But the musician & the listener are not the only people involved, Will. What about scholarship, just for starters, to advert to one other possible interested demographic?

So are you saying, Michael, that if you identified one of my three putative tunes as a modern, composed melody, it wouldn't be worth considering per se? What have the scholars and musicologists to do with a tune about which they know nothing? Can we musicians not play it because its provenance isn't known?

I'm trying to make the point that folk song is invested with a lot of baggage - baggage which can destroy a love of music for its own sake. This thread is proof enough of that!

Still no proper answer.