The trap many seem to be falling into is that there is an undistributed middle between the second and third paragraphs.

What happens to composed music (I suppose that must include all music, mustn't it) that is taken over by the community (I wonder what the words "ready-made" add?) and re-fashioned or re-created and written down (I wonder what forms of writing are necessary).

If the refashioned form remains unwritten, then it seems the work becomes folk, within the definition, and that would presumably satisfy many of the "horse" brigade since thier football chants etc, based on composed songs but with lyrics that incite violence tend to remain unwritten in that form.

But if "writing" includes recording as well as manuscript (and it does for many copyright purposes) then when John Barden re-arranges "Slipjigs and reels" and the rest of us tag along - it's folk, and then when he records it it isn't.

When Barden, Kenneth Ingham, and I do the "belter" version of "Ride on" (in A minor) an everyone goes along with it, it's "folk" within the definition, but when Fiddlefit do thier version (a very different timing, and with an added middle verse" - because they wrote the middle verse down it isn't folk? Something is awry in this middle area, concerning the way in which composed music (not a very happy term) becomes modified and adopted into the community and may or may not become "folk".

A consequence of this adoption mechanism is that the musical tests, and the statements that folk songs occur only in certain modes (see, for example Oxford Dictionary of music) have to become wrong, for the adoption process may bring in any musical form or mode.   

When Fiddlefit take