Thank you Old Fart. This thread (and the other about Musical Traditions which covers similar ground) has proved only one thing - that the term 'Traditional Folk Music' means whatever you choose it to mean - except in the legal sense, and there you have a bounden duty to attribute if you possibly can (which sadly a lot of folkies don't, to their shame and the deriment of talented writers down the ages) - then leave it to the PRS and equivalent authorities around the world to pay on royalties or not according to the copyright situation on the day.

All the other definitions are, by definition, retrospective, and thus mainly of romantic/emotional value only.

But one point strikes me, (from the Musical Tradions thread, actually). When that organisation and others seek to separate The Revival and The Tradition, how do they insert the fish slice?

Surely the Revival singers were only doing what the Source singers actually did, and which modern interpreters (and many writers) do today: Encountering a song, from whatever source, that they think is decent or half decent, and then either bowdlerising or rebuilding it or just giving it a bit of a polish to make it presentable to their particular audience.

I don't understand why any line needs to be drawn at all.

The whole notion of The Tradition, as opposed to 'some traditions' (note my capitals) seems a mere romantic notion of a rural idyll (with little basis in either musical or sociological reality) that has been seized upon by academic and/or political types in search of a gig - (let's not forget Sharp's quest for a 'posh' replacement for Germanic classical music).