Tam Lin and Beowolf the province of academics? Not entirely, but why shouldn't they be studied in an academic context? They are literature as well as oral tradition. I smell inverted snobbery.

Hugh Lupton, the poet and storyteller, performs both. I have seen him transfix entirely 'non-f*lky' audiences of all ages in community centres and village halls. When asked in an interview at the time of the First Gulf War what was relevance of Beowulf in modern times, he pointed immediately to the television images of abandoned, burned-out tanks along the route of the retreat from Basra as modern-day 'dragons', transformed imagery of events too horrible to confront directly.

In a performance by Dick Gaughan of Willie O' Winsbury, I have seen a bunch of definitely non-f*lky blokes in a community setting stand up and cheer at the bit where Willie tells the father just what he can do with his house and land, offered as a bribe to marry his daughter.

People out there understand and identify with the immense truth and beauty of our cultural heritage as long as it is presented excellently and with respect. What they find incomprehensible and ridiculous is unrehearsed f*lk club floor spots belting out dissonant, out-of-time renditions with clearly not a thought for the meaning of what they are singing.