When I was at the University of Washington, I took a class in "The Popular Ballad" from Dr. David C. Fowler (he has a couple of books out), and when it comes to performing traditional songs and ballads, his opinion was that it depends on how you regard what you are doing.

If you are a scholar collecting songs and ballads, you should write them down as you hear them, even if you might find some of it boring or offensive. Good scholarship demands it. Also, if you are performing something as an example of an authentic, traditional song, you should sing it as you found it.

But his suggestion to performers who are seriously interested in presenting the spirit of the songs themselves was that you are walking a line between doing justice to the song and entertaining your audience. Changing a few words in a song if it makes a line flow more smoothly and it doesn't substantially alter the meaning or eliminating repetitive verses that don't add to the story, he regarded as okay, as long as it was done for a good reason.

He recognized that singers of folk songs who were professional entertainers had an obligation to their audiences, and some reasonable editing of a song, as long as it didn't alter or dilute the spirit of the song, he referred to as "exercising a minstrel's prerogative."

Don Firth