I suppose I am more interested in making arrows than in finding any targets.So you had better, DUCK!!!! The music did come before the categories, after all.

Yes, it was a lot easier to dig this one up again but I had been thinking about the subject again recently and I did have something new to say. It is also nice to see some new opinions being voiced here.

To my great honour and surprise, I found that I had one of my songs in the DT. I had been posting songs to the forum for sometime, as I found it easier, in some cases, to post my thoughts, contained in a song, than to write them. When I came to gather them together for inclusion in The Mudcat Songbook, I found there were quite a number of these songs.

This is not a criticism of the DT or the selection methods used. I only mention it to demonstrate my feelings, as although I was pleased to see a composition of mine there, if I am honest, I was a little disappointed in the fairly untypical nature of the song that represented my efforts.

It was what I would describe as a 'cod' traditional folksong. Written in a setting and style of the past and as a conscious effort (if genuine) attempt to write a (folk) song about a subject that interested me, life on the inland waterways of Britain. For although I honestly thought that this was probably the best way to treat the subject, it was done, as a fairly academic exercise, to see if I could do it.

I did have some knowledge of the subject but the song is not a first hand account or a scholarly work, just mainly, my imagination and personal view. Not too different to most of the other songs of mine that I had posted. So why then, I ask myself, does that one appear in the DT and not the others? Myself does not answer very clearly.

Do songs like these have any merit or do they exist only because of the curmudgeons and their narrow definitions?

Would it have mattered, if I had not claimed authorship but that the song appeared in the DT as traditional?