"The people who want the faces in the churches to be evidence of pre-christian or pagan beliefs and practises behave and seem to think in the same way as those who see morris dancing and black faces in the same way."

I think in truth, they are my feelings - at least ever since hearing The watersons' Frost and fire album sometime in the 1960's. Since then, I have always thought of our folklore as something defined in our nation, by all its inhabitants and all its conquerors. the confused sensiblity about whether we were celebrating winter solstice/or Christmas as a religious festival, fitting in rather well with a culture where even now most of the buggers are pretty illiterate.

I have always suspected that the golden thread of folk culture lies with the proles, and there is a motherlode of atavistic daftness and folk knowledge running straight underground from the Brythons mudhuts to the modern housing estates.

We used to go paste egging when we were kids in the 1950's, and none of our parents (who sent us off paste egging) seemed to know what it was about. I followed the recent revival of the thread about Wren boys in Ireland - it also seems shrouded in mystery.

I'm not sure cerebration is what has kept this stuff going all those years when no one was interested. Is turning up the lens on the microscope going to help. People indulge in these beliefs and practices - because they enjoy it, not because they understand it.