" ... why this music attracts and has been appropriated by such a narrow social group, especially when most of that group do not resemble its originators in any way."

First, I do not consider that I have "appropriated" anything! I have always, since childhood music lessons introduced me to them, preferred tradional songs to pop music - that does not make me an "appropriator".

Second, you do not know me well enough to be able to tell if I 'do not resemble the originators of traditional song in ANY way. In fact both of my grandparents, on my mother's side, were East Anglian country people, born in the late 19th century. Although neither of them were singers, when I hear recordings of Harry Cox, Sam Larner, Walter Pardon etc. I hear my grandparents' voices and people who came from the same milieu as they did. And that milieu is still important and relevant to me - as it happens more important and relevant than popular, commercial effusions from the other side of the Atlantic or those produced by British, urban adolescents who went to Art School and think that they're desperately important because they formed a band that produces an incoherent, ephemeral, and often pretentious racket.

Call me whatever names you like but traditional song means more to me than anything the modern, commercial pop industry could ever churn out.