Les

Although the communities of people who kept songs alive and those communities that kept tunes alive overlap, I still maintain that the overlap was probably small.

I'm not sure about that. I've been listening to Phil Tanner a lot recently - you would class him as a 'songs' person, but he also took over the fiddler's duty when the fiddler took a break - mouth music, of course.

I don't think he was unusual - there are fewer recordings of mouth music, but that may be due to the early collectors concentrating on songs. Isabel Sutherland also did both, and although some of her mouth music may have come from her collecting, she did introduce some as learned from her aunt, as were a lot of her songs.

Phil