Pseudonymous wrote:-
God help his wife, I have often thought, if he is remotely like this at home.
Rather a cruel and uncalled for comment, I would have thought.
The persona that Jim portrays on Mudcat is intensely irritating and I have crossed swords with him on numerous occasions as have many people here. We all know the aspects of his posts that we find utterly frustrating and it is difficult to know why he does it. It must give him some sort of perverse pleasure.
However, to assume that the particular type of character that he displays here aligns with the actual Jim Carroll shows simplistic thinking.
I have never met Jim, probably never will, but I do know that outside of Mudcat and in my communications with him by email and by private message, I find a man that is polite and entirely generous with information that he has gained and by sharing aspects of his vast personal archive.
Neither have I met Pat but I do know that they have worked together on a huge number of projects together in song, lore and story collecting, in preparing and releasing some of this material, radio programmes, archiving, presentations at academic conferences, books, articles, etc. This record suggests that they are a good team.
I don't know anything about their relationship, but I do know that what I have quoted at the beginning of this post, I find more hurtful than anything Jim has ever written. I also know that the pair of them have devoted years of their lives - unpaid to various aspects of the furtherance of the study of folk song, particularly amongst the travelling community and that we owe them a debt of gratitude.