It's not about imitating source-singers; it's about understanding what they were doing, and building a personal approach based on that. Many of us will have started out copying the styles of revival performers, some of whom had taken the trouble to understand what they were doing; some of whom had not. We ought to try to move beyond that, if we're serious about it, in order to find our own voices. I wouldn't like to think that June Tabor has recorded a "definitive" arrangement of any traditional song!

Interestingly, the programme has just has its first message complaining about "the Folk Police", unsurprisingly from someone who doesn't see why she should be expected actually to listen to traditional singers before trying her hand at their songs. Gawd Strewth. The Instant Gratification Culture strikes again.

It's perfectly true that singers recorded in old age are unlikely to be at their best; but there will still be recognisable echoes of what was, in what remains. We have to do the best we can with what we have. The mistake is to assume, as so many people have, that (for example) Harry Cox recorded in old age is either typical of how English folk song sounded, or how it ought to sound. We have to listen to what he's doing, and consider how he would have sounded in his best days (probably in his 40s; there are a few recordings of him from that period, though most are later). In his youth his songs were recorded on paper rather than tape, but his reputation attests to a very considerable ability, and there were clearly many more like him. It's still evident in the recordings of his later years, though there are plenty of people who have neither the knowledge nor the imagination to see that.

The fact that, by contrast, traditional Scottish and Irish singers have often been recorded at the height of their powers, tends to distort the perception of English singing very much to its disadvantage. The apparent difference in quality is in reality simply a demographic accident.

That inability to make the requisite jump of imagination has led to a great many misconceptions. One is the tendency people have to imagine that the nasal style affected by revival singers (mainly in the '50s and '60s, though it still lingers) is somehow typical of English song. It isn't. It was borrowed in the early years of the mid-20th century revival, largely by people trying to copy Irish and Traveller singing styles.