IF we accept that 'traditional music is caught not taught' then this calls into question some of the stuff I was looking at about people regarded as 'traditional' teaching others to sing correctly down to getting the ornamentation right. I think this was either Irish or Traveller 'trad' singers. It also calls into question a lot of what Seeger and MacColl set out to do, as described for example by Jim Carroll and Martin Carthy and others. There are so many differing attitudes.

But this thread is about Pardon, and one thing that seems clear is that the grandfather from whom he believed that many of his songs came was a trained musician, from a family of trained musicians and that he could read music. Another thing is that Pardon did have some degree of 'training' in singing, definitely via his school experiences of folk music (in his own account) and almost certainly via his experiences of Methodism. Jst to add to that were not some of the trade union songs done to hymn tunes?