"Would you give examples of rights claimed to public domain material?
OK, this is a question where personal opinion comes in, since one is really talking about an arrangement."

No, I'm not talking about arrangements, which are a horse of another colour, but about spurious claims to authorship. Here's a few off the cuff and from memory.

The Horn Book by Gershon Legman, cites numerous examples, including a song which was collected by Legman, and which is coyorighted not to him or the person who sang it, but to one of the Lomaxes (Alan, I think). Why? Because it appeared in Lomax edited book, and the editor claimed copyright on the entire contents

In 1961, the British jazz trumpeter Kenny Ball recorded a Russian tune called Podmoskovnye Vechera, under the title Midnight In Moscow. Ok., it's probably not a folk tune but what the hell. The point is that when it was first issued on LP, it was ascribed as Trad/arr Ball. When it was released as a single - and incidentally became a massive hit - the accreditation had been changed to claim Ball as the composer.

In 1957, the skifflers Chas McDevitt and Nancy Whiskey recorded an American song called Freight Train. It was sung, and probably composed, by Elizabeth Cotten, and introuduced into this country by Peggy Seeger. Guess who claimed authorship ? Chas and Nance.

In the late 1950s, the agent of Lonnie Donegan turned up at the office of Folkways Records, announcing that a "Folkways Recording artist", Leadbelly, had recorded several Donegan compositions, including - wait for it - Rock island Line. The agent was looking for royalties. Moe Asch's reply was succinct and to the point. "Come back this afternoon", he said. "I'll have the records ready for you, and I'll break them over your head one by one."

An extremely rare song, The Well below The Valley was sung by John Reilly of Boyle, Co. Roscommon, and collected by Tom Munnelly. It is copyright neither to Reilly or Munnelly but to Christy Moore who recorded it and put it on an LP.

My concern though lies less with Peer and A.P. Carter than with people who have copyrighted public domain material since. Peer and Carter lived in an age when concern for intellectual property was not as finely honed as it is now. Moreover, they were not revivalists and they probably saw nothing wrong in taking something they felt was there for the taking.

However, we now live in age where different standards and ethics apply. And we are part of a movement that systematically tried to revive a heritage of music which - by its very definition - belongs to the populace en masse. People who try to copyright any part of that heritage would do well to consider their responsibilites towards it.

Incidentally, Legman used to tell a story about a US serviceman he met in Paris who wouldn't let Legman record his songs. He, wrongly, suspected that Legman would put them on an LP and that he wouldn't see a bean of the proceeds. Copyrighting of folksongs can sometimes have unfortunate consequences.