Walter heard all the songs he sang at family gatherings - he only sang 'Dark Eyed Sailor because "nobody else wanted it" - he was too young to be accepted as a serious singer by the gathering, but he absorbed what was sung and later, when he decided to write them down, he scored the survivors of the family to fill in his memory gaps

It's worth remembering that most of the English Folk repertoire of the twentieth century was taken from singers who had hardly experienced a living tradition - Sharp and co worked on the basis of gathering the songs before those who had them died as the tradition was very much in decline at the beginning of the 20th century
The situation was a little different in Ireland as the singing traditions survived much longer, but even so, Tom Munnelly constantly referred to his collecting work as "a race with the undertaker" (Tom was mainly working with English language singers)
The only thriving oral Tradition to be collected from was that of the Travellers - the Irish and Scots particularly
Their 'non literacy' and their 'social pariah' status makes what was collected from them the nearest examples we have of a purely oral tradition
Jim Carroll