"Jim Carroll
I don't know whether you are aware of the idea of taking words out of their context and twisting them? Because it seems plain to me that this is precisely what you are doing with my words in relation to the travelling community."
A word of advice
If you start postings with this aggressively abusive tone you are going to find yourself ostracised as others have been for attempting to talk down to people

If you make a statement, kindly have the balls to stand by it and not hide behind "someone else said it"
As far as your racist outburst towards Travellers - you said what you said and that sort of degrading language has no place in discussions on folk song

The relationship between orality and literature is a complex one - you appear to be treating it on the "Do you still beat your wife - yes or no" level
We spent some time examining the relationship - not by scrambling around the net looking for suitable cut-'n-pastes, but actually spending time with the people involved
Judging by the lack of requests for the article based on Walter describing his attitude to folk song, people are as disinterested in what he had to say on folk song as they are on what I have to say, and would much rather pontificate on the subject by removing the singers from the equation

Of course there is no such thing as a "pure oral tradition", just as there is no such thing as a printed folk song that hasn't relied on orality
Nobody will ever know which came first - we can only make intelligent guesses - if we put in the work we might just be able to come to some sort of a conclusion based on the little the singers were allowed to say
The only certain thing in all this is ONCE YOU ACCEPT THAT "THE FOLK" WERE CAPABLE OF HAVING MADE THEIR OWN SONGS, THEN YOU NEED TO ACCEPT THAT THEY PROBABLY DID

"a Communist Party front"
Can we assume from your choice of antedeluvian language that you have yet to emerge from The Cold Way ?
Please don't make these threads a platform for your own obvious extremist right wing views; they have as little place in these discussions as do your formerly expressed contempt of Travellers
Jim Carroll