About 20 years ago, I did a guitar class in Sutton. As a climax to the course, about thirty of us turned up at a folk club and played all our two chord songs. Jambalaya, Skip to my lOU, sINGING IN THE rAIN, The manchester Rambler. Within 6 months some of my ex-pupil;s were running the club. A couple of them became pro musicians. It was one of the most successful clubs in Nottinghamshire and I suspect it still continues in some form and at some unknown venue - Maybe the The Staff of Life, for about 20 years, it was at the Royal Forresters. Hundreds of musicians, hundreds of songs - some of them folk - hundreds of singers getting a start... starting other clubs.

Not really folk though, eh...? Not in the 1954 sense.

Dear Suibhne.

I'm sorry i couldn't agree less. Theres this bloke saying he can light the excitement in the eyes of children with tales about a Green man, and i say good for him - its a good trick. Theres plenty of time later to learn that dinosaurs never really did chase cavemen. And if they're too dumb to understand that, its not going to impact greatly on their lives.

Also look at the wasteland by Eliot - where the legend of arthur and the Holy Grail gets mixed up with The Fisher King and God knows what else.

It remains a wonderful metaphor the knight coming to the stricken wasteland, for Eliot coming to England where Noyes AND LIONEL jOHNSON were writing English as a dead language and he came and reconnected us with our own poetic sensibility and its connection with street language.

And robin Hood and little John turn up for a guest appearance in the Hal and Tow song. If there were no mystery, we would miss out on the revelations that mysticism can bring us.

al