"if you hear and love a version of a song, and you play it over and over, and then you hear someone else's version of the same song, you tend to think that the second person's version is just crap, and that you know this because you have heard *the real thing*."

I reckon one of the main joys of folk music is that that just doesn't apply. You expect variants, and welcome them, and appreciate how they bring out the different nuances of the underlying song, story or tune. (And that was an example of a musical dfrift in a