Glueman - the last thing I want to do is stop oral transmission. I think it has stopped, outside the restricted circles of people like us who care about this stuff, but that's another matter.

An open question to those people here who are arguing against restrictive (e.g. '1954') definitions of 'folk': do you think 'folk' has any definition, other than 'music somebody labels as folk'? Is it ever possible to point to something that's called 'folk' & say, "Actually, no, that's not folk, because to be folk it would need to fit this definition"?