Tootler, thank you for giving a link to Chris Bearman's masterly demolition of Harker's critique of Cecil Sharp. To quote from Bearman's paper:

"It is Harker, not Sharp, who deliberately ignored the significance of the singers' testimony when it conflicted with his own values and assumptions, and who suppressed the overwhelming body of evidence which did not favour his thesis."

Harker was/is(?) a Trotskyite who 'argued' from an extreme political position. Bearman suggests that Harker's critique of Sharp was equivalent to a member of the British Far Right criticising the Communist Manifesto. His thesis seems to have been based on the idea that the bourgeoisie appropriated and distorted the 'Workers'" music and then fudged the evidence to support it.

Suibhe, by all means read 'Fakelore', if you can get your hands on a copy, but you MUST read Bearman's paper as well. I suspect that the assertions that you often make, such as: "Folk is less a music than it is an psuedo-academic fantasy-taxonomy fabricated by the bourgeousie to ensure their version of things remains the correct one" may ultimately owe something to Harker's book - but just be aware that Chris Bearman has shown that much of 'Fakelore' is a fake!