How things go round in circles! A bit of digging reveals that the Fakesong review was linked in the first post on Mudcat thread ID 157878 to which Steve Gardam posted a number of responses. It was posted by Phil Edwards, who wrote the review in question.

When I put 'making a hames of it' I was quoting another post in this thread on the topic of Laban. The expression may be Irish, but the noun 'hames' as part of the equipment relating to horses goes back in English to at least the 13th century and mirrors a similar word in Old Dutch. I do not know whether a similar word appears in Gaelic. My family believed they had Irish antecedents, but I have researched back to the mid 19th century without discovering anybody not born in England. Had I been Irish I might have pointed out how ironic it was that MacColl drew on the poetry of Edmund Spencer, who played a part in Queen Elizabeth l's campaigns in Ireland. Wikipedia explains his views on Ireland. https://celt.ucc.ie//published/E500000-001/

I'm a nobody who happens to be interested in folk music and the various narratives that grew up around it.