Having had enough time to think more about this question while on holiday I was intending to re-open this thread, but I would have done so anyway to respond to Wordy's pearls of wisdom.
"It's fair to say that the separation of folk music from folk clubs is a good one"
I doubt if I have ever come across such a crassly arrogant statement in all the time I have been involved in folk music.
So I am to give up all the bawdy and erotic songs, the transportation and poaching songs, those about soldiers, sailors, farmworkers, miners, mill workers, the highwaymen and hanging ballads, the songs about the press-gangs and recruiting parties, the love songs, the historical, supernatural, tragic and comic ballads that go to make up the Child canon, and all the other beautiful songs and ballads that have kept me enthralled and entertained over the last forty odd years, and which are inextricably tied up with our history and culture – and for what?
I assume you are referring to the Charles Rice Diaries 'Tavern Singing in Early Victorian London' (1840 and 1850).
Are you seriously suggesting that we jettison our traditional repertoire for those dreadful glees, rounds and catches that were performed mainly by lower middle-class urban gentlemen in establishments contemporarily described as 'places where one could go to drink, smoke, sing and escape the ladies'. The songs that were performed in these establishments, with such inspiring title as 'The Nigger Ball', 'Don't I Love My Mother', 'Nix My Dolly' and 'Cat's Head Apples' were not even considered entertaining or important enough to make it into the 20th century – if you don't believe me, thumb through the thousands of songs in such collections as 'The Universal Songster' and see how many you recognise, or how many are in any way singable.
To 'separate folk music from folk clubs' sounds to me suspiciously like one of those dreadful 'Irishman' or 'Kerryman', jokes – tell us you're only ''avin' a larf" Wordy.
Jim Carroll