"Jim, your posts come over very London-centric and Ireland-centric,"
My conclusions were drawn from working with Travellers and in West Clare - the former still had a living tradition and the latter was still within living memory
The tradition in England began to die when the Industrial Revolution began to break up the rural communities and cause a shift to the town, literacy, commercial entertainment and technology dealt the coup-de-grace
Sharp et al reported that the live tradition was moribund and Tom Munnley in the sixties described his as "A race ith the undertaker"
This makes the information received from Travellers and rural Ireland so important
Walter Pardon was interesting as he was never really a part of a living sining tradition, but he learned all his songs from relatives who were
He sang what that taught him and he reached his conclusions from what his Uncle Billy and his father - repeated first hand information
Jim