That, Sweeney, is idiotic.

Only by way of poiting of the idiocy of many folk assumptions and orthodoxies anyway. Indeed, only when we come up with a crack team of Independent Time Travelling Invisible Folk Song Collectors who are capable of recording every single utterance of any given Folk Song in an oral context and subjecting their findings to rigourous peer-reviewed metaanalysis that we might think of Folk Song research as being in any way scientific. Until then, it remains tentative taxonomy with respect of wonky taxidermy and hardly the basis for anything firmer than orthodox pedantry and personal faith, fascinating though that may be.

(Sorry, that was another facetious post. I've got serious work to do here so I'm using Mudcat by way procrastination...)