and you of mine.....Jim. people never stuffed pound notes in my pocket, i had to go about about wringing a living by means of music from the dull earth by the ways open to me. i suspect your ballad singer would have recognised that we shared the same profession - because we would have acquired many of the same skills, and could have swapped war stories with each other.

its your purblindness that doesn't recognise that the externals change, the eternals don't.

BH - its not that i don't believe there is a tradition. i just don't believe you and jim have a clue what it consists of.

here is a clue - you will note that Jim's ballad singer and i were doing business in the public bar. not in a folk club, not a university department.
the originators and the guardians, and preservers of the tradition are not the people you think they are.
that is my serious belief. and in a country where freedom of thought is allowed, and freedom of expression - you will not shake my beliefs by arrogance, insult - calling me a clown, afool. an ingrate - or any other abuse.

and as for definitions . the tradition is an intangible, and thank god it is, it protects from those who would be propietors of it.