Hi Joe,
If you're referring to the Glasgow Broadside meeting I probably won't make that one. I'm also starting to slow down, and my very narrow interests are really the ballads. These broadside meetings are far too broad nowadays, too much not relevant to the relationship between print and ballads for me to make the effort. Shame because I'd have loved to have met you and swapped ideas.

Not familiar with 'snedding' as a word we use. Personally I'm very receptive to oral stories being passed down and going through the process. My only quibble is at what point were they made into ballads, and really there I mean each individual ballad, not collectively. From my wide reading on the subject, mostly of American academics, I get the impression that most of them were converted into ballads at a much later stage than a lot of people claim.