In the John Tams thread there was some mention of songs written by him that people would have said were traditional. It was also mentioned that Richard Thomson had also written songs that were the same and I'm sure there are many others, Ewan McColl, Cyril Tawney spring to mind from the UK. I'm sure there are many more from here and any other parts of the world. Further examples would be welcome.

It opens up an interesting line of debate.
1 Is it a good thing that songs can be written in a style that could be mistaken for a traditional song?
2 Is it a good idea for new writers to consciously try and write songs in this style?
3 Is it the only way that some people will actually be prepared to listen to original material?
4 If the original songs in this style can be so easily mistaken for the 'real thing' does this not make some of the purist's views somewhat invalid, in a musical sense if not a scholarly one?

In the 'Ashokan Farewell' thread. the same thing seems to be happening for tunes. The tune sounds so traditional that some people are reluctant to believe that it was written fairly recently by Jay Ungar.

I personally think that traditional is a nonsense word when applied to music (as are most of the labels and categories used to describe it). Despite our improving attempts to record music, by it's nature it is something that only really exists in the present, in the air, at the moment of creation and is gone. All that remains is the emotion triggered by those moments. (Phew that was a bit heavy)