Fred,
Please ignore my last posting. I had no intention of carrying on this sorry saga; first thing in the morning is no time to write letters.
I don't know who Mary is; I know she is not me, nor is she Tom Munnelly. I don't know William Kennedy so he will have to answer for himself. Personally, I don't give a toss if you believe this or not as I have as little regard for yours or Geoff Wallis's opinion of me as I'm sure both of you have of my opinion of you. My only motive for becoming involved in all this was that my name was raised as being the person who questioned the review of 'Around The Hills of Clare'.
As far as I am concerned her identity is immaterial. Whoever she is, she made a number of points and asked a number of questions which, as far as I can see, were ignored and replaced by a somewhat undignified scrabble to guess at her identity.
Surely it would have been a simple enough matter to answer her questions and dispute her criticisms with a couple of quotes from the reviews under discussion. However, even this is not necessary as these reviews are to be found on the Musical Traditions web-site along with the relevant correspondence. Further correspondence pertaining to this matter is to be found on the Irtrad archive for anybody with the slightest interest to access. Let them decide for themselves the rights and wrongs of the matter. It should be easy enough for them to see exactly how much space was taken up by   Wallis and yourself in discussing the songs and the singing of the Clare singers and Elizabeth Cronin.
The question of the Clare review is now an academic one; in general the album has been received well, the notes have been commented on favourably by those whose opinions I respect and the sales have been excellent. We are now coming to the end of the second pressing, making it one of the best selling collections of traditional singers for a very long time. The one adverse effect that the review seems to have had as far as I can judge was that it was not reviewed by The Folk Song Journal – you and Wallis may regard that as a victory if you wish.
Initially I responded to the review because I believed and still believe it to be inaccurate, unfair and dishonest. Unfortunately those interested are unable to judge fully for themselves whether this is the case as the editor of Musical Traditions refused to publish our full response.   My concern at the time was that the review might effect the distribution of the album, which I believe would have been a pity as the singers, virtually ignored by the reviewer, were important enough to deserve as wide a circulation as possible. As has been pointed out by others elsewhere, there are few enough new recordings of traditional singers available nowadays. Another loser would have been The Irish Traditional Music Archive to whom the royalties were donated.
I really think it's time we called it a day and accepted that we hold widely differing views on our responsibilities to traditional performers. How can we possibly expect the music that we both claim to be important, to be taken seriously if we don't take it seriously ourselves.
As far as I'm concerned this slanging match is over.