Thanks, Bob.

I don't object to the 'folk process' as such, and it has to be said that words to songs often change simply because someone has misheard them...

For example, what about the Dubliners on the BBC2 Folk awards? The first line of Dirty Old Town 'I met my love by the gasworks cross'!! Ewan wrote 'croft' - and the gas works in question is only around a mile from the Lowry Theatre where the awards were presented!!

My real gripe is with those conceited people who change the words because they don't like the ones that were written, particularly when the writer is still living. The songwriter probably worked long and hard to get the words right, so who are they to change them? More to the point, why sing the song?!

A case in point being a time when I was singing Alan Bell's 'Windmills' on live radio - with Alan sitting next to me joining in on the chorus! Before I sang it, I asked him to check I had the words right, and one word (yes, just one!) was wrong - but it meant I was able to sing the song as Alan wrote it.

Okay, I will concede that an historical or other factual inaccuracy could be an exception, and words that a singer may be uncomfortable with, or could offend their audience, may be another... but then again, why sing the song at all?

I'm lucky enough to know Ted Edwards as a friend, and I sing some of his songs - I'm one of the 'cronies' on his CD 'Ted Edwards... and Cronies'. The CD came about because Ted had a stroke many years ago, which sidelined his performing career.

The number of people singing Ted's 'Coal Hole Cavalry' (which he describes as a medley of his greatest hit!) using words Ted didn't write is amazing (the song itself is amazing, too!)... in the first line, most people sing 'cobbles', where Ted wrote 'flags' (meaning paving stones). However, I digress!

I don't have a big problem with people altering unimportant words to suit their own speech patterns - particularly when a song is in dialect that is 'foreign' to the singer - but yet again, why sing the song in the first place?

Where the original version of the lyric is known, I would suggest a singer owes it to the songwriter (as Bob has done) to research what was originally written to be as fair as possible to the songwriter. Traditional songs (as defined by 'author unknown') are a different matter, simply because (in most cases) no-one really knows what was originally written.