"If you are precious about labels,who has mentioned a pop song? I never did."
Not precious about labels - just arguing about what constitute a folk song
"who has mentioned a pop song? "
You specified that 'I don't like Mondays' was a folk song - I pointed out it was a pop song and nobody has ever pretended it was anything else, except you - pratt!
"I am the one saying if you are comfortable calling it folk"
It's documented and defined as such - with hundreds of books to back up that description - that's what makes it a folk song, but thank's ever so much for your permission to call it what it is anyway.
"More often than not, a dreamer and wannabe poet singing about others... "
You have evidence to show this to be the case - sure you have!!!!
My understanding is that they are songs made by soldiers, sailors. land workers, miners....
We have recorded ones made by Travellers about Travellers.
Now - you are about to show us otherwise - 'course you are!!!!
"Are Dylan songs folk? Baez? MacColl? Garbutt? Paxton? "
Can't speak for the others - MacColl always insisted his weren't - what did the rest of them claim?
"Absurd, really fucking absurd.."
Not here Muskie - save it for the confessional.
"Jim, I think, believes that traditional folk songs were the music of the people and that new songs 'in the tradition' could be again"
Can I just make one thing clear Phil
I believe that folk songs are songs made by the people, but unless people (in general) recreate the means by which new songs can be absorbed into their culture, the process is dead - no new folk-songs.
It's sad, but it doesn't stop the older songs from having entertainment value
Ordinary Londoners once flocked to see the plays of Shakespeare.
Dickens was once a 'people's, author - there are reports of long queues for the next episode of 'The Old Curiosity shop' with crowds agog to find out whether little Nell had snuffed it or not.
The fact that this is no longer the case doesn't mean we consign our two greatest writers to "the dim and distant past and replace them with 'Corrie' or Barbara Cartland.
I still get a buzz from both singing and listening to folk songs - particularly ballads - I used to do so at clubs, sadly the cances of my ever being able to do so again are rapidly disappearing with the help of people who don't actually like folk song.
I read an article in a folk magazine this morning about a young woman 'folk singer' - I was particularly drawn by her statement about "loving folk song but not being worried about damaging it"
I searched out an example of her singing on Utube - it turned out to be one of the early child ballads accompanied by intrusive, inappropriate guitar and side-drum accompaniment - not too offensive as music, crap as a way to present a ballad - any ballad.
I doubt if ballads can survive such treatment if that is how they are now being performed.   
This is my idea of a folk song which some people may not be too aware of, along with the note we've written for it showing its uniqueness, and, why, for me, these songs have their own importance beyond entertainment, though certainly that as well
Jim Carroll

Farmer Michael Hayes (The Fox Chase) (Roud 5226)
Tom Lenihan, Knockbrack, Miltown Malbay, Recorded 1976
Carroll Mackenzie Collection

I am a bold and undaunted fox that never was before in tramp.
My rent, rates and taxes I was willing for to pay;
I lived as happy as King Saul and loved my neighbours great and small,
I had no animosity for either friend or foe.

I made my den in prime good land between Tipp'rary and Knocklong,
Where my forefathers lived for three hundred years or more.
But now of late I was betrayed by one that was a fool and knave,
He told me I should quit the place and show my face no more.

But as soon as he ejected me I thought 'twas time that I should flee,
I stole away his ducks and geese and murdered all his drakes.
I knew I could no longer stand because he had the hounds at hand;
I tightened up my garters and then I was away.

But soon there was a great look-out by land and sea to find me out,
From Dublin Quay to Belfast Town, along the raging sea.
By telegraph they did insert this great reward for my arrest,
My figure, size and form, and my name without a doubt.

They wore their brogues, a thousand pair, this great reward for to obtain,
But still there was no tidings of me or my retreat.
They searched Tipp'rary o'er and o'er, the corn fields round Galtymore,
Then they went on to Wexford but there did not delay.

Through Ballyhale and Stranmore they searched the woods as they went on,
Until they got very hungry at the approach of day.
Now search the world far and near, the likes before you did not hear,
A fox to get away so clear as I did from the hounds.

They searched the rocks, the gulfs, the bays, the ships and liners at the quays,
The ferry-boats and steamers as they were going to sea.
Around the coast they took a steer from Poolbeg lighthouse to Cape Clear,
Killarney Town and sweet Tralee, and then crossed into Clare.

And when they landed on the shore they searched Kilrush from top to toe,
The bathing baths in Miltown, called otherwise Malbay.
And Galway being a place of fame they though it there I would remain,
But still their journey was in vain for I gave them leg-bail.

They searched the train in Oranmore as she was leaving for Athlone,
And every wagon, coach and cart that went along the road.
And Connemara being remote they thought that there I would resort,
They when they got weary they resolved to try Mayo.

In Ballinrobe they had to rest until the hounds were quite refreshed,
From thence they went to Westport and searched it high and low.
Through Castlebar they took a trot, they heard I was in Castlerock,
But still they were deluded, there I lodged the night before.

At Swinford's town as I sat down I heard a dreadful cry of hounds,
I took another notion to retaliate the chase.
And I being weary from the road, I took a glass at half past four,
Then I was renovated while the hounds were getting weak.

The night being dark in Castlebar I knew not how to make my way,
I had neither den nor manger for to shield me from the cold.
But when the moon began to shine I said I'd make for a foreign clime,
I am in the Land of Liberty, and three cheers for Michael Hayes!

As a young man, Tom Lenihan heard the ballad of Farmer Michael Hayes sung by his father and by local ballad seller, Bully Nevin, but never knew more than a few verses. In 1972 he obtained a full text, adapted it to what he already knew and put it to a variation of the tune he had heard. We believe it to be one of the best narrative Irish ballads we have ever come across; Tom makes a magnificent job of it.
The story, based on real events, tells of how a farmer/land agent with a reputation for harshness is evicted from his land and takes his revenge on the landlord, in some cases by shooting him, and in Tom's version by also killing off the landlord's livestock.
He takes off in an epic flight, closely followed by police with hounds and is chased around the coast of Ireland as far as Mayo where he finally escapes to America. We worked out once that the reported chase is over five hundred miles of rough ground. Tradition has it that he eventually returned home to die in Ireland.
As Georges Zimmerman points out, this ballad shows how a probably hateful character could become a gallant hero in the eyes of the oppressed peasants.
It is a rare song in the tradition, but we know it was sung in Kerry in the 1930s; Caherciveen Traveller Mikeen McCarthy gave us just one line of it:
"I am a bold "indaunted" fox that never was before on tramp"
My rents, rates and taxes I was willing for to pay.
When he heard it sung in full in a London folk club he said, "That's just how my father sang it".
Ref;
Songs of Irish Rebellion; Georges-Denis Zimmermann 1967