Hello Vic Smith

Thanks for your posts. However, my opening post to this thread gave a more or less exhaustive set of references on Pardon including films and online interviews etc. and the MUSTRAD material has already been mentioned. I say this to save you wasting valuable time posting links to stuff already on the 'table'. That said, I am sure everybody appreciates your contribution, especially in posting material referenced but not available elsewhere such as the articles.

Hello Brian

Apples and oranges. Not really. Perhaps I did not make my point clearly enough. I was referring to Atkinson's discussions of 'texts' generally, and ways in which these can be interpreted. I was saying that he was applying, in the context of the 'literature' on folk song, including the songs themselves, the reading skills which youngsters in schools should be beginning to develop. I mentioned these skills to suggest that one cannot blame Harker for all the scepticism relating to the narratives and ideologies of folk revivalists, including those who have over the years packaged/presented Walter Pardon for public consumption.