In part three of Vivian Stanshall's week (at around 1.02) one can see an unnamed Morris Side, complete with Hobby Horse, dancing in Paddington Station before heading off down The Underground. Viv looks on delighted, of course, blowing them kisses as they depart!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0U1AeS5Cow

In part two (at 6.00) we see Viv visiting instrument maker Michael Lynch who made Jake Walton's wee hudry-gurdy as featured on Times and Traditions for Dulcimer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3RVr1f9abM

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Interestingly, or not, whilst submitting a friend request to Wigan Folk Club earlier this very morning I see our Hapless Repatriate left them the same calling card in their comments box on the 27th June 2009 as he did on the 6th of Feb 2008. Methinks perhaps some new material is in order, WAV - not least your above line about The Beatles copying an aspect of American culture which is about as accurate as your notions of their own good English folk music.

We don't have any good (i.e. real) English folk music, rather we have the results of two highly specialised and agenda driven revivals of something that might not have existed in the first place. In this respect what The Beatles did is of greater Cultural Authenticity in terms of Cultural Migration & Transfiguration than anything produced by either of the 20th century Folk Revivals, especially with respect to the socio-economic context of Folk Music as perceived to have existed in the first instance. Its collection was selective, biased, and subject to endless improvement on the part of the collectors. Thus Revival Folk Music is The Imagined Village; it only exists by dint of its gauche & pedantic self-consciousness wherein the change & mutability enshrined by Maud Karpeles in her 1954 Definition becomes, as a consequence, fossilised by those seeking to somehow preserve it terms of material evidence for a process they freely admit is no longer taking place. In this respect I'd say what The Beatles were part of is of greater folkloric significance than anything we might encounter in either of the 20th Century so-called Folk Revivals and is, therefore, more deserving of being Their Own Good Folk Music.

Now, back to Part Three of Vivian Stanshall's Week....