"Ordinary people will go on singing as they always have, regardless of collectors and folk clubs."

I'm very doubtful about this, although of course it depends on who you describe as 'ordinary people'. Treewind is correct in saying that cheap home recording technologies, and internet sharing sites like Youtube, are providing opportunities to democratize music-making. Thirty-four years ago we had people saying that Punk Rock was the new Folk Music and, in the sense that you only needed a a Woolworths guitar and amp and a couple of chords, they were right. But both of those examples (and of course the modern 'folk scene' itself) concern self-selected groups of 'musicians', rather than the much wider community that the phrase 'ordinary people' conjures up.

To hear people singing while they worked or went about their business was once common, according to many accounts. Parents sang to their children. People gathered in pubs to sing together. Many of the traditional singers who were actually asked about it, told of siblings, parents, uncles and aunts who sang. I don't believe that any of those instances of 'ordinary people' singing is common today.

I'm with MtheGM in looking to football chants and children's rhymes as amongst the last outposts of traditional singing (although if you talk to Sam Lee he will tell you that singing is still going on in several Englsih traveller communities).

Jim Carroll wrote:
"Even the children's songs are very much on the wane, or so I am told by teacher friends... It is the adult culture I was referring to (I can't speak for the terraces, where I wouldn't venture without protective clothing!)"

There were still old songs circulating and new ones doing the rounds when my younger son was in primary school seven years ago. Not sure about now. As for the terraces, I've recently resumed my attendance at Old Trafford after a long break (no more terraces, and no protective clothing required these days!). Although the old custom of gathering on the Stretford End to sing for an hour or two before kick-off has now disappeared, I can report that several of the songs I knew in the 1970s are still around, and new ones are being composed, either to tunes previously associated with United chants, or as parodies of opposing supporters' songs, or to fresh tunes drawn from popular music in its widest sense (new chants are rehearsed in the pub beforehand). Whether they are up there with 'Tam Lin' as examples of great 'folk art' is open to argument, but the oral tradition is still alive there.

Before I go, I just have to question the sixth post in this thread, since no-one else seems to have:

"Given that Cecil Sharpe bowdlerised most of what he collected..."

Er... in what sense is that a 'given'?