Agreed about the rapid change in tachnology and fashion nowadays, David. But that still tells us little about how Joseph Lees sung his "Jone O'Grinfilt", and I'd bet it wasn't dispassionately, unless he was doing a dead-pan on it.

You mention above that "for a large part of English history being passionate about things was frowned upon - you know, stiff-upper-lip, etc". I believe this to be a fallacy, the manners you refer to were an affectation limited to a particular time (Victoria has a lot to answer for) and a particular class (mostly city-dwellers and well to do, with little experience of the things the traditional songs talk about). The ordinary man on the street or on the farm, the miner or the sailor or the tinker or the tanner wouldn't give a fig for stiff upper lips, I bet. When they hurt they cried out and when they were happy they laughed. And as for being "frowned upon", the very expression belongs to those upper classes. Let's not fall into the trap of extrapolating from a few snippets of information about the well-to-do of a given period to views of a whole, diverse society across the centuries.

And just to play the culture game a little - I am reminded that in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries many of the arts turned towards borrowing ideas from classical Roman and Greek periods; from "bucolic" poems in Elizabethan times to the columns etc in architecture etc. Now, does that mean that English culture was irreparably contaminated by those affectations? Ot simply that it assimilated them and grew with them? I think you can guess my view. Well, the same can hold true today, with influences from other cultures (just think of Chicken Tikka Massala, lager and kebab). Why, if it helps to get people singing, I might even condone karaoke!

OK, that last one was a joke. Karaoke is unforgiveable...

So let Seth experiment. He cannot hurt anything, and he may well add value. According to many, he does, too.