The other thing that makes me cross is the implication that the underlying motive of the people who complained was to have a pop at Seth, when it's been pointed out ad infinitum that this was never about him, or the quality of his music, and that even those of us who don't condone the nomination ackowledge the great job Seth has done in bringing new audiences to folk.

Only by *some* of those who didn't condone the nomination. From my memory of the threads on this topic, there were more than a few posters who saw this as further evidence of the evils of "folk going pop", and *were* using this as a stick to beat modern folk artists with.

That's the problem. You've got one lot of people who are rationally making a point that this song, whilst it may later *become* traditional, is not actually traditional now, even though the tune and story are traditional. They're being quite sensible about this. Standing alongside them, you've got a vocal minority jumping up and down shouting "Judas" because they fundamentally don't believe that new music can be folk music or that anything modern can be worth listening to. Guess who gets the press coverage?

Graham.