This whole copyright thing in relation to traditional songs is a real can of worms. As I understand it, back in the early 1960s, no less than nineteen people were trying to claim copyright to Greensleeves. I would have really loved to see that one come to court!

Ethnomusicologists and folk purists may want to stick pins in a wax image of my behind, but when I learn a traditional song, what I often do is listen to several different versions of it, and look at any versions of it that I can find it in song books, and what eventually comes out may be either a fairly pure rendition of one particular version, or an amalgam of several versions, or any point in between. I invoke the principle of "minstrel's prerogative." And I work out my own guitar accompaniments.

It would never occur to me to copyright my "arrangements." And certainly not the song.

But as I understand it, a lot of this stuff came about in the late 1950s and early 1960s when folk music got a lot of radio play. Radio stations are nicked a couple of times a year by BMI and ASCAP for their play-lists and a check to cover royalties for the various people who own copyrights on the songs on those lists. That's standard operating procedure in most radio stations. So the question is, "Who gets the royalties for this song?" And the guy who recorded the (traditional) song, realizing that someone is going to get the royalties, figures it may as well be him and says, "I do." Followed by either, "I wrote the song," or "That's my arrangement."

Don Firth