There are many, many composed tunes old and new - with a known author - which sit quite happily and absolutely seamlessly with tunes for which there is no known author or for which there may be many sources.

Absolutely. And if folk song had developed in the same way - if new songs were being written which could sit 'seamlessly' in between The Banks of Primroses and The Plains of Waterloo, or between Rigs of the Time and Hard Times of Old England, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. It has happened to some extent in the older-style clubs - in singarounds I hear a lot of songs (by people like MacColl, Tawney, Dave Goulder, Sydney Carter, Martin Graebe and Graeme Miles) which are recognisably new songs in a traditional idiom.

The resemblance only goes so far, though - very few contemporary songs have the story-telling structure which is so characteristic of trad songs, or for that matter the subject matter (big on death, heartbreak and unwanted pregnancy). I worry sometimes we're ending up with the worst of both worlds - an evening of songs that sound too 'folky' for punters off the street (all those big choruses!), while at the same time being too warm and fuzzy for anyone to actually sing very many traditional songs. (Litmus test: how would I feel singing Two Pretty Boys next?)