That's your opinion, Sweeney, and you have put forward this interpretation on numerous occasions. While you are certainly entitled to it and you always make interesting and thought-provoking points, many people will not agree. I feel that heritage can be active and living. EFDSS exists to help with that process.

For me, the sound archive is "the real stuff", and I would like more people to have access to and awareness of it. I would like the government to acknowledge traditional music and dance (and calendar customs and oral culture) in the same way it recognises stately homes and, more recently, industrial heritage - with status and funding. Admittedly, if more people got their hands on the music and songs they would be open to all sorts of interpretations, and not all of us will like all of them, but I would rather that than traditional music, dance and song be ignored, sneered at and generally swept under the carpet.