"after that time ready made entertainment began to become more widely available"
And yet people still continued to record their outlook on life and their experiences right into the 20th century - up to the 70's in the cases of some more isolated communities - they did so because they felt it more important to do it themselves rather than 'get a man in' to do it for them.
There's a story we got from a man named Jim Larner in Sam Larner's home village of Winterton.
Sam and his mates sang in the local pub, The Fisherman's Return all their lives, meeting in the back room every Saturday night in order to do so.
One afternoon a retired fisherman went into the pub to find a brand new bakelite wireless playing behind the bar. When he asked what it was he was told that it was a new-fangled device that brought news and all the latest tunes from London through wires.
The old man reached behind the bar with his walking stick and hooked the wireless off the shelf bringing it down tothe floor, smashed to pieces.
It was never replaced and Sam and his mates went on singing for another twenty years.
At Vauxhall Gardens and, I'm sure, other such places there were 'fringe groups' of people who would ignore the laid-on entertainment and sing to each other rather than be entertained.
Blind Traveller woman, Mary Delaney, as late as the mid-seventies would sit round an open fire with her family and friends and sing all night rather than go to the pub and hear the booked acts - usually C&W. When it finally died out she told us "The new stuff has the old songs ruined".
The saddest account we heard was of the magnificent blind epic storyteller Henry Blake of Kilbaha, in South Clare. He was in the middle of telling a story to our friend, Tom Munnelly in the local bar when somebody switched the television set on.
Henry stopped mid-tale, walked out of the bar and could never be persuaded to tell another story.
Traveller storyteller and singer, Mikeen McCarthy told us that the old men were "dying of loneliness" because they had lost not only their audiences, but also the desire to converse had disappeared; the youngsters either watched the match on the tele or played pool.
Or maybe I'm making it all up?
Jim Carroll