Given the open ended nature of the thread title, I'd like to bring forward a theory I have held dear for years: viz, that the singers of folk music are the real time travelers among us, moving from strange localized warp-spots in little coffee-houses, living rooms, and gathering halls all over the planet. From this wide array of staging spots, we haul as many of our listeners as are capable of making the jump back in time to the universes of High Barbary, Nantucket, the gold hills of '49, Antietam and the old Pontchatrain, the courts of Elizabeth and Phillip, the battles and lost loves and misadventures of our kind from earliest history on. Sometimes listeners make it all the way, and find themselves standing beside Roddy McCorly or Mary Seton or young Geordie as they die, watch the flags unfurl over the Irish town, and see the lass with the nutbrown hair traipsing down the green. Other times, the poor listeners get stuck in the present, and all they see is some marginal character with an scruffy Martin singing off key. Their loss, sez I. Because, more than historians in general, and far more than those who ignore folk songs, we are the effective travelers in time. Our songs, even when hobson-jobsoned through a thousand versions, capture the human heart of the past and give us the only known technology for lifting off and touching down at spots all across history.

So here's to all of yez who travel time as a reg'lar thing, may you live long, and travel far and often, and always come home safe and sound with your Martin intact!

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