Read what Jim wrote, bloke, don't read into it what you choose to think he wrote. He didn't talk about what Vaughan Williams or Delius did using folk songs as "their crime". They used folk materials to create something very different from a fok song. In no way is the result a folk song, any more than a wooden table is a tree.

And Vaughan Williams would of course have roarred with laughter at anyone making that mistake, especially as he so loved and valued folk song and did si much for it.

There are particular features of the folk traditions that do set them part from other categories of music. They need to be respected and cherished.