To pick up on what Marje said, I entirely agree that we shouldn't see songs as, say, a "Steeleye song" or a "Kate Rusby song." But all too often in the world of professional folk groups people play essentially the arrangement of a previous group. So the Waterboys, and now Nickel Creek, perform what is obviously to me Planxty's version of "Raggle-Taggle Gypsies." I always wonder, why don't (some) younger groups do serious listening (to field recordings, more obscure revivalists, etc) instead of rehashing Steeleye, Fairport, Planxty et al?

It's interesting to discuss mythic moments in folklore history, the folklore of folklore so to speak. The idea of a manuscript literally being used to light fires before being saved by the heroic collector has attached itself to Bishop Percy and his famous folio manuscript, but it is also there in the histories of other manuscripts. At some point you begin to wonder: did this actually happen? It's the same with the great collector and his sudden epiphany; this trope is so common that Sharp is said to have had TWO of these defining moments, one for Morris and another for folksong!