Helen- I think were on the same page musically! But Jack Campin I could not disagree more. Your approach is the classical one rather than traditional & no doubt why so many Scottish 'sessions' feature music stands! A dot is a dot & is technically correct, but you simply cannot say that the tune was 'not intended to have interpretative subtleties' It HAS, whether the composer meant it to or not!!

And as for the statement that 'there cannot be anything there that is not in the notation' I simply despair - I doubt if even classically trained musicians would claim that & in the context of traditional music, it is totally against the whole context of ANY kind oftraditional music