True enough leeneia, what I am digging around for is - many of these tunes have been palyed off and on for 2, 3 or 4 hundred years. What has been the main mode of "survival and transmission" durung that period?

Their seems to be an assumption, and I may be wrong here, that the main mode has been what is described in the 'folk world' as the oral tradition.

L in C#