This is ridiculous, why is this discussion based on age, surely that's irrelevant. If these guys made people feel unwelcome I'm positive it wasn't intentional and as for being rude, I know for a fact this would have been only in a musical sense and not verbally. Just because someone doesn't offer you a chair that they're already sitting on doesn't make them a terrible person. I have been made to feel welcome by them irrelevant of whether I can play or not.

I can't remember who said it, but it's apparantly our (young peoples) duty to carry on the folk tradition and this is why we should play. NO. I play folk music because I like it, if this means the tradition carries on then thats great, but that is by no means why I play it.

And on another note, I have been in many sessions at festivals and been made to feel unwelcome by older people, the solution...go and find another session. It's not the end of the world.