'Fakesong' presented a useful resume of the work of the 19th century ballad collectors as well as the Edwardians, and was no doubt a necessary corrective to the previously uncritical acceptance of the ideas of Sharp and the first Folk Revival. However, it's undeniably agenda-driven, to the point where a notion presented on one page as a possibility (i.e. speculation) is stated as proven fact a few pages later - the kind of logical jump, ironically, that Harker accuses Sharp of. I also remember with some amusement Harker's attempt to depict an unnamed 19th century community (which, after a bit of digging, turns out to be Stony Middleton) as some kind of suburb of Sheffield.

Though some of the late Mr. Bearman's wilder outbursts did him no favours, I've yet to find a rebuttal of his analysis of Harker's figures and textual claims regarding Sharp.