"old guard." is a term that filled Stalin's gulags - it has no place in these discussions
The present desk-jockey crowd are a tiny minority of those still interested in folksong - they appear to removed both songs and singers from the equation and are pushing it forward as an academic subject with no social or cultural significance
The only mention sources singers have been given in this discussion is to denigrate and misrepresent them
They appear to have become naive figures of fun fit only to poke fun at
Harker was rejected my the mainstream at the time
He came to the subject without fore-knowledge and he ignored the help he had been generously given
I was present on two occasions when he admitted he no longer wished to speak publicly because of the hoostil reception his book had received - in Sheffield and at the MacColl Symposium in London - I was a speaker at both

"Jim, what the hell."
Dodging the point again - it's become predictable
I have never come across anybody as sunfamiliar as you are of folksong who has attempted to dominate discussions on it - right back to the days when you tried to show that elderly Irish farmers were getting their songs from American blues records
I seriously suggest that you go off and find a source where you can listen to folk song as performed by experts such as Sam Larner, Harry Cox, Cecilia Costello.... and only then come back and start again
Jim Carroll