Does some of it come down to this:

1) there is a group of musicians, scholars etc who are very interested in 'The Tradition' as it existed in, say, 19th/early 20th century life (with trails sometimes going back several centuries before that, and in some cases forward towards the present day). The interest is in the informal music making of more-or-less ordinary people in the days before mass media. What songs did they sing? What tunes did they dance to? These modern-day musicians and other enthusiasts study and often perform/interpret this tradition for modern audiences (and/or for each other in pub sessions, etc). Nothing wrong with this.

2) there is another, perhaps larger, group of musicians and interested others who play and sing folksongs and tunes without near as much (or any) consideration as to where the song came from, who sang it/played it (or didn't) in the past, etc. They compose songs, they sing and play whatever strikes their fancy, etc. These people, in many respects, are the modern day equivalent of the tradition bearers that group #1 is so interested in. However, the context, methods of learning, attributes of the music they make, etc are all different. Nothing wrong with this.

This is not to say that there are only two camps here, or that anybody fits neatly into either one of these two groups, but I do think that ones perspective on 'The Tradition', or even what we mean when we refer to 'The Tradition', will vary greatly depending on which group we identify more with.

Thoughts?