Nick Hart has hit on something quite important in this interview. Making English folk songs sound 'odd' - or at least 'different' has been a big part of the folk revival since Sharp and Vaughan Williams started promoting modal tunes. Later came Bert Lloyd's further meddling with modes, plus 'Tam Lin' and his ideas about paganism, Martin Carthy's 'cross-tuning' of the guitar *(which he told me was a deliberate attempt to 'inject a bit of mystery'), and the fascination of many revival singers (including me) with supernatural songs. Nothing wrong with any of that in itself, but we need to keep in mind that English folk song as sung traditionally wasn't quite as weird as some of us have made it out to be!

It's good that Nick is aware of this, and also that he listens to traditional singers - though I'm not sure what he's saying about Harry Cox's 'Raggle Taggle Gypsies', which has loads of thirds in it.