jim answer this one you accepth the 1954 definition?
you agree you said this?Hoot - I call what I believe to be folk songs "folk" - that doesn't include MacColl's (of which I still sing about a couple of dozen) or Cyril Tawney's or Enoch Kent's... or all the others who composed using folk styles.
check mate, fields of athenry a composed song using a folk style is sung by football crowds, so according to the 1954 defintion it is a folk song CHECKMATE