Those are real knee-slappers, Stringsinger - keep 'em comin' - nyuck, nyuck!   };^D>

Humour aside - and I got a good laugh out of that - Howard Jones makes a subtle and clear observation that is too easily ignored by purists (from any era):

"For folk music from the British Isles, the piano probably has a stronger claim to be a 'traditional' instrument than the guitar."

His point is well-taken, and one may presume 'traditional' refers back to the first British Folk Revival of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, before the second British Folk Revival in the mid-20th century, and the birth of a more contemporary (and often guitar-based) folk music, paralleling the great urban folk boom ('Folk Scare') taking place in the States, in places like Greenwich Village, NYC and the coffeehouses of Palo Alto, CA.*

All a careful reader has to do to see the long-standing (historic) value of the piano in British Isles folk music - it's traditional use before the raggle-taggle-folk guitar came into its own - is to view a few of the transcriptions in One Hundred English Folksongs to see the VOICE (treble clef) and PIANO (treble and bass clefs) arrangements so meticulously preserved and transcribed by CECIL J. SHARP. Try it, look at the titles; look at the streamlined vocal and piano accompaniment.

So, I must agree with Howard's point about the piano having a stronger claim as a 'traditional' instrument in British Isles folk music, and one could extend that, arguably, even to Scottish and Irish traditional music (opened that ol' can of worms, oops!) in view of so many historic collections, e.g., the famous Skye Collection (1887) featuring fiddle (melody) and piano (accompaniment) - now back in print. View the violin and pianoforte arrangements by going here and clicking inside: Skye Collection (1887).

Whether it be for voice and piano, or fiddle and piano, Sharp and others relied on pianoforte accompaniment in their song and tune collections, and they're still helping us today. Only for the versatile piano would we have these important harmonized melodies at our fingertips, and they're extremely useful for guitarists and banjo players who bother to read music. A word to the wise: BIG EASY guitar chords are nowhere to be seen, and these traditional arrangements came first in folk-song. And they're not going away! [Q. How do you get a guitar player to stop playing? A. Put sheet music in front of him.]

Sharp wrote, "What form the ideal accompaniment to a folk-song should take is a question upon which many divergent views may legitimately be held. With the purist, a simple solution is to dispense with an accompaniment altogether, on the ground that it is an anachronism. But this is surely to handicap the folk-tune needlessly and to its detriment. For just as it takes an artist to appraise the value of a picture out of its frame, so it is only the expert who can extract the full flavor from an unharmonized melody. Musically, we live in a harmonic age, when every note, consciously or subconsciously, thinks in chords; when even the man in the street is under the influence - if only he knew it - of the underlying harmonies of the popular air he is whistling. And herein lies one of the fundamental distinctions between folk and art-song. The former, in its purist form, being the product of those in whom the harmonic sense is dormant, is essentially a non-harmonic tune; whereas, the latter, of course, is demonstrably constructed upon a harmonic basis...."

What he writes next is of particular interest to all serious accompanists, bludgeon-strummers and ivory-ticklers: "Surely, it would be wiser to limit ourselves in our accompaniments to those harmonies which are as independent of 'period' as the tunes themselves, for example, those of the diatonic genus, which have formed the basis and been the mainstay of harmonic music throughout its history, and upon which musicians of every age and of every school have, in greater or lesser degree, depended; and further, seeing that the genuine folk-air never modulates, never wavers from its allegiance to one fixed tonal centre, to avoid modulation, or use it very sparingly. Personally, I have found that it is only by rigidly adhering to these two rules - if I may so call them - that I have been able to preserve the emotional impressions which the songs made upon me when sung by the folksingers themselves. This, at any rate, is the theoretic basis upon with the accompaniments in this volume have been constructed."

*On a personal note, I have a few living connections and one particularly painful connection to the old NYC Village scene, having played festivals and concerts with singer, tunesmith and guitarist John Herald, formerly of the Greenbriar Boys, who died tragically a few years back. John taught me a stack of original folk and bluegrass tunes, how to arrange songs and harmonies, and then some. I had lots of good teachers from New York, and I'm glad to be alive, still playing music, and procrastinating in this thread.

So, that's my screed for the day. I have a book/CD project to finish (my third for Mel Bay). I'm a transcriber of traditional tunes, a tune compiler (tuneaholic) and arranger of Irish and Celtic tunes for 5-string banjo. I collect tunes in the field, at sessions, from recordings, people who write them, etc., and strive for settings that are fun, contemporary, or maybe historical, or whatever it is that is lurking, of which I do not know, until I stumble across it. It keeps me off the street (busking probably).

Piano players and keyboardists deserve a lot more respect in folk music circles, in my opinion. And good traditional singers, who have no cultural or sub-cultural bias, are able to work with them, no problem, and sometimes they ARE them! Being a folk singer and a piano/keyboard player are not mutually exclusive occupations, and there are so many great artists who do both exceedingly well.

Time to walk the husky, clear the head ... enjoy the lovely Irish weather, oh, I hear a dog, here he is ... sniffing at my elbow, haha! Midnight walk, so it is!

Best ~ Tom