The more I check out old songs (19th c or earlier), the more I find that the tunes applied to them vary. In other words, singers used whatever tune that suited the meter, their style, and the times.

With a little effort, suitable tunes can be fitted to most of the broadsides in the Bodleian Library and elsewhere. Looking at a more modern song group, cowboy songs, many of the older ones have had more than one tune fitted to them. Even the printed sheet music varies.

To me, the tune is singer's choice, and of secondary importance to the lyrics. Insistence on the one, true, tune seems to be a development that came along with cheap sheet music and the beginning of copyright law. For many songs, the tune used by the writer-singer will never be known.

More pertinent to Bob Bolton's complaints, Meredith and Anderson, in their introduction to "Folk Songs of Australia," say "From the examples given it is seen how a song learned from a single source by two or more singers can end by being sung to vastly differing tunes; and how a dance tune played by several musicians in the same district will develop many variations that may well be the result of the direct influence of the instrument upon which it is played."

Another comment in the same book states "Of the hundreds of items forming the basis of this book not one tune was played upon nor a single song accompanied by a fretted instrument."

I have to disagree with the statement "If somebody could find a tune for it, it would have a much better chance of making it into the Digital Tradition." Tthe tune should be the choice of the interpreter-performer.