Yes, doc.tom, I know about all of the above. I'm not sure that vast swathes of 'folk music' afficonados do, though, which is why I raised it here. There are still plenty of people around who believe, for example, that the English tradition contains songs about werewolves (see Mudcat discussion of 'Reynardine'). What bothers me is not the rewriting of songs, but the rewriting of history. The particular point about Lloyd - who in general I admire a lot - is that he was able to feed the material he'd found and sometimes 'improved' to a whole generation of young singers, who went on to establish that material as a new canon, which in turn became a template for many who followed on. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard Lloyd's amended (or perhaps 'invented') version of 'Recruited Collier' presented as 'a traditional song' over the years.

But no-one else seems to be bothered, so I'll stop banging on about it for now.