Evening Brian

First, your post set me interested in knowing more about how ballads/broadsheets changed: I've read a few but not thought much about historical order/changes apart from what is in Roud/Bishop's book.

I get what you mean about changing things; I actually do this from time to time and one thing I/we did it with accidentally got 'collected'. But enough said there. It wasn't folk, not really, probably....

Funnily enough, I can 'imagine' a 'singable' version of the St George if the audience could be relied on to pick up on the references. My instinct would be to make it an ironic take on jingoism.

But are we agreed that 'as written' the thing needs work?

It's strange: I did some theory of music as a kid and very young you were expected to write a tune to fit set lyrics (key and time signature supplied) ensuring that significant words fell on a stressed beat as opposed to something like 'and' (and I know in some contexts even 'and' can be significant.

And has my idea that in *some* cases singers may not have made the tweaks successfully sunk without trace?