Conrad has picked out the quote from Dick Gaughan because he wanted to sound-off about his concerns about the non-nationalist tradition in Ireland being marginalised and ignored.

His suggestion is that there is an inconsistency between what Dick has to say about tradition, and his selection of songs to sing.

But Dick Gaughan is not talking about that kind of stuff in this passage. He's not talking about whether songs should be censored or shouldn't be censored. He isn't in fact saying anything about the criteria singers should use in forming their repertoire. He's talking about how we have to be humble in making theories about folksong and about tradition, and need to recognise that we only have access to a pretty random sample of what has actually been sung at any time.

Thread drift is in my view quite a good thing to happen, and for a discussion about "What is Folk" to turn into one about Irish politics is quite a predictable thing to happen. These are two of the most longstanding free-fight areas on the Mudcat, I suppose they had to come together some time. But I think that stretching and distorting the sense of a quote in that way is not the best way of drifting a thread the way you want it to go.

And I think GUESTCharlo is just stirring things, and ought to be ignored. (I know I've just broken the golden rule and taken notice of the anonymous stirrer, but every golden rule has to be broken some time.)