Lest I get too far involved in this, let me just say a few words here. The Grateful Dead covered hundreds of songs, some by the ubiquitous "Trad." like Jack-a-Roe, Peggy-O (Fenario), Sittin on Top of the World, We Bid You Goodnight, and the list goes on and on. All of these, and other like songs, were attributed to "Trad/arranged by the Grateful Dead, or Trad/arranged by Garcia." This includes Sampson and Delilah, as listed above.

There is another group of Grateful Dead songs that are based on traditional songs, such as Stagger Lee and Casey Jones. These songs, and the many others like them, take the story of the traditional version and have new sets of lyrics and often (but not always) different tunes.

The best two examples of this kind of song are the ones bjg8 has listed above. In the Grateful Dead's Stagger Lee, for example, the female character Delilah (different from Sampson's Delilah)has to kill Stagger Lee because Billy DeLyons is too afraid. In Casey Jones, the addition of the lady in red, and more importantly, the cocaine as the reason for the crash, as well as the entire tune, is much different from any of the traditional versions I have heard.

I exchanged emails with Robert Hunter some years ago and he claims that he wasn't thinking of the original songs when he wrote different versions of them for the Grateful Dead. Now, I may believe that he TRIED to remove the actual songs from his head before he wrote, but there's a better chance of George Bush being the education president than of Hunter succeeding completely. What I came away from the email correspondence with was that he used the stories of the traditional songs as inspiration to write different lyrics.

The Grateful Dead played hundreds of covers throughout their career, and those that made it onto albums were credited to either Trad. or their original composer("Turn on your Lovelight" by Bobby "Blue" Bland). Keep in mind here that the band was never averse to giving credit where due; a quick check of their recordings will confirm this.

The traditionally-inspired songs were listed as Hunter/Garcia, and frankly, they should have been, because these were new and different songs in their own right.

A more complicated case is Lady with a Fan/Terrapin Station. Is this a "stolen" song because it tells the story of the traditional "Lady of Carlisle"? I think not, because the overall composition is about much, much more.

The movement of the traditional into popular music only strengthens folk music. It brings a little musicology to the masses, so to speak. I think that we all need to be a little more cognizant of who and what we call thievery. Sometimes, it should be called "Tribute."