In the light of other threads (in particular those about Bert Lloyd) I've been thinking about the extent to which Traditional English Folk Song ever existed as an autonomous phenomenon, and to what extent it ever permeated English Culture as a whole. One wonders what else these Traditional singers of Traditional English Folk Song were singing, and how they might have been singing it.

And to what extent can we consider any aspect of English Culture as being autonomous (and therefore distinct) from that of its neighbours? The answer is, of course, we can't. The recordings of Davie Stewart, John McDonald and others would indicate that in Scotland accordions were traditionally used to accompany folk song. Traditional English singer Bob Roberts accompanied himself on a melodeon, and I'm quite sure he wasn't alone in this. So the evidence for chordal accompaniments to Traditional English Folk Song is there if you look for it.

Monophonic modality was considered a defining characteristic of Traditional English Folk Song by early collectors & I've heard it suggested that they were so bent on their agenda in this respect that songs that did not fit this criteria were overlooked, thus giving the somewhat distorted picture that has come down to us today.

To use this distorted picture as blueprint for how things should be done is perhaps a tad misguided, unless of course it fits ones personal agenda, or else ability, in which case one might expect a little more by way of humility when it comes to discussing a subject that, one suspects, might hot have figured very highly, if at all, in their pic n' mix humanities degree.