Hello Howard,

I suppose we got sidetracked into the occupational definitions via claims that some songs show insider knowledge available only to those in the job in question, and that this is strong evidence against a 'hack' origin for that song.   

Your last paragraph seems reasonable to me. I have read the 1954 definition, which even Lloyd quotes. Claims that I have read that the 'use' definition of folk overturns a century of scholarship demonstrating or arguing or assuming an 'origin' definition seem to me to misrepresent what people were actually saying.

But I am not quite so sure that there are 'facts' to follow. What Roud makes clear is that we have very little evidence about what practives of 'the folk' - defined loosely as the lower status strata of society - were in respect of singing and repertoire.

For me, as I said before, a judgement that a song is 'unsingable' is in any case a subjective statement. So, I suppose, are judgments that a particular song must have, or could not have been, written by a mediocre professional writer. And judgements will vary.

So maybe it is better to think of different theories, while taking into account what factual information we have. And as Roud says, a lot of the people who wrote about vernacular music and street singers and ballad sellers were unsympathetic witnesses.

I was looking at Roud again and he said in one chapter that a lot of tunes served both as dance tunes and as song tunes. Now dance presupposes rhythm. Yet I could not tap my feet to much of what Walter Pardon sang, and I found myself thinking that the strong sense of rhythm in USA folk versions of British originals must have come from African influences. Am I incorrect in noticing a lack of rhythm, and how typical in your view is that relatively rhythmless delivery of 'traditional' English singing? I think there is some discussion of the need not to apply the values of 'art'music to folk in Julia Bishop's chapters in Roud, but surely people liked to tap their feet. Traditionally, rhythm and metre were supposed to be part of the ways within the oral tradition that supported memory?

Any thoughts?