This leads me to the conclusion that there is no such thing as folk music.

Probably the most sensible thing I've seen so far on this thread - and the 3 propositions from the esteemed Spleen that preceded it also made damned good sense.

It doesn't matter whether we agree with the 1954 definition totally, partially or not at all. The process by which those songs came to be over a period of time has now stopped - and the stoppage began, unwittingly, when RVW and C# and others "meddled and muddled" as Diane Easby put it. The very act of writing it all down and recording it has been the thing that fixed it in time.

So what we have now in the UK - unless the process as defined by the 1954 words is still going on unnoticed somewhere - is a body of work that entertainers can draw on if they feel fit. I doubt that many of us who perform in clubs, sessions, singarounds, open mics (call the components of this generally acoustic scene what you will) are connected in any way to that unconscious process. We draw on the material as we find it in our chosen sources, and we draw on other materials if we so choose and if we think they're appropriate for the moment. Whether others think they're appropriate is all down to personal taste in the end.

By singing traditional material, i.e. that largely within the scope of the 1954 definition, we're not keeping the tradition alive in any sense - we're choosing material to perform which appeals to us as performers and which we hope will appeal to the audience. It's good that the body of traditional music exists, and it's good that many performers draw on its beauty for performance purposes. But let's not be fooled - it's entertainment, and I doubt that even an informal and boozy sing-song in a pub is carrying on the tradition as defined.