Weelittledrummer, I had to smile there - that was your second reference to Carthy & Co, so I guess there must be a weelittlebee buzzing in that bonnet of yours about them. As near as I can make it, and please correct me if I have the wrong end of the stick, I think you infer that only songs recorded and passed on by Waterson/Carthy etc (let's call them The Establishment if you like) will be preserved, and the rest will disappear... "up shit creek and on a collission course with how things are" as you put it, helped by the fact that those that get the media attention get passed around the most.

I don't agree with this for several reasons. Yes, songs passed on by the Establishment might make it to the mainstream of trad folk and be remembered by most. But this does not mean that other songs will be necessarily forgotten, they just will be remembered by fewer people, let's say.

But even that last sentence of mine might not hold true; fans of trad folk always have an ear for a "new" (as in "rare", not newly written) song, and they pass it on. This effect will help spread the lesser-known songs, as it has done for decades (and centuries? - how about the Jone O'Grinfilt song claiming several parents hundreds of miles from each other today). I can certainly imagine song collectors 50-100 years from now jumping with glee every time they "discover" a non-Establishment trad song; like Fiddlers Green or Dave Webber's songs, for example.

I hold that the folk process of handing on and collecting is a lot more complex, sophisticated and pervasive than we give it credit for, for all that it is not as organised as the media establishment. It is this very lack of organisation and formality that gives it its vitality.

And finally, your comment about there being a "collision course" infers some sort of competition; as if a listener can only hold so many good tunes in preference, and the media establishment is bound to fill this up leaving no room for others. No way, mate - no matter how many good songs I have heard there is always room for more, and I don't believe I am any different to everyone else in that. There may be competition for the dough, the lolly, the purse, but that is commercialism for you, whose influence on the attention of audiences is negative for folk music in general, I grant you. But once someone is a traditional folk music fan, he/she is not limited to only what the commercial music establishment has to offer.