Thank you Georgina, I have The Imagined Village but haven't yet had a chance to read it; I *have* just read your brilliant essay on The Singing Englishman.

One of the things that strongly strikes me from that, is the contradiction between Lloyd's assertion that true folk song could only be produced in narrow social conditions, in a time already passed; and his own irrepressible, unaccountable practice of tinkering, revision and 'improvement'.

This reminds me a touch of MacColl's Critics Group insistence that singers should restrict their repertoires to their authentic geographies of origin - whilst himself being a Salfordian wrapped in ancestral Scottish heritage, singing songs from right across the realm, and a prolific writer of new material to boot.

As in so many fields, the high priests are above the covenants required of the flock...!