Nobody alive today has any continuity with the English folk canon. Few did in my father's era and he was born in 1913. There may have been some singers who knew singers, etc, in my grandfather's time (born 1880s) but it's safe to say The People's Music had died out as the people's music by the 1960s when many here first heard the stuff in revival form. By then it was on a menu of genres for modern sensibilities to fly their flag under, trad jazz, blues, folk - choose from the blackboard when you order your drinks.

Now people can believe what they like about folk music but a) they're not continuing anything, they're re-making it anew for their own generation, and b) the thing is certainly not under threat. In fact it's more secure now in hard copy and soft than it has ever been and being sung somewhere every night of the week. It's no business of mine whether traddies allow modern songs in the clubs they run or not, thousands of great tunes have been written in the last 50 years, barely a handful within a traditional style. I've no idea why people insist their compositions fit the revival format but the bile that's spilt over the subject is hugely disproportionate to its importance.