With a very few exceptions they did not survive in the oral tradition. Within those exceptions very few variants survived. How many "source singers" are there now? How many instrumentalists haven't used a tune book?

Thirty years ago Bob Pegg suggested that rugby songs were possibly the last example of the folk process and got howled down. Are you suggesting he might have been right? and in the larger scheme of things does it matter? The music has survived, anyone here wishes it hadn't?

All the best

Steve Ogden