except for what is, I feel, an over-emphasis on oral transmission. At its strictest this definition would exclude the Copper family: who had all there songs written down in a book, and thus not transmitted orally. Don't exactly know how i'd improved the definition: something like mediated or modified, by an oral process, making the point that it is not oral *transmission* that is important, but oral *interpretation*. Slightly off-topic, at a concertina beginners workshop I was helping with a few years ago, I got into a minor disagreement with the (classically trained) leader by stating that the notes, as written, were a guide and not a gospel. That's the sort of thing I mean.

Secondly, Captain Birseye said "[the] EFDSS remit then, as it is now,was the preservation, encouragement promotion of International Dance and English Song[please note English Song]not International song.". Actually it was the other way round. EFDSS was formed by a merger between the Folk Song Society - which always had an international remit - and the English Dance Society - which saw itself as preserving the dances of England.

Mark Austin