"Shoals of Herring is known by just about everyone in folk."
Is folk a place?
The definition was an attempt to analyse and explain a disappearing phenomenon the among workers and peasants of the world - the creation of songs which had been happening forever as far as was known - according to ethnomusicologists like Netl, Bowra and Trask anyway
That process was grinding to a halt and was not being replaced - people were becoming recipients of their culture (or customers for it)
By 1954, with very few exceptions, the song traditions were dead and the BBC team was largely recording singers who not only were not part of a living singing tradition
James Hoggs mother probably summed the situation up when she said to Scott
"there was never ane o' my songs prentit till ye prentit them yourself, an, ye hae spoilt them a'thegither. They war made for singing, an no for reading; and they're nouther right spelled nor right setten down.'"
The definition was never intended to include outsiders from the communities who had latched on to the results for their own interests
The explanation did not include the form that song making took, which varied from country to country - Lomax and the Cantometrics team showed, without too much doubt that the forms and utterances varied from country to country.
Once again, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with the clubs in any way, shape or form as they represent no-one but themselve - they are not even a united unit - they work as separate units with their own policies
Attempting to include the internet is equivalent to making e-mail a 'tradition'
Jim Carroll