Lox, seems we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

"I will never inhibit myself or try to inhibit anyone else for expressing their art any way they choose"

Nor will I, but all of us have opinions about what is appropriate in terms of song choice and presentation. We use these opinions to govern (not 'inhibit') our own performance, and to discuss them on Mudcat is not to try to inhibit, prohibit or censure others from making their own decisions. Didn't the Critics Group do that?

"If we strip away the accent and/or vocabulary to make the story clearer, we risk seriously damaging the intended artistic character of the piece."

Surely the "intended artistic character" as perceived by any traditional singer of former times would have been to tell the story as clearly as possible to the audience they were performing to. Which, whether the singer was Scots or Appalachian or whatever, would mean using the voice that was their own and that of their peers. I have merely suggested that modern singers follow that precedent.

"And if we insist on remaining true to the story to the detriment of it's original expressive form and we subsequently make it less of an art form and more of a historical tome, are we not therefore compelled, in the interests of consistency, to make sure it is accurate and told in a manner consistent with current historical understanding."

I wasn't talking about historical accuracy. I only entered this discussion when someone was talking about the need to sing Child Ballads in a Scots accent. While some Child Ballads (although not necessarily the ones that interest me) have a specific historical background, many do not. They are ancient stories, not unlike fairy tales in their mythology and timelessness. Different versions of the same ballad collected in different places and maybe in different centuries can tell subtly different versions of the same tale. The modern singer has two principal alternatives: choose one field-recorded version as their source and remain close to that; or, collate versions to make sense out of what may be conflicting accounts, whilst remaining true to the essence of the ballad. Both can work.

"If we reinterpret them and by doing so they lose their value historically, then it follows that their story becomes less valid being further from testimony and closer to fiction."

I think you should give modern song interpreters more credit than to suggest that, by making their texts understandable, they are clumsily altering the factual content. Assuming that the song contains any factual content, which many traditional songs do not.

"Ewen MacColl has done what the original authors of the songs were unable to do and that is record them. He tried to do this in a manner that left them as close to their original form as possible."

This is simply untrue. I've no desire at all to join in the MacColl-bashing theme that has surfaced regularly in this thread, but there's no doubt in my mind he composed new tunes for traditional texts. His close colleague A. L. Lloyd regularly doctored traditional lyrics, whether simply to tell a more interesting story ("Reynardine") or gain political spin ("The Recruited Collier") - check the recent threads on this topic. One of the main points of the MacColl/Lloyd-inspired folk revival was to make traditional songs relevant to British society in the 1960s, not to preserve them in some antiquarian form.

What is the "original form" of a traditional song, anyway? Current thinking is that many more of them originated as broadsides than was once believed, but isn't the beauty of the traditional song canon precisely that the songs exist in countless variants, and in many dialects?

"He (MacColl) is responsible for cataloguing historical documents in a form that meant that we might have the chance to experience them in a slightly less dry and rustly way"

If you mean "bringing old songs to life", then I'm with you all the way, both as regards MacColl and what some of us are still trying to do.

"We are a little bit richer for his contribution and I for one respect his efforts tremendously."

Agreed (please note, weelittledrummer).