Well I would simply beg to differ ~ hijacked is perhaps too strong a word "traditional song" and songs collected from all sorts of singers in the dim and distant have been recorded by collectors and digitized and put into books are just that and form a ready source for up and coming and established singers too to perform

And long may it be so ~ however certainly in my living memory other "new" folk songs (or however you would wish to call them) have existed and not just from the popular (o dear) singers such as Bert Lloyd, MacColl, Tawney, MacTell, and of course we cannot ignore the likes of other guests who may or may not have Americana, blues and other musics which they performed in folk clubs in the 1960s

Folk song ~ depending upon how you define it ~ must include songs which comment on the doings of the day or recent past ~ often newsworthy but always so!

Folk song is and always was meant to be entertainment for the masses ~ before the age of Newspapers (no doubt it can be argued that Broadsides were indeed early Broadside Newpapers!)

"Masses" may of course need to be qualified


Ray