WAV,If your first serious experience of English Folk music was the Northumbrian Gathering at Morpeth, then surely you must have heard Nortumbrian pipes being played in two part harmony. Fiddlers and other instrumentalists also do it in this part of the country, it is part of the tradition hereabouts and harmony parts are written for popular dance tunes. I have been guilty of writing such harmony parts myself. I find it quite a satisfying challenge to come up with a harmony part that is also a worthwhile melody in its own right.

If harmony is not part of the tradition, then perhaps you can explain the popularity of various squeezeboxes with their built in chords - the players certainly made use of them. Going further back, Thomas Hardy's village band in "Under the Greenwood Tree" consisted of three fiddles and a Cello. Don't tell me the cello simply doubled the melody an octave (or two) lower.

No, I think it more likely than not that harmony has long been part of the tradition. It is informal harmony, often improvised, rather than the formal harmony taught in music schools and often commits such heinous sins as singing in parallel fifths and octaves.

Of course there is a tradition of unaccompanied solo singing as well. If that's what you like, fine, but please don't tell others what they should and should not be doing - not that they'll take any notice.

Geoff