The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #137182   Message #3183711
Posted By: reynard
08-Jul-11 - 09:27 AM
Thread Name: Let's give the composers some credit
Subject: RE: Let's give the composers some credit
"Hearing one of your own songs introduced by a singer as 'traditional' was a sort of accolade!"

Copyright and royalty issues aside, it's good for new songs to be absorbed into the tradition as "anon". What upsets me is when traditional songs are claimed or attributed to famous singers/writers/collectors. I recently ploughed through dozens of Youtube versions of "Jock of Hazeldean" with a view to singing it myself and was surprised to see it repeatedly attributed to Walter Scott. He famously "improved" songs that he collected and may have written or changed verses but he did not, as far as I know, make any claim to have written it himself. I think a similar situation pertains to some of Burns' songs, but I haven't done the research (I tried searching on Burns but my computer froze)- perhaps someone can enlighten me further?