I have read Burns, though I prefer his songs to his poems

In Burns things tend to blur rather, though to take the case of The Highland Widow's Lament, which many will know as the opening song of The Wicker Man, there seems to be a clear demarcation between the traditional portion of the song & that which Oor Rabbie had a hand in. Likewise his take on John Barleycorn which is just execrable*. Like Bert Lloyd, Burns collected traditional songs; like Bert Lloyd he fucked around with them; unlike Bert Lloyd, however, such songs tend to be known as songs by Robert Burns rather than folk songs per-se. I'm not complaining, though it is heartening to find Nine Inch Will Please A Lady in The Digital Tradition Mirror.

a pompously religious police officer who is scandalized by societal sub-group that permits young, nude women to sing and dance around a bonfire

I'm presently giving thought to an interpretation of The Wicker Man as being somehow metaphorical of the condition of Nazi Germany, albeit somewhat more subtle than Animal Farm's retelling of the birth of Soviet Russia. The closing scene, as I indicated above, was the first clue, being so openly an analogue to that of James Whales' Frankenstein (1931) with the difference being that whilst in Frankenstein our sympathies are with the creature, in The Wicker Man we're part of the mob, mindlessly chanting Sumer Is Icumen In as Sargent Howie screams his last. Like I say, a tidy cinematographic equivalent of The Milgram Experiment in that our humanity has effectively been subsumed in respect to a higher moral authority which has been demonstrated to be entirely corrupt. The islanders, like the people of Germany, have been fed an entirely bogus pseudo-religious construct based on the flimsiest of folkloric precedents; they have been rendered docile, manipulated by mere spectacle, and anaesthetised by enforced compliance to the extent that they willingly participate in a sacrifice which is, in actuality, simply a desperate buying of time as the foundations of the aristocratic order of Summerisle begin to crumble.

It's interesting to speculate on what purpose might be served by the clumsy segue from the opening Highland Widow's Lament, as respectfully sung in a traditional manner by Shiela Mackie with Northumbrian (!) pipes & chorus, into Paul Gionvanni's sublime though purposefully untraditional setting of Burns' Corn Riggs. There is a lurch of conciousness here between the traditional, and the faux-traditional, the world outside and the world of Summerisle, where Giovanni's increasingly surreal perversions of traditional themes are as twisted as the pagan beliefs of the islanders themselves. A totalitarian state has been contrived from supposed folklore; the customs of the people have been used against themselves; vague symbolism (i.e the may-pole) have become didactic absolutes, and even their own natural bawdiness becomes a moral prison. How else might we interpret the weeping in the erotic night scene? Or else the alarmed & terrified faces of the musicians as they sing Gently Johnny whilst poor Ash Buchanan is being abusively initiated (though I doubt he's complaining) by Willow McGregor in the room above whilst Lord Summerisle utters his chilling, yet beautiful, soliloquy (which I think is worth quoting in full here):

I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one of them kneels to another or to his own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one of them is respectable, or unhappy, all over the earth.

Just a thought anyway; it's always been one of my favourite films (along with Frankenstein and Quatermass and the Pit), one that keeps revealing itself on so many different levels. Like The Prisoner it deals with issues of individuality and mass compliance; unlike the The Prisoner, however, it makes sure sure that the individual in question is as unlikeable as possible, however so innocent he might be. Interesting to note that his innocence is what ultimately qualifies Sargent Howie for sacrifice! Fine soundtrack too; a horror musical indeed. For those who don't know it, check this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSvJgRSiJSM, and for those that do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdWY-AMY_zY

FOLK: Image & Presentation - maybe it's all there in The Wicker Man after all!

* For a more effective literary take on John Barleycorn, see that by Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown.