Folk musicians, ballad scholars, and other lovers of lyrics came to Polytechnic University in Brooklyn this weekend for the second annual Eisteddfod Music Festival.

This festival began in Massachusetts in 1972 and continued there for 25 years. It was revived in New York in 2003, where its new annual home has been on the campus of Polytechnic University, the nation’s secondoldest private technology university, founded in 1854.

Eschewing narrow academic boundaries, the festival’s purview has been the musical roots of world culture. Festival founder Howard Glasser, who taught at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, said the Welsh word “Eisteddfod” literally means “a coming together and a sitting down of bards and minstrels.”

Panels and workshops covered subjects such as the Ladino tradition, songs with banjo, and deep blues, and one well-attended program Saturday evening on bawdy and ribald songs.

At the festival,a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, Ed Cray, spoke about his book, “Ramblin’ Man” (W.W. Norton), on folk singer,Woody Guthrie, known for songs such as “This Land is Your Land” and other classics.

Mr. Cray opened his presentation by asking the audience to describe Guthrie. “Original,” “charismatic,” “iconoclastic,” “rebellious,” “outspoken,” “American,” “stubborn,” and “prolific” were among the words audience members offered.

Then Mr. Cray said these words described the myth or public image of Guthrie, which was often at odds with his underlying nature.

To understand Guthrie, Mr. Cray said, one must grasp four truths about him. Firstly, Guthrie was an optimist. Mr. Cray noted that Pete Seeger and he agree that Guthrie’s children’s songs may prove to be his most remembered. Secondly, Guthrie was a “devout passionate patriot,” Mr. Cray said. While many compare Guthrie to poet Walt Whitman, Mr. Cray thought a more apposite comparison would be to Carl Sandburg. Thirdly, Guthrie had a dry, droll sense of humor. Mr. Cray’s fourth truth about Guthrie was that the folk singer was intensely religious. Guthrie was an autodidact who was “extremely well-read in world religion.”

Mr. Crary spoke of Guthrie’s sense of faith, a “curious fusion” that combined religious and socialist yearnings.

Among those in attendance was a granddaughter of Woody Guthrie, Anna Canoni, who works for Woody Guthrie Publications.

Later that afternoon was a panel on “humor and humour.” Witty songs with provocative lyrics were sung, such as “In England today, we can do as we like, as long as we do as we’re told.” One panelist sang about wanting to sing in the opera, containing the internal rhyme “Signor Caruso told me I ought to do so.”

One of the panelists singing humorous songs was Joe Hickerson, who sang “Lather and Shave,” about a wayward barber. Mr. Hickerson, who was librarian and director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, has had a distinguished career. He researched songs that appeared in the movie “Cold Mountain”and is an occasional songwriter, who composed the fourth and fifth verses of Pete Seeger’s popular song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.”He will be exhibiting at the American Folklore Society meeting in Salt Lake City in October and at the Society for Ethnomusicology annual meeting in Tucson, Ariz., in November.

Another featured speaker was Oscar Brand, who will be celebrating the 60th anniversary as host of “Folksong Festival”on WNYC and is working on a memoir to be called “A Helluva Ride.”

He gave a talk entitled “Song Censorship.” Mr. Brand opened by saying that there were a number of kinds of censorship, including “selfcensorship.””The bigger the outfit,” he said, speaking of large corporate ownership,”the more dangerous it is to do anything.” Self-censorship, he said,is caused by exterior forces that get inside a person and instill fear of going “outside the perimeter.”

Mr. Brand, who said he started on radio in 1938, examined other kinds of censorship. He spoke about Mc-Carthy-era intimidation and held up a copy of “Red Channels,” a booklet that listed performers, writers, and directors suspected to be members of subversive organizations. Mr. Brand said he was happy to be in the company of Edward G. Robinson, Shirley Temple,Dorothy Parker,Pete Seeger, Jerome Robbins, and Orson Welles.

He said the House Committee on Un-American Activities told him, “We’ll call you, if we want you.”

Throughout his presentation, Mr. Brand played various songs; at one point, the audience laughed when Mr. Brand paused to say, “If you want to applaud, please do. If you don’t want to applaud, please do.” Toward the end of the hour, Mr. Brand played a song that supported the idea of a third-party candidacy. Its lyrics included the lines: It’s the same old merry-goround Which one will you ride this year? The donkey and elephant bump up and down On the same old merry-goround.

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KNICK-KNACKS Emily Farris,a former intern at The New York Sun, is now editor of Our River, Our Streets, a publication from the Federation to Preserve the Greenwich Village Waterfront & Great Port…Princeton University Library has an opening for a librarian to oversee the holdings, resources, and staff of its Graphic Arts Collection at the Harvey S. Firestone Library.