If a tradition is what's handed down from one generation to another, than the revival must be part of the tradition. There are older aspects too, but if we are to regard anything after 1950 as too late to be traditional, we're left with a static and fossilised view of what the tradition consists of.

The "revival" was just that - it revived many traditional songs which would otherwise have been lost to future generations. It also "revived" or refreshed certain of the songs in various ways, attempting to revitalise them by creating new settings and accompaniments, re-writing lyrics and even writing new songs that followed traditional patterns. Not all of this was successful in the long term, but some of what was done then has resulted in the preservation of old songs and tunes in much the same form as they'd existed in for decades or centuries before. The old songs became accessible to a new generation of singers and audience. All this can't be written off as "not the tradition". It happened, it's important, and the process continues to this day.

Marje