There was an odd period some ten or fifteen years ago when punters would pay a few bob to go into a folk club and shut their gobs while somebody played. I can’t imagine why. Perhaps the late arrival of technology was making us romantic. Anyway, a few of these musicians started to make money.

The veterans on the scene knew it was a phase, but there entered this money-making era right out of school and thought it represented a general change in consciousness. Most of those have left the country or are moaning their heads off now. There are no bloody gigs.

It would be sensible to blame the economy. If you have a fiver, and it buys two and a half pints, you’ll take the drink over an invitation to be quiet over a glass of lucozade. It’s only natural. Pubs are having a hard enough time getting custom without some grouchola charging money at the door as well. Make no attempt to compare this with the money young people spend on rock music, for these is no similarity. Trad players (aside from Gerry O’Connor and The Furious Colour) still wear wooly jumpers and live at home. The richest of the lot are school teachers. The only areas around Dublin where folk scenes still flourish are Tallaght (thanks to a kindly Arts Council grant) and Ballyfermot, where Fran Sweeney and Mick Coakley keep the Phoenix Folk Club afloat and only charge a pound.

But in most parts of the country, the pay-in gig has seen the writing on the wall and its says ‘Here I sit, broken hearted …’ What’s left?

Plenty. People want to boogies and set-dancing has taken off a storm in every nook and cranny of the country and honey, it don’t wear corsets and little costumes. The traditional music, as a back up to dancing, is better in quality than it has even been. What’s suffering is singing, slow airs, and musical post-modernism. We have left progress to the Pogues and a hand full of yanks because we are a conservative, frightened crowd afraid of losing our bash in the tunnel. The culture thrives as the government crumbles. Nobody really gives a shit.

The ‘revival’ era began with Sweeney’s Men and ended with Moving Hearts. It swung with De Danann and ended up comatose on the last night of the Harcourt Hotel. The music, however, is doing just fine as the free entertainment of poor people, which was its original social function. That it has returned to that laudable status should come as no real surprise.