@ Sandman: I did not criticise your web site; in fact it looks good. Nor am I by any means criticising the fact that you earn money through your skills. As did Walter Pardon himself, though probably not a great deal.

What I do think is that you may need a better dictionary. The word 'industry' in its original sense meant something like diligent work, and it is often used to describe a particular form or sector of productive work.

So whereas I would not describe the web site of one man as an 'industry', the collective output of the writers and film-makes and record and CD producing businesses associated with Pardon did seem to me large enough to merit the word 'industry'. It was striking.

It seems to me that folk enthusiasts seeking to obtain or perhaps preserve a reputation as an authoritative source of theory and information about Walter Pardon or anything else might consider whether making over the top and inaccurate assertions about other posters, often twisting what they say, whether these be me or the other people who have experienced and complained about this sort of thing, in a public forum such as MUDCAT café. I can only say that the fact that some MUDCAT posters had or laid claim to be 'scholarly' given what I had seen of their powers of discussion and reasoning on MUDCAT came as something of a surprise to me.

I will not discuss moderator actions as we know this is not permitted and that it can and has in the past resulted in people being suspended, though sometimes people seem to fail to realise or at least to admit to it.

I was going to post another reference, one I don't think has been mentioned in this thread. Sadly, it is an obituary, one written by Mackenzie and Carroll. I found it on JSTOR. I think the ref is FMJ 1996 p264-265. It

I also have a question about the repertoire. The MUSTRAD information (repeated in a post above here) gives Pardon's repertoire as being at least 282. "The Walter Pardon Repertoire contains the titles of 182 songs we are aware that Walter knew." http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/pardon2.htm

However in the 'Not a Simple Countryman' piece it states that the authors had recorded over 200 songs, with a solid base of over 100 complete songs.

I am not sure how to reconcile these two statements.

Is Yates counting songs not wholly known as part of the repertoire, and if so have I missed where he records 100 less than complete ones?Hillery comments that a singer's repertoire can change over time. On that basis, I am wondering whether the learning of new songs by Pardon during his engagement with the revival might account for some of the difference between the two figures. Is Yates counting songs not wholly known as part of the repertoire, and if so have I missed where he records 100 less than complete ones?

(NB this is different from stating that out of 200, there was a solid base of 100 complete songs)

So we have been told on MUDCAT: "Most of his songs were intact, but those that weren't he filled out from printed texts given to him by friends in the revival. This 'filling in' was done extremely tastefully; that's why, I believe, they are so good. Probably 'Dark Arches' is the best example of these, which he had as 2 verses and a chorus."

The Not a Simple Countryman features transcripts said to date from between 1975 and 1973, but they are not dated. I think this is a shame, though a minor matter.

There is also a point on MUDCAT that Walter's repertoire of music hall material was particularly interesting in that they were early pieces, many of which he had learned from a neighbour, Harry Sexton. However, the same poster said that Walter's family never sang in pubs, contradicting the information that his Uncle Billy had sung in pubs provided elsewhere by the same poster.

I think it might be worth repeating those snippets on this thread, so that people coming to it for info on Pardon get as much as they can in one place

There is a lot of recorded material on Pardon on the British Library web site, by the way.

Thanks. Over and out. Have a nice day, everybody!