The hymnal used in the church my family attended (my dad was the preacher) had a feature that it seems would be useful in the DT: Under the name of the hymn at the top of the page, in addition to the name of the tune was a string of numbers indicating the lengths of the lines of the songs, the purpose being that it was then possible to try using different tunes for particular verses: if you didn't like the tune a hymn used, you could find one with similar line lengths that you did like, and sing the verses to that tune. I don't recall the feature ever being used in that church, but MMario's posting of a poem he had come across about a turkey's attempt to avoid its fate, followed by speculation over what tune one might sing it to made me remember the hymnal feature: I'm not advocating promiscuous switching of tunes and lyrics, but if we did have a listing of tunes with line lengths--and accent patterns--someone with a problem/opportunity such as that faced by MuhMario could check the list of traditional tunes for the line lengths and find ones which fit the words...

Actually, this is just idle speculation, for none of us honest folk artists would ever use a tune we didn't create ourselves--would we? Imagine a grinny emoticon here. Or don't, as you choose.

--seed