Pip said
> As far as I'm concerned, the songs don't need new arrangements - the plain, spare, unadorned readings of artists like Nic Jones, June Tabor and Tony Rose are all the adornment they need (and some would say we should eschew even that level of frippery and stick to the source singers). <

I'll go along with that. I would add that some of the recordings of source singers are pretty rough in one way or another, whether or not due to their ages at the times when they were recorded, so sometimes I think I prefer some measure of polish. Anyway that's a matter of taste. As Pip, Jim and others have said, it's the songs that matter. The more people who perform them, in styles close to or not so close to the tradition, the better the chance that future generations will acquire the taste.

State sponsorship, as in Ireland, would be wonderful if done right, but heaven help us from the Red Army Choir approach.

Pip also quoted Jim Moray's
"Young men are false and we seldom do prove true".
and asked
> Anyone else want to volunteer to sing that version? <

Presuming that "we" means young men, then those of us who aren't young men can't apply it to ourselves. And those of us (if any here) who are young men probably would claim that they will prove true.

Or does it mean that the human race in general seldom do prove true? That would be too cynical for me.

Richard