If anybody can come up with a new formula which fully combines the process and the people I have described above with the creations of the 'singer, songwriters', by all means let's consider it, but until somebody does, the old definition stands.

All very worthy, Jim, but there's still nothing in the 1954 definition that can't be applied to any other music. Like Christianity, it only stands because of unquestioning belief of the faithful in a remote theology. Thus, it creates that theology to account for a music that can only understand itself in terms of category, political agenda, and fantasy of folk-character. In short, the 1954 Definition is the opiate of the Folk Intelligentsia and can only account for a musical tradition which is, as far as it ever existed at all, (and in your own words, Jim) DEAD. Back in 1980 I was renting a house from some taxidermists who'd left a stuffed bittern hanging on the wall; folk process as taxidermy perhaps? The taxidermy of the extinct simply because the 1954 definition does not allow for its transformation and continuance in any form other than that which isn't on the agenda.

Ah degrading vile was the way ye died, o my bittern beauteous of glowing sheen
Was at dawn of day that your pipe ye'd play as content ye lay on your hillock green
O my great fatigue and my sorrow sore that your tail is higher than heart or head
And the tipplers say as they pass your way: had he drunk his fill he would not be dead

Still, at least you've got your books, Jim - cut & dried, dead on the page, and the more I think about it, the more it leaves me cold; cold as the fecking grave.

Folk is dead. Long live Folk.