Flawed as it is, 'Folk Song in England' is, for me, probably the most influential work on the subject (alongside the equally flawed 'The Ballad Tree' by Evelyn Wells).
It is a great work, if only by default; as far as I am concerned there has been nothing to equal it (somebody mentioned 'Fakesong' and 'The Imagined Village', both of which left me with a rather unpleasant taste in the mouth that I have never quite been able to get rid of).
Those of us lucky enough to hear Bert perform live, or attend his lectures, or hear his radio talks such as 'The Lament' or 'Folk Music Virtuoso' were well aware of his tendency to 'fly by the seat of his pants' academically, but what always came over to me was the love he had for the songs and music, and more importantly, for the people who created them and passed them on. This occasionally led him (and MacColl) to present wishful thinking as academic accuracy, if only for the best of reasons.
'Folk Song in England', for me, was a step in the right direction away from Sharp's 'Some Conclusions'; by no means containing all the information of traditional singing, but giving enough to indicate that, if we lifted the corner of the subject and looked underneath, there was a treasure-trove yet to be discovered. Probably its greatest strength is that it is extremely readable.
It's always seemed to me that the field of folk song research is very much virgin territory, relying heavily on speculation and partially informed analysis. This is due mainly to the fact that there has been no real effort to collect information from the real experts – the traditional singers. I believe that personally, I learned much of what I think I know, sitting in Walter Pardon's or Tom Lenihan's kitchens, or in Mikeen McCarthy's or Mary Delaney's caravans – light years away from the dry, laboratory atmosphere of some of the conferences and lectures I have attended or the impenetrable tomes I have waded through in an effort to understand traditional music.
Bert Lloyd's world seems to me to have been a gentle, kind, humane one, a far cry from the predatory tendencies of some of today's academics who seem to be more concerned with carving niches than passing on information and experience (aptly described by one writer as a piranha pool).
The great Irish traditional music expert, the late Brendán Breathnach one boasted that he and collector Tom Munnelly were the only employees of the Irish Folklore Department lacking academic qualifications; I know whose work I would choose to consult if I had to choose between these and the lab technicians.
Jim Carroll