'And the social cicumstances differ from those of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland how, in the cited respects?'

ever heard of the potato famine and the highland clearances - and god alone knows what we did to the Welsh, but i don't suppose it was any better.

we depopulated those countries, so the communities were less industrialialised, more isolated and more composed of rural communities. Even when they went off to live in Chicago - they went as people from rural communities.

By all the rules of folkmusic, I should be from a folksinging family. My Grandpa (born circa 1880) was the son of an irish tinker, he was sold as a baby to a lancashire family - and he was down the pit by the age of 12, and he knew hundreds of songs and he was a clog dancer. But i tell you this when he sang, and what he sang wasn't like anything really like whats in the folk club nowadays.

Cosmotheka used to do some of the songs he sang - but not really in the same way.

What we are talking about is a major dissociation of sensiblity. folkmusic is in the hands of one class. and as Orwell says - if there is any hope - its with the proles.

you saw the reaction on Mudcat when No Fixed abode said last week they were going to do some folk gigs in caravan sites. People were saying - oh yeh - you'll be singing Agadoo and The Birdie Song.

you gotta face it richard we are talking about a movement which cries itself to sleep about the plight of poachers in the 17th century, sailors in the 18th century, child factory workers in the 19th century, people in the tenches in the 1st world war - but when modern working class people hove into view - they hold their noses.