One funny result: After following this long discussion, last night at the Irish session in Newburyport, I found myself so self-conscious that I couldn't remember any of my songs! So, I sang all three of my contributions from word sheets. No one seemed to mind. Granted, this is a mostly instrumental session, with only every third or fourth number being a song; none of the instrumentalists play from sheet music. So I suppose they're pretty easygoing about the singing.

And for one of my songs, a rather difficult one to memorize that we don't often sing, Robert Burns's "Westlin Winds", a couple of the other singers came to look over my shoulder, and they appreciated having the words out so they could sing along! Afterwards we chatted about what versions they knew, and about what it meant to them, but I was sensitized to this issue of reading words at a session, and I couldn't detect any critical eyebrow-raising or anything else, far as that goes.