GSS - no indeed, but by being rocked up (or wombled up) & spliced with Farewell He, it did become a bloody poor source to learn the words or tune of "All around my hat".

Musket -

If Jim is right, then folk died years ago. If I'm right, it is a living musical genre

Jim -

I believe that folk songs are songs made by the people, but unless people (in general) recreate the means by which new songs can be absorbed into their culture, the process is dead - no new folk-songs.


This is very much how I see things, for what it's worth. It's a huge stock of songs, but it's not being added to and probably won't again, unless society changes fairly dramatically. Which is sad, but it doesn't make singing the songs any less worthwhile.

(Did classical music die years ago? Bach's music is still going strong AFAIK.)

Side note: the memory had been nagging at me for a while of hearing a song which (according to the singer's introduction) had been picked up from Travellers relatively recently, which showed that new songs were being made more recently than we might have thought. This evening I remembered the song: What Will We Do? The linked page will tell you who it was collected by.