Just trying to pull together discussions going on on the other Bert threads. Their is clearly are growing number of songs that owe much more to Bert Lloyd than to the people he claimed to collect them from.

The Blackleg Miner, Do me Ama, The Recruited Collier, Reynadyne, Tam Lyn, Byker Hill in 9/8, The Four Loom Weaver, The Handloom Weaver and the Factory Maid are songs that various people feel are a lot of Bert.

I trust Ruth Archer wont object to quoting her from the "Do me Ama" thread:

"I agree that one of the problems about the "remade" songs is that they are often made in the image of Lloyd's personal politics. It's about as academically dodgy as it's possible to be: start with a thesis, and find sources that back up your thesis. And if the sources don't quite support your thesis, change them. Or just make them up. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time..."

And similarly Brian Peters from the Source Singers thread:

"Two of the best-known songs of that genre - both of which I've been known to sing - are "The Four Loom Weaver" and "The Handweaver and the Factory Maid". I can't understand why anyone would choose to sing those songs without being at least mildly curious about where they came from, who composed them, who actually sang them a century or more ago. In both cases it turns out that their provenance is murky, with probable or definite editorial intervention by Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd respectively. That doesn't mean that they're not worth singing, but it does mean that I would feel the need to be careful about introducing either song to an audience with words like "Here's an old song that Lancashire cotton mill workers used to sing."

Two questions:

1. How long is the Bertsong list
2. How much does it matter?