"It saddens me that being a folk song collector like Maccoll or Lloyd is no longer a viable lifestyle."
It never really was, certainly not in Britain.
There is no record of Lloyd having collected anything significant, he was a singer, lecturer, broadcaster, writer, journalist... but I've never heard him described to any degree as a collector.
MacColl's 'lifestyle' was based entirely on his work as a singer and songwriter.
Kennedy's career as a collector stretched from 1951 to 1955.
The earlier collectors were all middle-class 'hobbyists' who used their own private incomes
The most long-term collector in these islands was probably Dubliner Tom Munnelly - who was also the most prolific - over 22,000 songs to his credit. Tom was employed as a full-time collector by University College Dublin from 1965 to his death in 2007.
Collecting was summed up perfectly in the title of a book,'Irish Folk Music - a fascinating hobby' by Captain Francis O'Neill'. O'Neill was an Irish/American policeman who, in his spare time was a piper and who assembled one of the most important and influential collections of Irish dance tunes.
Unfortunately folk song has never been taken seriously enough in Britain by the establishment to have been thought as needing a collector - our failure and theirs.
No-one has ever made a fortune out of collecting, the argument is whether the small returns from the results of collecting has been and is being used wisely, and if not, can something be done to re rectify that.
Jim Carroll