I withdrew from this thread because, instead of sewing the seeds of a practical debate on Peter Kennedy, it has turned into one of the most fatuous and ill-informed debacles I have ever witnessed.

I have returned to it because I want to endorse Jim Carroll's e-mail, which summed up the Kennedy situation admirably. Unlike many of the contributions to this thread it has not been written from a position of ignorance over what Kennedy did and didn't do.

On that score, I was surprised to see one detractor admitting that he didn't know very much about Kennedy, whilst another has been seen elsewhere asking who was the collector who recorded Joseph Taylor! I'm sorry, but that is such basic common knowledge that I would have expected anyone, who considered themselves sufficiently knowledgeable to add to this thread, to know the answer.

What's more, that questioner has also been asking whether there was any animosity between the folk song and dance sections of the Edwardian revival. (Sorry, I can't quote directly without navigating away from the page and losing what I've just written.)

Dick, you obviously don't know anything of the stuff which has been written about that period over the past couple of decades. The literature is not huge, but is significant nonetheless, and you will find a few sources at the end of this message. If you don't know of the existence of that literature, then it suggests that you are sadly under-informed about the British folk revival in general, and therefore of Kennedy's role in it. Instead of attacking people who have studied that revival in some depth, you would serve yourself better by getting up to speed with what a few of us have known for years.

To get back to the matter in hand, I named John Reilly and Tom Munnelly purely because somebody (Dick Miles, I think) asked for facts. I presented them, complete with sources, and I was not very pleased to be erroneously reminded of the law of libel. Sorry Dick. Facts are facts and sources are sources. I did not libel Kennedy and I did not libel his memory.

I have no desire to rake over most of the things which have been said in this thread. However, there are one or two other issues which need to be put right.

First of all Dave Eyre would have been well advised to study the following statement on the Mustrad home page.

"The copyright and intellectual property right of everything appearing in this magazine remains with the person who wrote it.
Nothing may be reproduced without prior written permission of the author, and the citation of MT as the source."

Copy appearing in Mustrad is subject to the same rules of protocol and laws of copyright as those which cover any other form of published media. Dave Eyre should have asked my permission before posting my letter on Mudcat.

While we're at it, Dave Eyre might have cast his eyes over the following;
"The views expressed in all articles, reviews, etc, are those of the author of each piece, not of the Editor."
There are one or two mistakes in Rod's script, which I'll point out to him when he comes back. Otherwise, I stand by what he said. But Dave Eyre should have recognised that Rod is the author of that piece, and his comments are his responsibility.

On the score of litigation, so far as I can recall nobody has ever accused Peter Kennedy of suing people. The accusation is that he threatened people with court action. Those people who realised his "contracts" were little more than elaborate toilet paper told him where to go. Kennedy must have known his agreements were unenforceable before he got people to sign them. In other words he was acting fraudulently.

Incidentally, the Campbells refused to treat with Kennedy over the Nightingale, but I recall that the Dubliners recorded that same version on an early Transatlantic LP. Does anyone know who they credited the song to, and whether the Cantwells benefitted ? I ask because I've been told that a third party absconded with Harry Cox's royalties to The Black Velvet Band and the Dubliners made up what was owing to him out of their own pockets. If so, it's good to see that there are some honourable people around.

On the subject of Folktrax, unlike several other contributors, I have quite a stack of them. A few were bought by me years ago as part of a bulk order, before I realised what Kennedy was at and before I realised how shabby they were. I bought a couple more - second-hand I should emphasise- a few years ago, because they were of Frank Proffitt, who was a great musical hero of mine. Finally, I recently inherited a substantial number. Therefore, when I say that the production standards beggar belief and that they are a rip off, I know what I am talking about.

Incidentally, I take exception to Dick Mile's statement that the quality is "only important [in my opinion]if it becomes impossible to discern the words and the airs of the songs". If I buy a record of Harry Cox or Belle Stewart or Elizabeth Cronin or Frank Proffitt, or any of the great practitioners of the tradition, I do not want to use it just to get the words and the tune. To regard those singers purely as source material is offensive to their memory and to their artistry. These people were masters of the song tradition, and I want to be able to enjoy what they had to offer. Many field recordings were made on substandard equipment in adverse conditions, and poor sound quality is often something we just have to put up with. The BBC recordings were made on state of the art equipment and the sound, for its time, is generally very good. To put that collection out on shoddy cassettes with shoddy notes and shoddy sound quality demeans the tradition and cheats the purchaser.

Finally, a story about Seán O' Boyle which under other circumstances, might be amusing. As it is, it is highly illuminating. It was told from the stage of the Bothy folkclub in Southport, Lancashire, about the year 1988 by Paddy Tunney. Michael Gallagher (Paddy Tunney's uncle) had a version of the Keech in the Creel. According to Tunney, Mickey Gallagher, being a religious man, and sensitive to the song's "salacious" content, agreed to sing it for the BBC only on the condition that it would never be published. It subsequently appeared on volume 2 of the erroneously titled Folksongs of Britain; Topic 12T 161, where the collectors are identified as Peter Kennedy and Sean O' Boyle.

Again, according to Tunney, Mickey Gallagher was so incensed that he wrote a stiff letter to the BBC in Belfast and addressed it to JOHN BOYLE, ENGLISHMAN!
I will not be wasting my time with further rejoinders to this thread. But I hope that any debate which emerges in Musical Traditions will be better informed than this one.

Anyway, here's a few of those written sources.

Richard Sykes, The Evolution of Englishness in the English Folksong Revival, 1890-1914 Volume 6 Number 4 (1993). Folk Music Journal: Volume 6 Number 4.

HUGHES, and STRADLING. The English Musical Renaissance 1860-1940: Construction and Deconstruction. . RKP. 1993. ISBN: 0415034930

Georgina Boyes . The Imagined Village: Culture, Ideology and the
English Folk Revival. Manchester U.P. 1994. ISBN: 0719045711

Dave Harker. Fakesong: The Manufacture of British Folksong 1700 to the Present Day. Open University. 1985. ISBN: 0335150667.

C.J. Bearman. Cecil Sharp in Somerset: some reflections on the work of David Harker. The Journal of the Folklore Society. 2002.