I think the thing is....

tradition...the word comes from the Latin....traditio....I hand over.

Joseph Taylor and Sam Larner surely didn't say to themselves, 'I am working in a tradition'. They created with what was handed over to them.

If you can't get your head around the fact that today people are handed over something rather different, you might as well abandon the idea of folk music as a vital form created with the grace of free human beings,

The idea of kids having paraded before them the music of a hundred years ago as offering a means of self expression - well it works for classical music. But it has bugger all to do with the spirit of the guys who created our folk songs.

The essence of folk music is folk, and the technology and society they are situated inside, The men aboard Nelson's ships wrote different styles of songs from people marching to Aldermaston to protest about the bomb,