Well, I think it's time to go out on the porch and consider John Moulden's suggestions about being politer than polite. That and the policies of this web site.

For me, the questions of whether or not Dave Harker ever collected any songs or ran a folk club or produced a book of songs are immaterial to the value or otherwise of his book.

Speaking hypothetically, a poster who had repeatedly misrepresented other posters, and who continued to do this despite being asked not to do it would lack credibility as a mediator of what anybody said.

Undated quotations from recorded conversations between folksong activists and their close friends do not for me carry much weight in providing to our knowledge of the past.

"the terminology might have changed somewhat down the years". I wonder whether this might be interpreted as not registering the fact that it isn't the 'terminology' has changed: the definitions have changed. Harker is just one in a long line of commentators who have pointed this out. For some A L Lloyd played a crucial part in this.

Just a reminder that when Sharp referred to the peasants, he meant illiterate people. So if people here wanted to claim in writing on an internet site that they do fall within Sharp's repeated and firmly stated definition of peasantry, on the basis that they are 'common', that would be up to them. Such a claim would strike a person with even a passing acquaintance of Sharp's writing as the complete absurdity that it is. Especially were such a person from a large urban conurbation and had undergone various sorts of training, not least at the hands of Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger.