Besides "Simple Gifts" in Appalachian Spring, Copeland used the fiddle tune "Bonaparte's Retreat" (as played by W.M. Stepp, collected in the Library of Congress, and reissued on CD) in "Rodeo", and several other folk songs in A Folk Song Suite (the cumulative song "I Had a Cat, My Cat Pleased Me" stands out in my memory as one of these).

Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst all collected and orchestrated English Folk Songs. Tchaikovsky used a folksong ("Dunai, moi dunai"), a Russian Orthodix hymn, a tsarist anthem and the French national anthem in his 1812 Overture. Charles Ives used lots of American folksongs and hymn tunes in his works (for example, "Three Places in NEw England").

But the tune for "Going Home" was written by Dvorak for his New World Symphony (Symphony No. 5 or 9, depending on your numbering system) and became a "folk song" only afterward.

Or you could contrast a field recording of a song, versus it's "Souped-up" version by a group like the Limeliters or Peter, Paul and Mary.

--Charlie Baum