Dave,
We started recording Travellers in July 1973; Our recording sessions took a set form: record your singer in his or her home, go to the pub, then go back to the site where somebody would light a fire and people would sing, swap yarns, deal horses, whatever.
After six weeks we had recorded so many songs that we had to stop in order to index what we were getting and form a plan of work.
It was eighteen months before we started again, by which time the fireside sessions had totally disappeared and nobody was singing - the reason - everbody had portable televisions.
As far as I am aware this remains the case. Since May 1975, among the travellers we know, the only singing that has been done was into our microphone.
Asking others working with (Irish) Travellers, this seems to be the general situation. There are going to be no new songs taken into the tradition if there is no tradition to take them into.
Happily this is not the case with teh music; there has been a big move back to Traditional music here in Ireland, thanks largely to the healthy state of settled music (and the assistance of oraganisations like Limerick University Music Dept. and (I think similarly Galway U.
It hasn't happened (yet) with singing, but we can all keep our fingers crossed I suppose.
Jim Carroll