Subject: RE: Origins: Barbara Allen
From: Jim Carroll - PM
Date: 03 May 15 - 10:31 AM

"The word 'traditional' is only useful when both the user and the audience have a good idea"
Thankfully we have a literature, a history of research and a pedigree to fall back on to sort out the wheat from the chaff as far as folk/traditional song is concerned.
There may come a time when those who would have us accept the misuse and misunderstanding of the terms as valid, produce their own literature and scholarship - not in my time, I hope.
Then we'll have to follow Bert Lloyd's advice:
"If "Little Boxes" and "The Red Flag" are folk songs, we need a new term to describe "The Outlandish Knight", "Searching for Lambs" and "The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife".
Jim Carroll
I would rather not follow Lloyds advice, his statement is bollocks, he lumps together two songs, one of which is social comment song[ little boxes], the other was the song sang at labour party conferences,they have little in common, it is exactly the nonsense that has reduced Lloyds credibility as a scholar.
please tell me why little boxes cannot be considered a folk song, but the coalminer and the pitmans wife can.