I was once involved in a theatre project based around the Kalevala, which, as many will know, is a Finnish epic written by Elias Lonnrot (sp)but based on lyrics of runesongs which he collected "from source".

When challenged about his right to deviate from the original lyrics Lonnrot (who never hid the fact that he adapted, and made the originals available to all)commented that the singers themselves adapted lyrics and as he knew had learned these songs from the singers he felt he was simply one of them doing what they did.

When we premiered the work a translator of Kalevala gave a short speech and commented that "When an oral tradition is written down the tradition stops". Now, I disagreed with him, I felt the tradition merely took a different route (shown by the fact there are numerous interpretations, musically, literary and theatrically of Kalevala material).

Terry McDonald's post above made me think about this, as he mentions Eric Bogle.

Let's consider Bogle's "The Bands Played Waltzing Matilda". Obviosly it is a modern composition and is able to be sourced to EB. However, it is a folk-club standard.

Like many people, I first heard the song as performed by the Fureys. I learned the song from a record. Later, when I got the dots to their version, I found that they had learned it from the singing of someone else. Only when I found the dots to the Bogle version did I realise how different the lyrics are. Since then my singing has been based around the Bogle version.

How many of us have been accosted by someone who tells us that we weren't singing the right words because we didn't sing the Furey's version.

What has this to do with tradition? Well, the way I see it is that with so many people knowing the Furey's lyrically different version, am I going against the tradition of transmission by trying to return to the original (superior!) lyrics as learned from a book, rather than aural transmission?

I don't think so, because surely written music is now so established as a tradition in its own right that I'm simply choosing my path.

This brings me to the question of 'anonymity'.
A quick look at Youtube will be revealing in this case. It is amazing how much mis-information is floating around about this song.

There are those who believe that the song was written by a dying soldier, or at least someone who fought in Gallipolli. Others believe it is actually about a specific soldier in an Irish regiment (Enniskillens, I believe)and is an Irish song (apparently this comes froma researcher actually checking to see if there really was a Pvt William McBride who died in 1916 at the age of 19, although Bogle says he just made the details up).

So, the song, despite being modern, creditted to a songwriter, written down, electronically transmitted etc has become (in some cases) anonymous, subject to variation and even mythologised.

Isn't this either becoming a 'traditional' song or alrady one?