Okay, I've read almost every word of this thread (skipped a few long disagreements at the end) and this is what I have to say.

I have been singing ballads for years, learning them off records by heart from the time I was four or five years old. I learn them by listening to them and by singing them over and over. When I come across a new version I like I will quite often sing along with it and then sing it by myself and then sing along with it again. Whenever I got a new record I would learn all of the ballads on it that I liked -- one of the things I like about them is the language, so I will sing in Scots, or my best approximation of it, if it is a Scottish version that I am smitten with. When I first happened upon Ewan MacColl recordings I sang quite a lot of Scots ballads.

Eventually, some ballads fade out of my repertoire -- they just don't grab me as much as they did when they were new to me -- or sometimes I hear a version that I like better than any I've ever heard before and will set to learning that one. Some ballads have stayed with me all of my life: I still sing "Barbara Allen" to the tune I first heard for it because I like it the best.

Several years ago I started a Ballad group in Berkeley, simply because some singers at other sessions did not want to hear ballads and ballad-singers needed a place to sing them. A note on singing ballads as duets or in groups: I have learned a few ballads, including their pacing and diction from other members of the group and there are some ballads where we will all chime in on our favorite lines, which no one minds much. Sometimes we hum harmonies softly while someone else carries the ballad -- if they look daggers at us, we stop.

Jon Bartlett: do I like the same singers now I did in my youth? Sometimes I like particular ballads by particular singers and I still like them. I have lots of opinions and preferences. Martin Carthy, for example, often chooses tunes I don't care for, so I tend not to learn things from him, and I only listen to those cuts of his I like. I don't think I will ever get tired of hearing Jeannie Robertson recordings though.

Pace: you have to sing the way you like to sing. Some people will like it, some people won't. And whether to Anglicize -- that depends on your comfort level, too: if you can't get your tongue around a language or find it off-putting, you might want to change it. You can always explain or summarize for audiences. It's not about being obscure or scholarly, Joe: for me, it's about loving the sound of the language (and that goes for the repetitions, too). End of novel.

Good thread.

Sharyn