Because its older? Because it lasted in the oral tradition, unwritten and not fixed. Very interesting thread. I have learnt my songs in many ways, at the begining snippets from my granny then off LPs and cassettes, remember them? Then i discovered Kilmarnock folk club. We are lucky that we have so many recourses available to us, although I would dispute the idea of something learnt from a book being oral tradition but then I'm a pedant!!!! Songs learned directly from another singer, face to face are far more personal than those learned from either books or music media and certainly attribute to what Stanley Robertson refers to singing with 'a tribe at your back' and I consider myself extremely privilleged to have learned some of my repetoire from some fine source singers and i always acknowledge then when i sing the songs i learned from them.