Everything you say is absolutely right, RJM. Bert's contribution to and influence on our music is beyond reproach from a performance point of view, and generally on what we loosely call the folk scene.

However, there are also scholars who feel the need to state, myself among them, that a lot of what Bert wrote and said was fabricated to some degree.

As I've stated here many times I sing and love many of Bert's concoctions, but I wouldn't include any of them in my research unless verified from other sources, or if I was researching the fakelore tradition which in fact I have been known to do.

The study of folk music may not have such a high profile as the performance, but it is never-the-less important, and not to be decried or minimised here.