Once a song has been lifted out of the living stream and printed can it be poured back and re-enter the tradition or is it always a revival song until it goes through the 'folk process' assuming it's heard and sung by one of the dwindling number of genuine traditional singers somewhere in the world?


If a collected song still resonates or expresses something significant to a community it can become traitional.

So can a modern song I would argue if it is selected within such a community. In our South yorkshire carol tradition new carols have been introduced from composition or retrieval or transfer from other pubs etc.

There are a lot of us who learned these purely within the singing community and make no distinction as long as they meet the criteria of the singers. I've seen songs sung and rejected or ignored and others taken up.