Another candidate for the oldest European folk songs still sung today: the Carmina Burana. The manuscript is early 13th century, from Germany, and the songs (and little plays) in it are in (secular) Latin and German. They are part of the 12th-century goliard tradition: wandering poets, educated as clerics but not working as such. The subject material: love (but not the courtly type you get in the troubadour tradition, rather a more earthy type), drinking, gambling, the good life...

The music used today is usually Carl Orff's, who of course is a modern composer, but the lyrics are the same!

Finnish rune songs are said to back a long time (see http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/folksing.html), some say even 2500 years, but of course there is no way to check this (the old literacy problem discussed above).

Letty