"I am about to write a song. How do I "get it into the tradition?"
You don't Willie - it's very much a case of "Don't ring us - we'll ring you".
There is no guaranteed way of getting a song into the tradition; it has to be relevant enough for a community to take it up, re-work it, adapt it to suit themselves (200 plus versions of Barbara Allen), until you are pretty much written out of the equasion - that's how it works, or worked, when we had a living song tradition. We have become passive recipients rather than active participants of our culture nowadays - it all comes packaged, labelled and marketed and placed on a shelf until the manufacturers decide it's more profiitable to replace it with something more modern and sellable, then it is put in a cupboard where it remains until some enterprising advertising organisation decides it's exactly what they need to sell a new brand of suppositories.
The question is, why should you WANT to write a 'traditional song'?
Traditional (folk) songs are in the public domain and belong to us all. I've yet to meet a songwriter who is prepared to withdraw his name and all claim of financial reward to his brainchild - would you be preapared to let us have your song for nowt?
"sorry Jim. "
Don't apologise Willie - we all make mistakes.
Jim Carroll