I said that the term 'mediation' does not appear in the index, I really am not prepared to re inflict a re-reading of 'Fakesong at my age - it was a depressing enough experience the first and second time around
Whether I understood it or not is something that will have to be judged by someone who knows something about folk song

I have placed Harker's main points against our own (mine and Pat's Joe - it was a team effort) recordings of what we have been told by in the field - doesn't even come a runner up - he knew little more about folk song than our masked heroine do though he appears to have read a few books rather than attempting to fill in a void of ignorance with a few hastily trawled snippets from the internet (have you managed to plough your way through McCarthy yet ? - you should - it really is worth it)

The only way you will ever earn the right to comment on the
work of others is to actually examine it - otherwise they know SFA about what others have done, other than the few snippets other than the little that has been made available

I was intending to try and persuade the National Sound Archive to include tales, lore and backgound information up when they put our collection on line, but discussions here makes me wonder whether it wouldn't be best served by waiting for a generation who is more interested in our people's culture to come along rather rather than throw it at people who seem more interested than strutting their stuff to gain attention

Anyway, enough of this pleasant banter - back to the serious exchange of ideas (if I can find space among the downpour)

I have always believed that the answer to many of these questions lies in a full examination of all the work that has ever been done in the past, not the constant replacement of it with yet another fad, like the discarding of used underpants, which seems to pass for scholarship post Harker
If we can't learn from the past then we might as well do nothing and wait for a celestial chariot carrying all the answers

I am beginning to understand from continuing work here in West Clare that there is still a deal to be learned from the communities the songs stories and traditions were taken from

Old friends, Bob and Jaqueline Patten showed the valus of followning the footsteps of some of the early collectors in their case, Baring Gould - they generously shared much of what they found with our archive
Other generous souls, Mike Yates, Bob Thomson, Hugh Shields and Tom Munnelly, Barry Taylor.... made the point of passing on what they had done

One of the practices we did discover was 'family songbooks' and diaries - notebooks of handwritten songs from the family repertoire   and accounts of singing and storytelling, somtimes in the form of letters to relatives abroad - I heard Peter Cook give a talk on similar in Shetland once

I am convinced that there is much from the BBC collection that may have been recorded in the way of interviews that have never been examined
I'm waiting with some interest to see if researchers like John Moulden turn up anything from the huge and as yet largely un-examined Sam Henry Collection

The Sharp diaries as yet remain a mystery to me - are there more accounts of what the singers had to say..... ?

It is these people who had the answers to many of these questions - not self appointed 'experts' who hastily scrabble around using impenetrable language to keep them out and keep their clubs exclusive talking-shops

I'll continue to put up what the generous people we met passed on - with Jack's permission, of course

"the Jim Carroll show".
I count six postings in the trot - all "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" - no doubt there will be more when I finish this far-too-long message
Self-awareness appears not to rate too highly with some people   
Jim Carroll