Nic Jones freely admits that he often has not sourced songs correctly, simply because he was unable to remember quite where he got them from. In his notes to Unearthed, he says that his tendency was to absorb songs over a period of time rather than consciously learning them by writing them down and working out an acompaniment.

He is a past master at deliberately altering or rewriting the words and tunes of traditional songs while keeping, more or less, in sympathy with the orginal. In the case of broadsides, he had even greater freedom to compose around the text and thus arose one of his greatest achievments, The Warlike Lads of Russia.

In no way do I claim to speak for him, but I doubt very much whether Nic Jones would condemn those who take similar 'liberties', so long as, like him, they remain true to the music and to themselves.