"I'd heard that he played from sheet music, but who wrote his arrangements? Were they his own?"...
.,,.
I have always taken it, Brian, that Bert or Ewan(or Peggy?) or whoever would write out the melody line for him. IIRC he generally just played one line of the melody: few chords or harmonies; which may be what Owen meant above by "feel that he never got to grips with the problems of accompanying folksong", and what made you find them "a bit stiff".

~M~