Too many followers of folk/traditional music & song are all too ready to accept that the first written version is the original!

Name them, then.

In fact, let's see you name even one.


Such rigidity of view is a contradiction in terms, and a lot of old cobblers of course. Having a mythical 'original' version does enable students of ethnomusicology to create theses about its subsequent journey through the folk process & to keep a few academics in work.

Try reading some real ethnomusicology and see what they actually investigate. You can find about 10 complete issues of the British Journal of Ethnomusicology on the archive site http://lit.gfax.ch/. Something like the article about potatoes and music in Bolivia will come as a mind-boggler to just about anyone.

The downside is that it does a grave disservice to the real 'tradition bearers in denying that anything of value can be created by the PEOPLE rather than the plagiarists/composers who set up the alleged 'original' version, however long ago.

So who's saying that, then?

Music goes both ways between popular aural tradition and elite art music composition. We have about 2000 years of documentation of how it happens.

It would be nice to know where the currently popular tune came from. I don't know, it looks like Steve Gardham doesn't either, and you certainly don't.