Ray having reminded me of the book, I set about re- reading it. Although I've only got as far as the first 3 chapters, and the early days of folk song and dance collection (plus a bit of dipping), it's already clear that my memory of it as a very well written book was accurate, and that it was designed to examine the unstated assumptions that we all make. The idea of "folk" is not at all simple, as witness any of the many centrifugal discussions in Mudcat threads.

Had I read the book back in the early 1970s, I would have been spared a great deal of misapprehension, and my selection of music might well have been both more open and more critically selective. It helped me to realise, for example, the social background to some of the attitudes in English dance circles that I found repellent at the time.

Don't let the occasional outbreak of 1990s academic lingo ("privileged", "semiotic" and so forth) put you off. It was probably the only way to get through the academic gatekeepers when Postmodernism was all the rage.

I'm looking forward to re- reading the later chapters, which IIRC cover the period when I first acquired a taste for the music.

If anyone is so itching to read it that they can't wait for the promised new edition, I'd be willing to lend it (local to Derbyshire UK and with dreadful oaths sworn to return it)- just put up your personal email in some suitably obfuscated form.