"Given that these days the singing of traditional songs is largely the preserve of people involved in the folk scene...
So if I set up a 'Elizabethan Madrigal Appreciation Society" and we start composing our own stuff, whatever we come up with will automatically become an Elizabethan madrigal? Hmm, have to think about that one - thought about it - rubbish!
A song (or any artistic) form is defined by much more than where it is performed and by whom. 'Traditional' is about where the song has been and what has happened to it on its journey.
If You'll Never Walk Alone is 'traditional' then so is The Birdie Song and Viva Espania.
Bert Lloyd said it all forty odd years ago when he wrote at the end of Folk Song in England, "If Little Boxes and The Red Flag are folk songs, we need a new term to describe The Outlandish Knight, Searching For Young Lambs and The Coalowner and the Pitman's Wife"; all different forms, different origins, different functions, different historical, social and cultural significance.
Jim Carroll