> 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.

People in England (and everywhere else) were playing and dancing to recorders, informally and recreationally, for centuries. Look at the iconography for a start. This instrument goes back to long before they had such concepts as "classical".

> virtuosity

just means you're flash at playing your instrument, not that it has to be a concert stage performance. It can just as easily be done in the tavern yard.

> chromaticism

Because you can cross-finger it and get sharps & flats, it can't be a folk instrument?   

> Requiring a relatively simple embouchure made the recorder ideal as a parlour novelty, but is that really folk music?

Because it's easier to blow notes out of, it can't be a folk instrument?

> because the recorder died out when it was superseded by the transverse flute, a fair case can be made against it ever being considered as anything else other than the early chromatic classical flute it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.

Because it was eventually displaced by the transverse flute, this somehow invalidates its prior existence? Recorders were in use for hundreds of years, for a variety of purposes, before they died out. How does the eventual ascendancy of the German flute nullify that past history?

> no matter what tunes they were playing out of their tutor books; folk music is, after all, more than dots in a tutor book.

Yes - and where do you suppose the books got those tunes from???   From the folks playing them, dancing to them, singing them - some on fipple flutes. If that's not folk music, what is?