Everyone doing any sort of research has to decide how extensive the topic should be, and define their terms in a way that keeps the project manageable. It doesn't mean they're rejecting other avenues of study as irrelevant.

I suppose Sharp felt that music hall songs were already familiar and well documented at the time. In his collecting, he did concentrate on certain areas, and on rural rather than urban song and music, but I don't know of any evidence that he thought the rest was in the "wrong" category - I think it more likely that he simply concentrated on what interested him most, and the places where he felt socially comfortable, which is perfectly understandable.

If someone does decide to study the songs on football terraces in 2007 (and I do hope someone will!), they'll have to decide what to include and leave out, but most people won't criticise them for not extending their interest to children's skipping rhymes or folk-rock, we'll just be interested to see what they find out about that one category of song.

Marje