American folklorist Robert D. Bethke, who studied under Ken Goldstein and collected songs in the Adirondacks, told me the following in an email within the last couple of years. This was after I had told him about Ermina Pincombe, a traditional singer I have come to know lately who took old song fragments and melodies she remembered from childhood and fleshed them out with other sources:

"Ermina's life-long inclination to search out and to complete texts for pieces learned from a significant female family relative is highly typical of documented women traditional singers in regional US, including Almeda Riddle in Ozarks, women in Appalachia, and elsewhere. Many publications confirm this gender inclination in commentary, and I believe there are various academic articles/book chapters that speak to it, by feminist folklorists."