"Isn't that the point about folk - all kinds of songs and melodies are subsumed into the folk process."
The 'folk process' has not operated in Britain for several generations - advance in technology, copyright laws and mass media communication has made sure of that.
We receive our culture ready made, vacuum-pack-wrapped, factory finished and legally protected, it has become a commodity rather than a commonly owned means of self expression.
Tinkering with the older songs in the greenhouse conditions of a handful of folk clubs has nothing whatever to do with the common ownership, re-adaptation re-making of songs that was once an essential part of our creative and reinterpretative culture - it is the "Fascinationg Pastime" of a few rather than the collective voice of many, as it once was.
Jim Carroll