"it is a fallacy to imagine that one can identify some sort of unitary 'a people's culture' stretching back over centuries"
That is exactly what Harker denied and what our ignorant friend put up - "fakesong" puts that stupid philosophy in one borrowed term (those who used it before Harker stole it meant something entirely different)
Questioning the term 'folksong' by calling it fake dismisses the idea that the people even had a culture
The same is implied by those who suggest that 'the folk' didn't make their songs but contacted the job out to incompetent writers to do the ob for them
The same people have also suggested that our folk tales originated from literary sources (if my memory serves me right Steve)
Which more or less reduces the cultural creativity of the English people to scrimshaw and knitting patterns (and who knows, maybe there were long forgotten businesses producing them)
Our folk song traditions died as their exponents turned from being active creators and re-creators to passive recipients, if that had always been the case we woldn't have any folk songs, as someone once argued argued on this forum, they would be no different than the output from the music industry
I think I may still have the quote somewhere Steve - I considered it important to save it at the time
Jim Carroll