Greg- most original threads on traditional folk themes are almost bound to have been started several years ago- it's trad, remember? Not much new turns up in source material. What does change is interpretation, which is driven by the performer's way of reconstructing the music. In our youth, that was overwhelmingly social and socialist- and all the better for it. Later it became increasingly individual and all too often conservative, as living memory of old hardships receded, and the arcadian perspectives of some of the early patrician collectors were reasserted.

The heirs of former colonials will observe that this is from a Smallislandian point of view.

I used to have quite a few friends here, almost all have passed on now- to elsewhere in the web some of them, others to the recycle bin...