Howie Bursen's new CD lists a 1940 copyright date by Geordie Music, Jean Ritchie's company, for "Pretty Saro," a song that I've always known to be traditional.

Many of the songs that A.P. Carter "wrote" and recorded by the Carter Family as early as 1927 were also traditional. So, copyrighting traditional material is certainly nothing new.

And I'm reasonably sure that neither John or Allan Lomax was really a co-writer of "Goodnight Irene."