Sorry about that, Pip; after three bottles of ice cold Greene King Sun Dance last night I was feeling a tad flippant. Coincidently, Sun-Dance is also the word for the weekend on my Forgotten English desk calendar, the belief being that the sun came up dancing on Easter morning. Whatever the truth of that, I did not rise dancing myself this morning; it a very fine beer though - more of a lager I'd say, hence I drink it chilled.

Anyway back to your questions - I don't mind people using the word 'folk' in lots of different ways because.... Seems it's all about not caring, or else thinking, which brings in opinion, and subjectivity, which, as far as is humanly possibly, I'm trying to avoid here by looking at the situation as objectively as possible. And just as I do care, I certainly don't think, because the evidence is overwhelming. So can I say N/A?

The main problem I have with the 1954 Definition (and its conventional interpretation) is that like a lot of other Folkloric theory it romanticises community by effectively denying the creative genius of the individual. My feeling is that the creative work of the singers is overlooked in defining them merely as song carriers, who are part of The Tradition, the mechanism of which is The Folk Process.

Defining a song as Anon or Traditional isn't just saying we don't who the songwriter was, rather it subscribes to the notion that these songs are a product of a cultural process in which individual creativity somehow didn't matter. No doubt this is why the 1954 Definition has absurd clauses as: a community uninfluenced by popular and art music and it is the re-fashioning and re-creation of the music by the community that gives it its folk character.

It is my increasing conviction that many of the songs we now think of as Traditional are the specific creations of the individual singers who have taken the songs from other individual singers and purposefully adapted them to their own purposes. This is is the Folk Process in a nutshell - and it's still happening. We may well find echoes of John England's Seeds of Love in other songs, but to what extent might Seeds of Love be John England's creation? Or must (in the patronising eyes of Folklorist for whom such a Grubby Rustic couldn't possibly be responsible having created his own song) John England be consigned to the status of song carrier entirely passive to a process of which he is as unaware of as the fish of the water through which it swims?

There is precedence for this cultural paternalism in other aspects of folklore (see, for example, the thread Folklore: The Green man); indeed, it might be argued that our very concept of Folklore is very much the product of such cultural paternalism, the gathering of such Quaint Rusticity for the Amusement of the Gentry. Again, how could these Grubby Illiterate Rustics possibly be responsible for the creation of such beautiful songs? Heavens, they couldn't possibly have written them, so there must be an Oral Tradition to which they themselves are merely paying unwitting and innocent lipservice, and in so doing, continuing The Folk Process - which is something else they couldn't possibly understand.

In working with Seeds of Love last autumn for my Naked Season album it occurred to me that this song was very much John England's creation; a song he'd made out of elements of other songs he'd heard, bringing it together into one cohesive whole as an expression of his personal life experience. A bit of a epiphany - for in singing it I was no longer singing an Anonymous Traditional Folk Song, but a very purposeful and particular creation of a named individual. To hear my version, go to www.myspace.com/sedayne - it's the first song you'll hear there. I won't say anything here about the musical accompaniment (rough music?) but if anyone wants to know, then by all means PM me!