Where I left off last night.
"You are a member of the TSF."
Many others here are not, this is a public discussion.
From what I know of your work and from your arguments here, you are 'paper-based' and there is no indication that you have drawn your conclusions from other aspects of the tradition – the importance and identification, use of vernacular, knowledge of folklore, intimacy with area and work, access and attitude to literacy.... all part of the making of and the inspiration for the songs in the first place.
"Guilty as charged!!!!"
This attitude really isn't conducive to open-minded research and has led, I believe, to the rejection of facts that don't fit into pet theories – sorry to be harsh Steve, but this is how it has appeared throughout our arguments – pushing on a closed and heavily bolted door.
It's not just you, I hasten to add; I've met it from many 'academics' over the years. I was told one by a quite respected researcher holding quite a responsible post that I couldn't tell her anything about Travellers because she'd "studied them for her degree" – it transpired that she had done no collecting and had never set foot on a Travellers site – wouldn't have recognised a gypsy if they'd tried to sell her a clothes-peg.
I am aware of, but not particularly familiar with your collecting work, which, as far as I can see, shows no great attempt to obtain information on the whys and wherefores of singing from your sources, which I believe to be the important features of the tradition, (certainly no attempt to pass it on); if I am wrong about this, accept my apologies and show me where I am mistaken.   
Very few collectors have recorded such information other than the basics, the folk song equivalent of 'name, rank and serial number!
I was lucky in being given access to (mainly MacColl and Seeger's and Charles Parker's) recordings of actuality and interviews with Harry Cox, Sam Larner, the Stewart's the miners and the road workers, et al (mainly for the Radio Ballads), which made me realise how much information had been missed by adopting a 'headhunting' approach to collecting.
An old friend, Bob Thomson, told me about the work that was being done in the US by Ken Goldstein, with singers like Sarah Cleveland, and previous work by Lomax and others with greats like Texas Gladden.   
All this led me to the conclusion that collectors had treated singers as song bearers and little more.
".....which you would do well to read."
Now you are sounding like a schoolteacher again – I have read 'son of Marrowbones' – I was touched to receive it as a gift from Malcolm Douglas shortly before he died, and I enjoyed it immensely, particularly the extended 'notes to the songs', but I couldn't help but notice it does not contain a corresponding 'notes on the singers' chapter – no context again.
"Not once have I stated that all versions of LL are comic"
True, but you asked "does anybody take Lord Lovel seriously" (will dig out the exact quote if you wish) which suggests to me that you were unaware that virtually all the recorded versions indicated that all the singers did just that.
I am aware of Sam Cowell's version, but I am not aware of any traditional singer adopting his approach.
'Multiple meaning' – I never said that – I was referring to the multiple functions of song-making and the information the songs .
"This is the political stance set up in the early 1900s by the likes of Sharp in order to sell his wares"
This is simply not true – Isaac Walton was referring to 'country songs' in relation to the broadsides he saw on the walls of inns in the 1600s, Hindley in his works on broadsides wrote about 'country songs'; I can't find the quote but somewhere he talks about the songs coming from 'the countryside, to the towns and cities, to the presses then to the streets' – or words to that effect.
The last time we discussed this you claimed that the term 'country songs' referred to broadside printers from outside the cities – consistency wins the day Steve.
"As I said, Jim, you are somewhat out of touch with current thinking. About a century behind"
There you go with your patronising again Steve, it really does bring out the worst in me. I'm fully aware of some of the work that has been done in recent years – much of it from the 'throw out the baby with the bathwater' school of thought, which you appear to be a fully paid up member of.
If there is one thing I have learned is that you throw nothing away – we even recorded a couple of songs that were 'communally composed' – shades of the much dismissed Francis Gummere – forget or reject nothing!!.
A good long bath in traditional songs from traditional singers would do you the world of good.
Our song tradition is all but dead; Sharp et al were saying that over 100 years ago; even they were collecting from singers who were remembering songs their predecessors had learned from a rapidly disappearing tradition.
The BBC project in the 1950s was acknowledged as a mopping-up campaign – songs being 'remembered being remembered' rather than being taken from a living tradition, or even being 'remembered being remembered, being remembered' - your own East Riding Songster very much reflects that.
We were forever being told how many singers and songs we had missed.
Tom Munnelly, without doubt the most prolific song collector in these Islands with something like 22,000 songs under his belt, described his work in the mid 1970s as "a race with the undertaker"; a decade and a half later he was all but desk-bound because the singers were gone.
The best chance we have we have of understanding the tradition is to re-visit and examine what has been recorded and written down and see if we have missed anything important – everything else is paper-shuffling.
Last point – at last
"And this is exactly what you're doing. Snap!"
No it is not – I have tried to apply our field researches to what I have read and picked up over the half century I have been involved in folk song and have presented my conclusions here as well as I am able. I do not ask for 'faith' or blind acceptance, I ask for my conclusions to be examined, considered and, if disagreed with, argued against – not bloody well dismissed out-of-hand and sneered at as you have done throughout and just admitted having done so – I give my reasons for disagreeing with what I believe to be wrong, please have the good manners to do the same.
Sorry about the length of this – big subject.
Will try to respond to other points later.
Jim Carroll