"Or is a song only really acceptable by the trad. lobby if no-one knows who composed it?"

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! I really, really, really don't want to start another definitions thread, but I think that it was Bert Lloyd who said that the fact that many songs in the British Tradition have no known authors is purely an accident of history. It's a 'red herring'. It's like believing that it can't be a sports car unless it's got a 'go-faster' stripe on the side.

The trouble with many 'modernisers', as far as I'm concerned, is that they don't really understand what traditional song is. They set up their own model - and then modernise that - and they always end up with something which sounds suspiciously like rock music ...

Finally,

"...the attitude that change is GOOD is always wrong, too."

Amen to that!