Steve and all
No - neither of us can prove anything, but Steve is challenging and, I believe, attempting to undermine the whole premise on which our concept of folk song has been built on.
It is important to me whether or not our folk song repertoire came from the 'ordinary' people and reflected their lives or experiences, or was a commercial product.
That people find the discussion tiresome evokes the same response from me as does the often heard complaint that "ballads are long and boring" - tough - go and listen to something else!
While Steve continues to suggest that 'the folk' didn't make folk music I will continue to seek clarification on his (I believe) reactionary claim. I really don't feel it is something that we can agree to differ on.
Steve hasn't begun to address any of the real problems - literacy (not the lack of but the attitude to), the likelihood of non sailors, farmworkers, spinners... et al producing songs on subjects that took hold and spread all over the English-speaking world (and beyond), lasted for centuries, and were claimed as Norfolk, or Clare, or Suffolk, or Traveller... or wherever they ended up, by the people who sang them.
Or the (claimed) ability of commercial writers having such a grasp on folklore as to interweave their ballad 'compositions' with folkloristic references.
Or the skilful use of the vernacular... or technical terms... or the or the geographic or social reality.....
In my opinion none of these, and many other questions have been answered, or even approached.
Above all, Steve continues to claim that, unlike most of the world's peoples, the English 'people' alone did not reflect their lives and opinions in song, but left it to the 'professionals' - pleading 'special case' for the bothy songs in order to do so.
Jim Carroll