Alright, Jack, valid point

Or perhaps not... After all, these 18th century recorder tutors were aimed at bourgeois hobbyists - hardly the traditional folk musicians whose rustic repertoires were greedily plundered out of long standing fashionably for same. A crucial difference perhaps? Also - the recorder is in no way, shape or form a folk instrument - it's a dynamic classical flute developed for chromaticism and virtuosity reaching its apotheosis as a solo orchestral instrument of the high Baroque. Requiring a relatively simple embouchure made the recorder ideal as a parlour novelty, but is that really folk music? I would say perhaps not, no matter what tunes they were playing out of their tutor books; folk music is, after all, more than dots in a tutor book. I would further argue that because the recorder died out when it was superseded by the transverse flute, a fair case can be made against it ever being considered as anything else other than the early chromatic classical flute it undoubtedly is.

When the recorder was revived it was not as a folk instrument. I think this misconception is in part due it finding its way into education as a primer for proper woodwind instruments (entirely due it being easy to cheaply mass produce in Bakelite (Dolomite?) and latterly plastic) thus effectively ruining the experience of music making for millions of school children. Not so much a musical instrument, as an instrument of torture - a further case against the recorder as folk instrument!