The simple act of recording a song from tradition and disseminating that record will always tend to distort the tradition; this is pretty much inevitable.  In fact, the publishing of folksongs by collectors such as Sharp has given rise to far less distortion than did the enormous popularity of the Broadside during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; songs were collected from tradition and widely distributed throughout the UK and Ireland, leading to other versions disappearing in the face of printed "standard" versions.  In this way, a lot of English songs became established in Ireland, and vice-versa; since melodies were often not given, the itinerant ballad-sellers simply sang them (that was part of the marketing process) to tunes that they knew -and since a great many of those ballad-sellers were Irish, this led to a large importation of Irish melodies into the English tradition.  Often these melodies displaced the original English ones; not necessarily because they were better, but simply because they were more widely-heard.

Today, the same process is underway; this time it is commercial sound recordings that are the agent of change.  A great many people only hear one or two recordings of any particular song, and tend to assume that these versions are the definitive ones.  In many cases, the lack of background information given with recordings leads people into any number of misapprehensions, such as the widespread belief that Dirty Old Town was written about Dublin.  Some irresponsible performers promulgate all manner of fanciful nonsense when they do provide sleevenotes, leading innocent listeners to believe all kinds of foolishness.

The Digitrad itself is not immune from this effect; contributions have to be taken on trust, and I've come across -as I'm sure have many others- all sorts of "information" attached to songs which is either unproveable or just plain wrong.  The authority of print should not be underestimated; people will believe things they see written down.  It's just as bad, to my mind, to fail to provide proper credits for songs -some people simply transcribe from recordings and don't bother to read the notes or look at the copyright information on the label.  Of course, many people will consider that sort of information irrelevant, and me pedantic for wanting it: I'd say that that would be a rather short-sighted viewpoint, particularly as the Digitrad is taken very seriously as a source of information.  Nowadays, collectors of folkmusic are careful to place the material in its proper context; the source of the song or melody is just as important as the music itself.  I think that's a healthy attitude, and one that we should all aspire to, insofar as we are able, when disseminating material by whatever means.  We owe it to the music, and to those who will come to it in the future.

Malcolm