The Revival will change; it's changing all the time & there's no second guessing how it'll turn out. The Tradition, on the other hand, is fixed, unchanging, and sacrosanct on various levels.

But, as I asked earlier, when someone begins to collect and categorise revival folk music will that then become the tradition for later revivals to be based on? Or, as Ralph says, can there no longer be a tradition? I would certainly concur that there can be no tradition based on Aural collection but could it not be based, if the future, on some other Media?

EG - this is from the tradition when people used to record things on Philips hand-held cassette recorders (snigger, snigger). Or this is from the odd traditions of the Mudcat dwellers who based most of their songs on the ramblings of a few insane seers.

In Moorcock's 'Dancers at the end of time' series he mentions that Billy the Kid was the famous astronaut and entrepreneur of the twentieth century who had the hind quarters of a goat. In another (Count Brass possibly) The four ancient horsemen of the Apocalypse were Jon, Pawl, Jorg and Rhungu.Who knows what will happen :-)

Cheers

DtG