Up to comparatively recently we have dealt with an identifiable body of song to which we attached the term 'folk', even if that identification was "I don't know what it is but I know it when I hear it". The 1954 definition tried, sort of successfully, to pinpoint characteristics that went into the makeup of those songs, their origins, the forms they took and their significance to the communities from which they were obtained.
These are the folk songs that have been archived, documented and continuously analysed right up to the present day and these are the songs that will be passed on as 'folk', a representation of the 'common creative output' when we are all wormfeed.
It is only within the clubs, and not all of those I'm told, that there is any dispute over the general acceptance of the term to any great extent.
Whatever happens to the clubs, it is the documented definition that will prevail; folk is probably the high on the list of most extensive musical forms to have been discussed, defined and analysed.
It is true that we don't need a label for the songs we sing, but we do need one in order to be able to point them out to others, to tell them where to go and look for them. We need one to know where to find them ourselves, and we need one to discuss them among ourselves and perhaps to reach an agreement and understanding of them by pooling what few facts and opinions we all possess (wouldn't life be boring if that ever happened?).
I believe one of the reasons for the present confusion lies at the door of collectors who have assumed that our source singers had nothing to offer other than their songs, so they/we never bothered asking their opinions – result; it can safely be claimed that "they never differentiated between the varying types of song in their repertoire, so why should we?" This has been taken so far as to have it be suggested that "folk does not exist and is a self-serving invention of collectors and researchers."
At least two thirds of our collecting work was interviews with singers, attempting to find out what they thought about their art; probably far too little, far too late, but enough to undermine the 'free-as-birdsong, instinctive' image that we have saddled our traditional singers with.
Walter Pardon was dividing his songs into clear categories as early as 1948, blind Traveller, Mary Delaney referred to her 'folk songs' as "Me daddy's songs (she learned about ten of her 100-plus songs from him), and swore that "the new songs have the old ones ruined". All the 'big' singers (sizable repertoires and a semblance of style) we talked to attached their own label to the songs – come-all-yes, traditional, the old songs, local songs; Walter Pardon very firmly used 'folk' and certainly had an opinion where they came from and what they meant to him.
For me, Bert Lloyd said it all in the last chapter of Folk Song in England:
"If little Boxes and The Red Flag are folk songs, we need a new term to describe The Outlandish Knight, Searching For Young Lambs and The Coalowner and the Pitman's Wife" – only it's a bit late in the day for us to go searching for a replacement - IMO.
Jim Carroll
PS Sorry to all who have heard all this ad nauseum!