Then there's the grumpy make-believe stuff, singalongabert, tankards at dawn, where two or three misanthropes are gathered together, and all that.

Don't you just love it though? I've been defending this for more years than I care to remember but all the more so now because the only time I listen to Folk is in singarounds. I look upon it in a similar way to medieval churches and the carvings therein; though each carving might be of a type, they're a unique manifestation of that type, and altogether part & parcel of their particular habitat. Thus do I seek out singarounds in old back-rooms of old pubs, gatherings possessed of their own lore and history, as heady as any you might find in a church, replete with amazing singers you'd never hear otherwise. And so I bask content in the corporeal singularity of it all, and somewhere along the way, in that glad company, I'll catch a glimpse of what drew me into this music in the first place.