Oops, my last post went walkies.

The point about Donnegan and Dylan is that they inspired working class people to take an interest in expressing themselves through folksong.

You seem to be implying then that Donnegan and Dylan *only* had an effect on working class people. That just isn't the case. Sure they inspired working-class people to take an interest in music, but they also inspired middle-class people (and probably upper-class too) as well - it was completely class-agnostic.

And boy did that stick in the craw of the upholders of the tradition.

Who were they? The obvious one I can think of would be Ewan McColl, trying to limit people to only singing songs from their ethnic/class background. But he was in a minority with that opinion, and his Critics Group crashed and burned because of this unworkable restriction.

Ironically as well, some other "upholders of the tradition" were also the working class people from whom the songs had been collected, who didn't like other people singing "their" songs. Other collectees were quite happy to see "their" songs getting wider attention.

Graham.