I thought it might be something like that.

I tell you something that occurred to me. That practice of playing fast and loose with lyrics and beeefing them up to make a powerful connection with an audience is far more prevalent in American folk music. And goes unremarked.

If you think about someone like Derek Brimstone, he had been Rev Gary Davis's roadie and he had bettr insight into the guitar playing than a lot of people who played cleaner versions. His instrumentation was nearer the original - (big Gibson for much of his career) and national steel fingerpicks.

And yet Derek would tell a joke whilst finding the tuning - some completely crazy tale about the song's origins, and the words of say a classic like Candyman would be the cobbled up from the Reverends, Sleepy John's, Donovan's and he'd probably feel free to write a verse of his own. I've seen him do the same with Frank Proffits and Clarence Ashley's banjo songs as well.

And I think Derek probably took this approach from American artists he had seen. people like rambling jack eliot. I seem to recollect seeing quite serious American artists adding a tall tale to spice up presentation.

perhaps AL Lloyd wanted you to look at the artists that he credited with the creation of these songs. Perhaps he saw it as part of his brief and he thought if he pesented it strongly - it had a better chance of surviving than as a fragment.