The whole idea of what's traditional fascinates me. I've been very interested in the contributions here, but none of them touch on what I have come to think of as traditional. There are two criteria.

1. That in general nobody claims it. It's fine to write something and be capable of being identified as the author. What I mean is that nobody is going to sue you for singing it or for getting the words "wrong".

2. That somebody, not the author, felt it worthwhile learning - generally orally - to sing other than for profit (rules out recorded covers of Beatles hits).

This suggests two unusual traditional songs which you might wish to comment on or add to.

One is "Norwegian Wood" as sung in our folk session. We don't do it like The Beatles and, though the words are much the same, the stresses are markedly different.

The other is "Delilah", song in some very interesting modal keys by people leaving one of our (three) village pubs at around midnight.

Would I be willing to die to include these in the traditional corpus? - depends.

Ian