This is all good stuff, and thanks for many interesting contributions. Liam's Brother's characterisation of differing attitudes amongst traditional singers towards improving their material rings very true. I suspect that some of the mishearings / Mondegreens that tradpiper refers to were perpetuated precisely because singers in L.B.'s category (1) consciously decided to leave their texts well alone even when certain phrases were apparently nonsensical.

On the other hand, I can think of instances in ballad tradition where a major shift - e.g. a change in a the gender of a significant character - has occurred at some point during transmission, with a marked effect on the emotional or moral weight of the ballad. It's hard to imagine that a change like that would happen by accident. But, as I said before, inference is one thing, direct evidence is another.

Given that at least some singers always seem to have altered consciously their material, it isn't really surprising that the likes of Gordon Hall or Fred Jordan, in contact with the folk revival and also with access to a wider range of printed sources than their forebears, should have wished to improve the texts they sang. It's even more interesting that a singer like Bell Duncan might have been doing the same, even before Carpenter arrived on her doorstep. I seem to remember Steve Jordan, in his excellent workshop on Richard Hall (one of George Gardiner's sources) mentioning that Hall was learning material from 'Songs of the West' in the 1900s. And, when Mike Yates observed Fred Jordan's collection of songbooks, was this before or after Fred had become a guest artist at revival venues?

romany man: all you say is true, and it doesn't "make it wrong". I'm just curious to know how all those versions came about.

Keep 'em coming!