Harker?? ROFL!

I must admit when I finally tracked down Fakesong I was expecting something a good deal more - er - radical than it actually is; in fact, it's rather quite mild & considerate given its reputation. Stats? WTF??? None of which gets away from the fact that Folk is a middle-class academic fantasy of working class culture born of an bourgeois class condescension replete with quite terrifying implications of pure bloodlines that are very much with us today. Steve Roud was on here a few weeks back saying that because 'Shoals of Herring' had been 'collected' from a bona-fide traditional singer it was now a traditional song.

I quote : It's not the origin of a song which makes it 'folk' or 'traditional' but what happens to it if it is picked up and sung/passed on within a tradition.

ROFL? I tell you, the more I read of the orthodox folk law the more it depresses the hell out of me, but that's nowt new.

(Still miffed that I couldn't get a seat at the your New Penguin Fylde show though, Brian - apologies for lack of cheer outside the North Euston; I was so ill that weekend I was very nearly hospitalised on the Monday...)