There have been lots of discussions here about the survival of traditional song, etc., but they usually start out with a negative point of view (i.e. proclaiming its death), or degenerate into a discussion on "what is folk?", in which someone starts going on about fecking horses. So apologies if I'm covering familiar ground, but I wanted to start off from another direction.

My question is: in what areas of life in the British Isles is it still meaningful to talk about the oral transmission of songs?

You only have to look at the thread listing Ron Baxter's songs collected during his Merchant Navy days to see that people didn't stop making up and passing on songs during the 20th century. But "aha!" comes the reply from the cynic: "even that source has dried up now; the Merchant Navy ain't what it used to be". Ok then, so where else might someone find songs being passed on? I have a couple of tentative suggestions:

1) Songs for infants: Since having a kid a couple of years ago, taking the kid around to various playgroups etc., it's become clear that people do learn and pass on songs to sing for and with their children, and more than once a week I'm sitting around in a circle with other parents joining in songs. There are all sorts of these: story songs, counting songs, nursery rhymes, etc. In terms of how they are memorised and passed on, they contain a lot of repetition, which makes them 'catchy'; it's also a context where people don't feel shy about singing, because they're with their kid and it's just part of playing. Speaking personally, several of the songs that get sung to my kid are recognisable as traditional songs, learned in turn as children; I sing Coulter's Candy to my son, remembering it from the singing of my uncle from Govan; my wife is American and sings "I've been working on the railroad all the live-long day".

2) Sports songs: One of my hobby horses as a Liverpool F.C. fan (I've started threads about this before); we don't have to get into debates about whether You'll never walk alone etc. as sung on the terraces is a folk song, because it's clear enough that there are many songs that emerge from the community of fans that are passed on down the years in pubs and in the grounds. e.g. Poor Scouser Tommy (Liverpool F.C.), Every Other Saturday (Rangers F.C. and Liverpool F.C.), the Chip Butty Song (Sheffield United). Sports clubs can also be a good places for the preservation of folk songs from the area; all Newcastle United F.C. fans know the chorus of Blaydon Races, and a good number know the whole thing; I also saw a discussion recently by Crewe Alexandra fans who recalled singing Poor Paddy Works on the Railway. In Ireland, I've heard various songs from GAA members in County Cork, including Up up Newmarket, and The Bold Thady Quill.

3) Village carols: This is a guess, someone will have to fill me in on this; are the village carols sung around Sheffield etc orally transmitted? Are they the product of a revival, or something that goes back year on year?

4) Pub singing in general: This is a lot more dubious, but still worth thinking about. I was at a singaround in The Lion tavern, Liverpool, on the Thursday at the start of the Grand National meet. By chance, other people turned up and joined in; one singer who was there by chance had a vast knowledge of songs that by the sounds of it suggested he'd heard a lot of recorded folk music; but others who joined in and were definitely not 'folkies' had a good working knowledge of a handful of songs, mostly Irish (e.g. Wild Colonial Boy) but also Liverpool songs like Maggie May. It would be foolish to proclaim pub singing as a continuing fount of traditional song, but it's probably worth pondering what songs are still part of people's consciousness from singing along after a few pints.


So yeah, to stop stringing out what's basically a very simple question: in the British Isles today, what are the contexts where songs are being passed on?