@Jim Carroll. In response to your question.

You tell us things that the singers you collected from said and report to us views that they expressed, for example about the different sorts of songs in their repertoires. Unless that is verbatim quotes from your recordings then it is, to readers here, second-hand information. Even if it is on your tapes by choosing what you do and do not say about the singers you are being selective. I guess you chose what information to pass on based on the context in the discussion. The same is likely to apply if you give a talk - what you present will tend to fit the context or current theme. So what we get will only be part of your whole (non-recorded) experience during collecting. Your accounts are second-hand to us, so you are mediating, and they are selective - but not neccessarily selected deliberately by you.

I have no problem with that, and many people who post here and know a lot about folk song - even if they disagree strongly with you in discussions here - have said how your collecting has preserved a huge amount that would otherwise have been lost. You and Pat must be very good at building up a rapport with the singers so that they would trust you with their songs and tell you about themselves.

However, the evidence on this forum is that you repeatedly 'get the wrong end of the stick' when reading other people's posts and respond to things they didn't say. For me that is enough to leave open to doubt anything you tell us that other people said.

How do I know that some of your first-hand accounts don't contain misunderstandings on your part?