" There is, he says, not enough evidence to support the idea that there is a large corpus of songs which originated within the singing tradition rather than in the music halls or pleasure gardens. "
He and Gardaham have also said that there is not enough evidence to indicate where the songs came from but have opted for the 'commercial' explanation based on the fact that most of them appeared in print
Without being able to examine the songs next to these conclusions it it impossible to move on - there are no texts enabling us to do so and no discography in order for those coming to the genre anew to test the validity of Roud's claims (conveniently maybe?).
If we haven't got the actual background information, we need to do so by examining the texts or the sung versions.
That's not dogmatism, it's common sense
A book on folksong that excludes forlsongs is nonsense - like Bronson's "when is a ballad not a ballad" conundrum - when it has no tune
Far from defending the collectors he undermines and eventually rejects the conclusions they arrived at
His is Harker's iron fist in a velvet glove.
"a commercial product manufactured for the entertainment of the people".
The evidence has been here from day one - Steve Gardahm said this in the early days of our arguments in more or less those words
He went on to equate folk song with the output of today's music industry.
The two Steve's biggest crime, as far as I'm concerned is that they are attempting to rob folk song of its uniqueness - Gardam has ecxtended that to tales, dance, music lore... leaving the people with only having ever actually artistically created cave-paintings and scrimshaw, and little else
How political is that?
As far as the music is concerned, that requires a discussion as to how the singers regarded it before you approach it in its own righT
Every single traditional singer we have asked has said that they regard their songs as narratives with tunes attached - the words were always more important than the tunes
Where the singers were unable to retain the tunes they selected one that fitted - the extent of choice they had depended on the health of the various local traditions.
The same with the texts - if they failed to remember a bit, they filled in the gap from their own imagination
David Buchan in 'The Ballad and the Folk' probably overstated it, bu he had it certainly partly right
Jim Carroll