Like many folklorists Lloyd was not eager to fix a definition of folk song but he did think there was such a thing The closest he came to his own definition I think was in his chapter in a 1979 collection called Folk Music in School (p10) "I would suggest that nowadays by 'folk' we understand groups of people united by shared experience and common attitudes, skills, interests and aims. These shared attributes become elaborated, sanctioned, stabilised by the group over a period of time. Any such group, with communally shaped cultural traits arising 'from below' and fashioned by 'insiders', might be a suitable subject for folklore studies. Some of these groups may be rich in oral folklore (anecdotes, speechways, etc.) but deficient in songs; others may be specially notable for superstitions and customs. Perhaps for English society the most clearly defined of such groups are those attached to various basic industries: for example, miners with their special attitudes, customs, lore and language, song culture and such. But it will be seen that my suggestion does not rule out the possibility of regarding hitherto unexplored fields, such as the realms of students, actors, bank clerks, paratroopers, hospital nurses, as suitable territory for the folklorist to survey. The present-day folklorist, who views the problem in its social entirety, and extends his researches into the process by which traditional folklore becomes adapted to the conditions of modern industrial life, has to consider the classic 'peasant' traditions as being but a part - the lower limit, if you like - of a process by which folklore becomes an urban popular affair. Indeed, as far as song is concerned, that is the present stage of folklore development: nowadays there is far greater use of the folk-song repertory and of folkloric forms of creation in our industrial towns than in the countryside." I have found that very useful in my own work collecting Australian labour movement songs and poems. Industrial folklore or 'laborlore' as Archie Green saw it allows us to still claim that people do make their own culture, stories, joke, songs in ways that is connected to their work, life and aspirations. At this time in Australia The Rail Bus and Tram Union has a $1000 song competition for a railway songs continuing its own tradition of such competitions. see http://railwaysongs.blogspot.com/
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