'Jack': the reason that people like Jim Carroll (and me) get cross with your arguments is that you refuse consistently to acknowledge that anything has changed in the way of folksong scholarship since 1905. To hurl familiar slogans about 'cultural imperialism' and 'condescension' at the folksong movement in its entirety is to insult collectors like Jim, Mike Yates, or John and Katie Howson, who have operated with a very different agenda to the Edwardians whose attitudes Harker dissects (though, having read Sharp's Appalachian diaries, I've found even in that bogeyman's writings more respect and affection for the singers than condescension).

It really isn't news to anyone who's bothered to think about it, that the Revival is culturally different from the Source. We knew that, thanks. And, as for definitions, I can't imagine how the editors of 'New Penguin' could have arrived at their selections without using something along the lines of '1954' (but please don't let this turn into another thread on that tired old topic). To reject a definition, yet to "agree folk songs are different", sounds suspiciously like the position of F. J. Child and his followers (so mocked by Harker): "we can't define a ballad, but we know one when we see one."