It is one of the more iksome myths of the Folk Movement that in writing Modern Folk Songs people are supplying The Traditional Songs of the Future. Consequently in most clubs you're more likely to hear Artificial Folk Songs than Real Folk Songs, however so artifically interpreted. I have a love of certain Artificial Folk Songs - be they by Bob Pegg, Rudyard Kipling, Peter Bellamy or Ron Baxter - but whilst they might tick all the right Idiomatic Boxes, they are a very different beast to the real thing. In more mawkish MOR circles the songs are even further removed from the core root of the thing (by their very sentimentality), and the Weirdlore Scene is a law unto itself (by its very pagan-centredness). That's the Horses for Courses Definition of Folk.

The Tradition is dead; long live the tradition.

Empirically yours,
Jack Blandiver.