I dont mind Jim,lets take a quote from WP
"Well yes, because there's a difference in the types of the music, that's another point. You can tell 'Van Dieman's Land' is fairly old by the sound, the music, and 'Irish Molly' and 'Marble Arch' is shortened up; they shortened them in the Victorian times. And so they did more so in the Edwardian times. Some songs then, you'd hardly start before you'd finish, you see; you'd only a four line verse, two verses and a four line chorus and that'd finish. You'd get that done in half a minute; and the music wasn't as good. Yeah, the style has altered. You can nearly tell by the old 'Broomfield Hill', that's an old tune; 'The Trees They Do Grow High', you can tell, and 'Generals All'"
He is only partly correct his"OLD" examples broomfield hill etc, IS INCORRECT, they have a certain sound because of their musical modes it is perfectly possible to write songs that sound musically "old" in fact many recent songwriters have done so,
when walter talks about defining by using a one row melodeon what he in musical terms means is that the songs are restricted to the major the mixolydian and the dorian[ which includes most trad songs from the geographical british isles and appalachia]on a g one row melodeon you can play in g major. a dorian[abcdef#g] and d mixolydian[def#gabc nat d] that does not necessarily mean the songs are old. modern songwriters who want to write in the musical tradioinal style/ sound use these keys too, but their songs are not old.
The other thing that many traditional songs have in common with each other is a style or styles of prose.
Walter was only half way right, because for a tradtion to be vibrant and alive it has to have new repertoire, otherwise it is dead just a museum piece, the tradtion is alive because new songs are being written using the ancient modes and using convincing prose style. Walter was wrong, you cannot call a song old because it uses certain modes or certain prose style, what you can say is that it is written in a tradtional style and sounds old.
the style has not altered walter had clearly not hears johnny handles farewell to the monty. Walter was a little out of his depth