I'm a bit suspicious of the motives behind this thread. Or, to put it another way, I don't subscribe to the theory (notion?) that 'truth' can be uncovered via a popularity contest.

'Guest, Bert' describes this thread as, "An offshoot from the "What is a folksong" thread." This implies that if we can discover what the 'majority' think of as a 'folk song' then we will be closer to a 'true' definition of the term 'folk song'. I submit that this is a false assumption. It is also a meaningless exercise because we already have a workable definition of the term 'folk song' - it's just not a very popular one - mainly because it doesn't conform to many people's wishes and prejudices.