Misteltoe Bough, Yesterday, Mull of Kintyre,Daisy Daisy, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, spaghetti - have I missed something here?
None of the above(Mistletoe Bough appears in the repertoires of some source singers but..........) come anywhere near my definition of traditional (or folk) song.
Ron Olesko says "The study of folklore should be approached as a science" - I'll drink to that. As far as I can see we nearly all came into a poetical and musical art form which had already been defined by those who came before us. We have been provided with a definition (of Folk Song) by The International Folkmusic Council. There have been numerous books written on the subject - notably (for me) A L Lloyd's 'Folk Song In England' and David Buchan's 'The Ballad And The Folk'. Both of these deal at some length with the creation and dissemination of what I have come to understand as folk song. We can't really take into consideration what the traditional singers thought about traditional song because it appears nobody ever really got round to asking them!
We can either accept conclusions that have been previously arrived at or we can disprove them - I don't think it is either valid or helpful to ignore them.
Jim Carroll
PS Small, relatively isolated communities, particularly rural ones, appeared to have provided the ideal conditions for supporting healthy, living traditions. Folk clubs don't fall into my definition of communities as the only thing the participants appear to have in common is the songs and music, which makes them mutual interest organisations rather than communities. I know some American academics disagree with this point of view and would class say a group of office workers as a community - hmmmm.