GUEST wrote:

Bert bashing and careless supposition are so unattractive.

Deceit is not only socially damaging, it also makes it harder to do other research. One of the biggest problems of folk song scholarship is trying to penetrate the deceptions of people from Thomas Percy to John Jacob Niles.

Rewriting is fine -- all of us who perform play around with songs to get performable versions. But own up to it.

Someone who has engaged in false attributions once must face the prospect of never being trusted again. And deserves it.