Well Alan Lomax was a pretty good definer of folk. Peter Kennedy, his mate, was too. C# and Maud Karpeles didn't do too bad on both sides of the pond. And Child?

Ewen Macoll did a sterling job of conning the world into thinking some of his songs were traditional to the point that he "collected" one of his own from a Canadian lumberjack!

But one defining luminary for a genre that spreads from the Norman conquest to the crass commercialism of the 21st century?

Spaw - as ever - contraversial.