If it ever was a standard performance piece at folk clubs it certainly isn't now. I've never heard anyone perform or recite it in nearly 20 years of going to folk clubs and it would go down extremely badly at any of the folk clubs I go.

If anyone performed it at my local folk club I wouldn't be the only person having a quiet word with the performer asking them not to do so again. The viewpoint that the poem expresses is ambivalent - liberal perhaps even radical for its time - but couched in all sorts of outdated values and assumptions about race and class.

Ask yourself how you'd feel as a person of Indian descent listening to that. Then remind yourself that you don't know who's in your audience. Loads of people don't realise my partner is Anglo-Indian and once or twice over our long time together I've been in situations where someone has been extremely embarassed after they've said something slightly racist and she has informed them about her heritage using let's say colourful language.

If I were at a folk club and someone 'performed' that poem, I'd be coming over to have a word afterwards.