And it's all down to singer-songwriters. And they are still around.

INCOHERENT RAMBLE ALERT!

A fascinating thesis, Sminky, but one would do well to take a closer look at the actual nature of your average minstrel, troubadour, or wait. The Troubadours, for example, were aristocratic poets of the medieval Languedoc, and the role of the Waits and Minstrels is more akin to that we find today being fulfilled by drum n' organ duos as typified by Les Alanos from Phoenix Nights - musical troupers in other words, grafting away at the daily grind and given the punters exactly what they want for fear of their livelihood. I don't think one can equate your average singer-songwriter with such people, let alone think they will be in any way responsible for the traditional songs of the future.

I think the problem is one of craft and continuity; once upon a time, when these Traditional Songs were written, the conditions were such that craftsmen of every persuasion were an integral aspect of society - rural, coastal or otherwise. There existed a continuity of master craftsmanship (as celebrated by Kipling in A Truthful Song) reaching back thousands of years. Sadly, for whatever reason, with but few exceptions, that continuity has been broken. The rule, the aesthetic, the feel, the touch are long gone; we've lost the beauty once embodied in even the simplest piece of home-crafted treen, and the once glorious interiors of our public houses have been gutted and made over by bodgers whose abilities would have made a Victorian apprentice boy blush with shame.

In Durham, for example, there is a pub called The Shakespeare whose intimate middle snug has been cherished by drinkers for over 200 years. Last time I was, it was no more; the ancient wainscoting stripped away to make a modern style booth on account of the present incumbent being of the opinion that his punters didn't know the snug was there. 200 years of history gone - and we won't be getting it back because joiners and interior decorators these days wouldn't know where to start.   

I think of our latter day singer-songwriters are akin to the DIY bodgers that typify the present age and their bland housing estate style of living. At best, their songs are a bogus pastiche of the picturesque that lingers on, somewhere, but only just; I see the modern barn conversions and for once in my life I am glad I live in a town. Of course there are exceptions - I've named a few on this thread already - those whose songs do manifest considerable craftsmanship and which have already been absorbed into a sort of tradition, which is to say, people are singing them and making them their own. But that is not to think of them in the same way as we think of Traditional Songs, just be glad of the anomalous talents we see around us.

As a rule, however, I think this is why I am a Traddy; it is why I love old songs, old things in general, to touch a world that is long gone. However, whilst I might relish a song sung by my Irish great-grandfather who worked as a tailor on The Castle Garth Stairs in Newcastle back in the 1870s, I wouldn't have liked to have visited his dentist. So in this respect, I am a fervent modernist; I flit between worlds on a whim, glad that I might touch the past with the one hand, but seize the future the other. I do not resent all change, and even though I might be at odds with the crap-begets-crap school of thinking, there is a school of DIY that I absolutely love, that of an outsider folk architecture that creates its own functional picturesque without worrying too much about the past or the future. I see this in allotments and boatyards everywhere I go, so maybe in this respect I might even applaud the most average singer-songwriter (or singer of traditional songs) and might even, at a stretch, uphold the virtues of GEFF.