It's an interesting distinction you're making, Jim, and one that's often made without much explanation. It's never seemed very clear to me where tradition ends and "revival" or "song-carrying" begins.

Is it, as you use the terms, to do with the means of learning or transmitting the songs (oral vs written/recorded?)Or to do with the social context in which the songs are used and passed around? Or is it more about whether the songs themselves are old and from an anyonymous source? Or is it to do with being old - is it possible to be a traditional singer only if you were born before a certain, fixed date? (and if so, why?)

It all seems quite blurred to me. I've learned loads of songs just from hearing other people sing them - some from older members of my family, some from friends, some from strangers in clubs and sessions and festivals. I also learn loads more from books and records and the internet. I sing them mostly at these folk events but also sometimes at social occasions or parties, or to my children and grandchildren.

It doesn't seem to me to be so very far from the way songs have always been passed on and used. The means of transmission available to us are now more varied, but the time-honoured old processes still continue too. If I sing my granddaughter a lullaby my Mum sang to me (and probably her Mum to her), isn't that a tradition?

When there was a live "tradition" by your definition, people must at some points in history have learned and introduced new songs, surely? When did these become traditional - after x years? After a generation?

If you say "tradition" is now dead and simply doesn't exist, when did it stop, and how? What was it that used to happen and now doesn't and can't? Or does it happen in Ireland and not in England?

Sorry about the string of questions, you don't have to answer the lot - I'm just trying to get at what people mean when they say that "traditional" folk song is something quite distinct from "revival", and something that is dying or dead.

Marje