Thank you, Jim, for the usual interesting contributions.

For what it's worth (as someone who *is* interested in the provenance of songs), I think tradpiper is making a very good point about the tradition in his (or her?) traveller community, although this is the kind of topic that's been discussed here before at length and has a tendency to end in tears or thrown teddies (go and search under 'What is folk?', 'What is traditional?' etc. etc.). As to "where do travellers' songs fit in?", I'd say this field is now (belatedly?) recognised as one of the most vital areas in traditional song. I hope we're going to hear more from tradpiper in this forum.

Tradsinger also made a good point further up the thread:

"Traditional or source singers are human beings like us. They are not born with a repertoire in their heads. They hear songs, they like songs, they learn and sing songs. They forget bits and embellish bits. They get their songs from oral tradition, books, recordings, letters, and now by Internet, email, fax and answerphone. But hey, who doesn't?"