With respect to Anne Briggs, who I admired very much, I would guess her breathing at the ends of lines is more to do with her singing in head-voice which takes twice as much breath as natural voice, forcing her to take more breaths.

Perhaps. I loved her recordings when I first heard them, but these days I hear a reverential quality in her delivery which I find quite off-putting. And I hear an awful lot of pauses, to the point where the melody breaks down into a series of beautiful phrases. I much prefer the almost metronomic timing of a singer like June Tabor (or Tony Capstick).

I like the work of both Tony Rose and Nic Jones, and have learnt several songs from their records, but I agree that the accompaniment is generally very important on their stuff - Nic Jones in particular is a very poor model for an unaccompanied singer.

Pip - ok if you can confine it to practice, but I find that it is exactly then when you develop your singing habits.

It's a step on the way. I need to hear the beat of the tune before I can sing it in any style at all. A good singer will break the regularity of four-square timing, but I think to learn songs like The Recruited Collier or Reynardine the way Anne Briggs sang them - as a series of lines, without any beat or forward momentum - would be to get into an even worse habit.