going back to the very VERY beginning of this thread, can I just point out that there are a lot of clever, learned people here who are actually arguing over the most ridiculous thesis anyone has ever posted? "I heard one recording of Joseph Taylor. It was really old. He was singing in a particular way. Therefore, that is the only way traditional English singers ever sang and the only "correct" way to sing English song."

Admittedly, it's this sort of fact-lite, soundbite crap upon which all of his theories are based. But there are two things I'd like to add:

I was listening to a talk on Vaughan Williams' folk song collecting at the weekend. Vaughan , when listening to village singers and if there happened to be more than one of them, would only note the melody of a song - EVEN IF PEOPLE WERE SINGING HARMONIES.

While the evidence of bygone practice will always be patchy and based on what is extant, I'd have thought that WAV would have some awareness of the Copper Family, as he namechecked Bob Copper in another thread. The Coppers posses one of the few unbroken singing traditions in this country - the current lot are the 7th KNOWN generation to have sung the family songs as they have been handed down. And how have they been handed down? That's right: it's a HARMONY tradition.

Goodbye.