With reference to Matt Milton's post, the reason I cited that rendition of "Little Musgrave" at Durham was that it was an inspiring LIVE performance, compared to which the finest recording is but the singing of a caged bird. To take the metaphor further, and acknowledging Jim Carroll's "rare bird" analogy, I would hope that the specialised ballad session/workshop might be less an aviary for the display of exotic rarities than a captive breeding programme to propogate & release the ballad into its proper environment.

Ballads can flourish in the wider folk club & session scene if introduced sparingly and with due regard to the particular audience
present. At our informal sessions here in Cumbria, my usual ballad introduction, "Are you sitting comfortably?" is sometimes greeted with groans and comments like "How many dead bodies?" but I am usually given a sympathetic hearing. Also, we have the local colour
represented by the border ballads. I cannot now walk around Carlisle
without feeling that I am in the company of the ghosts of Hughie the Graham and Hobbie Noble.