") then in Ireland pure oral transmission ceased a long way back"
No it did not and that was exacerbated by th fact that many Irish singers did not read English as their main language was Irish
Even in the first half of the twentieth century many Irish, while being able to read, often struggled to both read and write English, particularly in The Gaeltachts, though they often sang English songs
The Travellers could neither read nor write as a community and their pariah status made it highly unlikely that they could seek assistance from the settled communities - this was still largely the case in the 1970s
Travellers were the most important preservers of many of our longest and rarest ballads and stories, all learned and carried orally
The subject of learning songs from print is complex, many singers didn't trust printed versions, others treated the printed word as sacrosanct and unalterable and, unless the songs were perfect (many broadsides couldn't be sung without radical alteration) they were rejected as not good enough
It is nonsense to claim there is no such thing as an oral tradition, almost as nonsensical as suggesting that so many traditional songs originated from print
Jim Carroll