They are definitions of a specific art form from a specific period in history, I would have thought
"He seems to have made a determined effort to try to find out what 'the folk'"
Yet he doesn't use the term "folk" as it has been defined since the 1830s by William Thom and how it has been identified in many thousands of works of literature ever since
If we accept this re-definition we are no longer talking about the same thing as Child or Bronson or Wimberley or Geould or Broadwood or Kidson, or Gummere or Greig or Lomax or Wilgus or Studer........
Don't you find that a serious problem?
I'm afraid I find it insurmoutable
What do we say to anybody coming to folk song for the first time - "forget all that old nonsense" ?
Glad I'm not going to be around to have to sort out that one
Jim