"If they liked a song they did it and made it their own."

That's definitely the way to go Jerry – but it can be difficult. "Making it your own" may come naturally to someone like Doc Watson, who grew up surrounded by an inherited tradition and developed a personal musical style rooted in that tradition. But many of us can connect with tradition only through books and recordings.   And we often find it hard to relate that inheritance to our own lived experience, so it's a constant struggle to make those old songs speak for us (and hopefully for our listeners) in a meaningful way.

And sometimes an old song has its roots in an environment so remote from our experience that we cannot connect with it at all. Under those circumstances, I think the only sensible thing is to leave it alone (unless you can steal the tune and compose your own words to it).

Wassail!