Why on earth should the fact that people (very much like myself) enjoy Shakespeare's plays stop anybody enquiring further into his art?
I, like Nock Dow, have no problem whatever recognising or defining a folk song when I hear one - there are libraries of literature to assist if I ever have the slightest problem in doing so
Personally, I spent thirty years asking source singers what it was and had no problem with what they told me.
What makes me laugh about you people is that if I or anybody else ever suggested that you have it have the same interest as you do, yo're the first up on your chairs screaming "folk police", but you have no hesitation it screaming the odds when our interests part from yours
"Songs are to be sung,waffling on incessantly about their possible origin" is about as 'kick in the door and burn the books" as it gets
Kindly mind your own business and let me decide for myself what my interests are
"I don't know who you mean by that. "
You really have no concept that folk songs might have more to offer than to be sung - you astound me?
Long live education eh!
Jim Carroll
Your "folk police" might have I point if I behaved like you
Jim Carroll