I saw this thread the other day but didn't have the right thoughts together to make a sensible comment. Finally, this morning, it hit me. The whole attraction of folk music is in its lack of formality. It is informal in grammer, informal in meter and rhyme, and informal in musical theory and harmony. It's precisely that informality that makes it approachable by the likes of us folkies <g> and allows us to bend the music as fits our need or mood. It's that beauty in informality that attracted many of us in the first place.

I certainly have no objection to people changing the words to songs when they sing them---that's everyone's piroghitive---but to change the words (or the chords) just so they will satisfy a formal structure of academic rules seems to me to miss the whole point.

      - Mark