"Guitars?, Bouzoukis? and even the banjo in it's various forms, nothing wrong with any of them in the right context."
Who decides what is and what's not the right context - maybe it's those mysterious 'folk police' that I keep hearing about and never encountering! Spanish guitar not suitible for Scots music - bye bye Dick Gaughan
I wouldn't go anywhere near Martin Carthy's Spanish guitar accompaniments - not because the instrument originated in Spain, but because it doesn't suit the songs he sings, IMO.
It really is all a matter of taste, but you questiond it as a cultural anomoly:
"I owe you an apology I must admit that I was absolutely ignorant of the place of the 5 string banjo in the Scottish tradition as used on the recording under discussion"
As it happens, I don't particularly like the banjo accompanying English, Scots or Irish songs in most cases; not all - it nauses up the narrative, BUT THAT IS ENTIRELY MY OPINION; I certainly wouldn't challenge it on principle - seems to be a bit of straw-grasping going on here.
MacColl and Seeger (and others) experimented with accompaniments throughout their time together - sometimes successfully, some times not, but from the time they set up the Singers Club (remind me how long ago that was!), they both stuck to their own culture for their material. MacColl. Lloyd and Kennedy always claimed it was Lomax's influence that brought that about, and Lomax certainly didn't challenge it at the syposium given on MacColl's 70th birthday at County Hall - got the recording somewhere.
You and the OP are using something MacColl did back in the Stone Age to demean a lifetime's work - nothing new there. I can remember Alex Campbell chucking up over front row of the audience at the MSG in Manchester, but I wouldn't present that as typical of his work; it would be as grossly unfair of me as it is of what you are doing.
Jim Carroll