Ok Shimrod you win... 'The Tradition' is NOT that 'now closed body of works'. No problem!

You and Mr Douglas have bagged that term for your wider category, which DOES include works of known origin, to which we CAN still add - yes? Fine.

But that closed body of work DOES exist, it IS closed, and it DOES need a name.

If it's not called The Tradition (which is fine with me - I'd never have called it that myself) then what DO we call it? There are plenty of posters here who'll fight you for 'traditional,' Mr Caroll for one I suspect, and he has a good case.

When the term was first coined it did mean only 'that body.' But now things have moved on, and we have this confusion, with both a finite and an infinate catalogue both having the same title.

Does that matter? Yes, it matters very much indeed - as any archeologist, lawyer, writer, songwriter, folklorist or historian will confirm. Only slack-thinking singers don't care.

It's essential, for the reasons I've outlined above, that we recognise the difference between works 'of unknown authorship, which have survived generations of oral transmission' and works of known origin which have become popular through modern transmission.

I don't care what you choose to call either (or what value you place on either, individually or as a group) - but you MUST differentiate, or you'll loose the lode-stone.

Correct attribution of the creator of a creative work is not an issue in any other discipline; art, literature, classical music, poetry, furniture design, architecture - but for some reason folk-singers have decided that because SOME songs are public property, ALL songs should be public property. But that way lies theft of intellectual property and the gradual dissolution of the broader thing we choose to call 'folk.'

Even the really old stuff was originally created by someone, then developed in critical isolation by talented singers. We should honour all them when we sing their work - specially those of us who don't have the talent to make anything of equal beauty ourselves.