Maybe this ought to have a separate thread but, I have always referred to folk music's "Aural" tradition because it doesn't matter what anyone actually says what really matters is what the listener/ scribe hears, what is written down is what one hears, even listening from rumbly wax cylinders or from scratchy 78's or even CD's released yesterday, I suppose with "source singers" one might ask what the words meant. Also I was recently in a doctors surgery waiting room and picked up a copy of "The Dalesman" it had dialect poetry which I couldn't grasp until I converted it to "proper" english and then spoke it in my Fathers "Monday morning market" accent purrrrrrrrfect. What gets passed on is what one hears not what the other one says.
Peter