There seems to be a mismatch in your opinions.

In which case, allow me to clarify. First of all there are the empirical events - the songs, the customs, the stuff as it exists, or has existed in times gone by. Second, there is the documentation of the stuff - the collected matter which is not the stuff itself of course, but a secondary archive in the form of manuscripts, sound recordings, films, photographs etc. These occupy completely different realms - the first is a thing; the other is a study of a thing, and, as such, must be as objectively dispassionate as it needs to be clear on its objectives & agendas. So far so good; I've got no problem with that.

There is, alas, a third level which seeks to interpret such events in terms of a fantasy folklorism wherein such things are seen in terms of highly selective aestheticism which is loaded with assumption, agenda, speculation and spin which has absolutely nothing to do with the events themselves. This is the realm of Revival and Reinvention - the realm, I fear, to which The Museum of British Folklore belongs, with its nasty folksy Green Man imagery which owes more to The Wicker Man than the wondrous reality of British Folk Custom. This is bucolic post-modernism at its very worst; an indulgent weirdness which exists in direct opposition to sheer and often shocking ordinariness of the customs themselves - and the people who participate in them.

So, whilst I applaud any attempts to maintain the integrity of the archives, I can't help but feel the Museum of Folklore trivialises the whole issue and is somewhat counter-productive to a cause that would be better served by taking the wider view you spoke of earlier.

Just one opinion though, to which I am no doubt welcome.