...clogs, tankards...music to my ears!...I play just the tune/top-line melody, as an accompaniment, on keyboards set to "piano" or after pleading "to play a pub's proper piano" (see myspace; "The Water is Wide" is done this way).

Stop avoiding the question. I didn't ask what YOU do, I asked you if chords were played on the pub's piano, why is Dick Miles playing them on a concertina some form of heresy.


but, for centuries, NOT free verse - was it Ezra Pound who first said to hell with it, regarding traditional metre and/or rhyme? Either way, I like the challenge and effect of saying things WITHIN those limits - that's poetry.

Again I ask, which is the proper form and meter?
I suspect that you really know very little of Ezra Pound, if you've even read him. He is very, very far from being my favourite poet, but he can't be dismissed lightly, he did have a strong grasp of the inner workings of his native tongue, which is vital for any poet. He did not come up with the concept of free verse all on his own, but drew heavily from MEDIEVAL poetry. Alliterative verse ring any bells?


Good poetry,
is not mere rhymes,
you see.


It's better to say that most songs COLLECTED in the early 20th century were sung unaccompanied, etc.