Capt B: "we dont know anything about past amendments [we may assume they are mishearings, when they may have been deliberate]"

Good point. Clearly some of the variations in texts and tunes we find in tradition have been the result of poor memory or confusion, but equally it's reasonable to suppose that traditional singers made deliberate improvements as well.

"when we do know[BertLLoyd]should we not make our judgements on
the quality of the text,rather than the fact he altered it"

It depends from what point of view we are looking at the finished article. As a song, I would say that "The Handweaver and the Factory Maid" as collated by Lloyd is a more interesting piece than any of the traditional versions he used to construct it, but if you wanted to use it to make inferences about the social history of the day it would be flawed, since he he appears to have made key changes to the status of the participants, possibly in line with his own agenda. Previous Mudcat discussions have picked apart his amendments to "The Recruited Collier" and "Reynardine", which made crucial changes to the entire point of each song - so now a generation of singers believes that "Reynardine" has something to do with werewolves. Also Lloyd was in a uniquely influential position in that he fed material to many of the most popular acts in the folk revival. Baring-Gould, for his part, submitted material to FJ Child and published singbooks, so in his case too he was attempting to make his "improved" texts part of the folksong canon. I think there's a difference in kind between that and an individual singer lost in the mists of time making changes to the song that he or she sang.

The other crucial difference is that when I, for example, go about constructing my own version of "Banks of Green Willow", I have at my disposal the collections at Cecil Sharp house and the Bodleian Library, the research of Bronson and Child, a welter of folk revival recordings of the song, and the combined wisdom of Mudcat members. I daresay you could throw at me the example of Gordon Hall as a self-conscious "song improver" but nonetheless I would never claim that what I am doing is analagous to what we consider "the traditional process". Although if "Famous Flower", that magnificent monument to Martin Carthy's creative genius, can win a BBC award as Best Traditional Track, then perhaps the meaning of "traditional" is still open to debate.

And I'm not at all convinced that using "old" as a substitute for "traditional" is going to make things any clearer.