Merciful heavens, what a commotion!
Having just ploughed through these 200 or so posts I feel like a sober man who's wandered into a party where everyone else is four or five drinks ahead of him. For goodness sake, let's try to calm down and get things in proportion.

Mr Paris is a professional entertainer. He earns his living by telling stories. So long as the stories amuse a sufficient number of people, he can eat, drink, run his car, pay off his mortgage etc, etc. However, these stories do not have to be true, and most hearers do not take them as such.   

"Folk singers" – whether modern and synthetic or ancient and authentic– have been mocked by satirists for decades, if not centuries. Nevertheless, we are still around. The two-pennyworth of mud Mr Paris threw at us the other day will have no effect, except to confirm his reputation as a vendor of smoothly delivered clichés with a predilection for soft targets.

So let's ignore him and spend our time and energy on something more constructive, like learning a new song, a new dance, a new tune, or even a new instrument? If enough of us keep on doing that, and doing it well enough, then the folk tradition will be around long after Mr Parris and his ill-informed gibes have been forgotten.

Wassail!