TOTAL BULL, "....But I don't think Bob was too hard on Nic, at all! I can't imagine why Anyone would sing "little" instead of "wee" in this song. For one thing it would mess up the meter; and for another, unless the dumbing down of America has gone further than I think, most people who listen to folk music understand that "wee" means "little.."
Nic Jones is bloody well ENGLISH, had he used some fake "Scots" or god forbid "Aussie" dialect there would have been 100 times as much flack about that, he obviously didn't do it to make it easier.
And as for Bob Bolton, by your own admission even Australians would never have heard the song if not for Nic Jones.
It is the Oral/Folk tradition, you write a song and it gets out in the ether, people change it to suit themselves, generally with attribution to the originator. Most writers are actually flattered by someone else picking up their material. As Harry isn't around to say either way, it is totally "BULL" for someone else to slag anothers performance of a piece of material for nit picking crap.
So I guess that's one for and one against = Zero.
JohnB