To quote again my own inlay to my own record: "All these songs are traditional; but I suspect every one will have been more or less consciously modified from original sources in the course of making them my own."

It's what we do, surely...

{One example which occurs to me, not from my own singing ~~ the Coppers' Warlike Seamen has as its second line "I'll tell you of a fight my boys on board the Nottingham". But in a later verse we find "They asked from whence we came; Our answer was from Liverpool and London was our name". So the name of the ship has changed in the middle of the song. I wonder if the Coppers ever noticed; surely they must have done, but that's the way it is in The Book, presumably. I know of at least one group who change that line to "And Nottingham was our name"; which doesn't scan quite so easily. I usually keep the Coppers' words when I sing that one, as I find it flows better; but I can see the case for the alteration. I think, anyhow, that it's a great song, either way & whatever...}

~Michael~