Yes, 'GUEST, Russ' you're absolutely right and it's a logical point that the 'horse definers' can't get round however much they blather, wriggle and fume.

Wrong as ever, Shimrod. For one thing it's not the Horse-Definers that blather, wriggle and fume - rather it's the 1954-fantasists who still cling doggedly to the perverse notion that The Revival is somehow Worthy, as oppose to an ultra-conservative pseudo-academic orthodoxy which has fuck all to do with The Tradition it claims to have - er - revived. For another thing the logical point is that Folk has about as much linguistic value as it does cultural - which is to say, none whatsoever outside of a very narrow band of pendantic enthusiastic hobbyists such as yourself.

And myself too, of course, but as an OSESIOT Singer I'm like the contented Model Railway Enthusiast contentedly working away on his 7mm scale O-gauge replica of Battersby Junction circa 1947. He knows his place in the scheme of things; and he would at least recognise a real train should ever he see one.

but accept that human-made noise is a wonderful continuum, and our ingenuity with technology is just making all it's genres more widely and easily available to us all: and Yeay to that.

Seconded!