interesting thread, all...
Shambles:
thanks for reminding me about The Ascent of Man. A professor of mine in college had our Experimental Theatre class watch the entire series in class...I had forgotten how much it changed my life and wish I could find a copy of it now...
When I first heard "Mull of Kintyre" I thought it was a traditional song and asked a friend where i could find the lyrics etc...He told me it was written by Paul McCartney and was the top-selling Beatles' single of all time in the UK...just goes to show.
I myself have written some original songs with traditional sounding meolidies and lyrics...and have also added new "traditional" lyrics to songs such as She Moved Through the Faire and Black is the Colour of My True Love's Hair, both songs whose lyrics seemed to me in need of embellishing (the story, in the case of the first, and the emotions, in the case of the second). Composing such lyrics is difficult if one wishes to keep them authentic and appropriate to the song's original version (or versions, as is usually the case).

Two extra verses I added to She Moved Through the Faire (which I sometimes use to replace the third verse which begins "The people were saying no two e'er were wed"):

I gave my love a ring of fine silver thread
A garland all of roses I made for her head
But the roses are now withered, the silver gone grey
And it will not be long now 'til our wedding day.

The frost lies on the field, the snow on the hill
The crow flies in the orchard, the fairground is still
But I wait by my window for my love is come soon
And the swan in the evening flies over the moon
.

To me, these extra verses expand on the mystery...did she just take off and disappear? To me the final verse always seemed to make this into a ghost story (she come sin quietly at the window as in a dream), so I wanted to embellish that possibility.
And having the swan fly over the moon, while physicallyu difficult to imagine, parallels the swan on the lake in verse two of the original and enhances the dreamlike/fantasy/illusory element...

peg