"Jim's statement which you quote is fair comment. Of course we can never be fully certain that any work of art is original unless we have just produced it."

Then why do you insist on presenting your theories as facts and describing your opponents as "romantics" who "believe all this nonsense" or other such insulting dismissals of our work?

Short of a hidden trove of information being found we will never know for certain who made the songs and ballads, so we have to rely on what little information we have and as much common sense based on what we do know to arrive at an intelligent guess - paper pushing by tracing earliest versions isn't going to do it, not for me anyway.

It is inconceivable that an anonymous non-co-operating school of "broadside hacks" would ever come up with a repertoire of songs containing background information, folklore (before the discipline was ever recognised), vernacular or all the other beautiful insights they gave us into the lives and experiences of the people they are about and a general familiarity of the communities that gave rise to them; certainly not enough to fool the generations that carried the songs that they were "Norfolk", or "Somerset" or "sailor" or "military".

The making of local songs that never made it onto the collectors' notebooks or tape recorders because they didn't fit into the national repertoire in Ireland and Scotland is an indication that people felt compelled to express themselves in song and verse – we know about well over a 100 that were made in this village alone – I know the same happened in England in spite of your claims that "English people were far too busy earning a living".

One of the problems is that many of the early scholars, despite their magnificent contribution, wouldn't recognise a traditional singer if one placed a hand over his ear and burst into a 25 verse version of Sir Patrick Spens – this includes Child.

Paper knowledge is no real guide unless you have enough of it.

Even more up-to-date collectors seem to have neglected to find out if the singers knew anything other than the songs.

You know my opinion of Phillips Barry's dismissive to the verge of contempt in his note to 'The Lake of Col Fin', in New Green Mountain Songster.

"Popular tradition, however, does not mean popular origin. In the case of our ballad, the underlying folklore is Irish de facto, but not de jure: the ballad is of Oriental and literary origin, and has sunk to the level of the folk which has the keeping of folklore. To put it in a single phrase, memory not invention is the function of the folk"

One Canadian collector wrote in her memoirs that she "couldn't wait for the songs she had collected from traditional singers to be taken up by "proper singers" – again, verging on contempt.

If there is any way of learning about the songs and their origins it is through the singers to whom they "sank to the level of".

The suggestion that the singers were "too busy" so they contracted the job of song-making out to hacks shows equal contempt as far as I'm concerned.

Jim Carroll

Susan – haven't been in touch yet, but will do so as soon as it starts raining – bloody garden!