Ollaimh,
You have my deepest sympathy. That's a real eye-opener.

Jim,
I certainly didn't intend any of what I wrote to be patronising. In my experience it's just a fact. Obviously things ARE/WERE very different over in Ireland. I wrongly assumed things were similar to over here having looked at the flourishing Irish broadside scene, but I suppose I should have taken into account more the books of Henry and Glassy as opposed to Healy and O'Lochlainn. I'm sorry but I know of nowhere in England in the last 2 centuries where there is any strong tradition of songmaking that hasn't got commercial interests at the bottom of it. A few odd individuals have sent me tapes they've made of their own songs and I recently recorded an old farm hand who had written some of his own songs for his own amusement, and then there's John Greaves on our website, but to what extent he is/has been influenced by the folk scene is debatable. But two or three people hardly constitute a thriving scene. As I said before the Bothy ballads of NE Scotland are a very special case.