Ok, but the point I'm trying to discuss, Jim, is the question 'did the original writer feel that his song belonged to everyone?'

It's likely that at least some writers in the 17th 18th and 19th centuries had a partly professional motivation and felt that they owned their songs - so financial advantage can't be entirely ruled out.

It's always been the case that in time songs pass into public ownership - though that process was not formalised in law until relatively recently. So Walter's view on ownership was a simple statement of fact, and one that every source singer would share. By definition source singers were aware of the danger that 'their' songs could die with them, so obviously they'd decided to share them for posterity - and thank God they did.

But in times past some people might not have been so keen to see their work widely distributed and avialable, certainly not some writers. Reputations tend to rest on repertoire, though the simple act of singing a song - to anyone - has always let the cat out of the bag, so to speak!

The crucial change was recording. In olden times you'd need to listen carefully to a song a good few times to learn it and write it down - so the co-operation of the singer was essential if a song was to be passed on intact (which helps explain why we have so many versions of songs that might have been heard once, and then re-written from a few memorised fragments).

Once wax recordings arrived it got a lot easier - but you still needed permission and co-operation from your source. By the time everyone had musical reproduction equipment at home, and recordings were widely available, the ethical situation had changed.

Now you could own a record of a song, exactly as it came from the horses mouth (but only one horse, remember), and that record would stand for ever.

Now it was ok to take quite big liberties with songs, because people could go back to the source recording if they chose to - in fact to lots of source recordings of different versions. This changed the morality of song-bearing, and it was down to the collectors that it happened (thankyou again)!

My problem is that I still don't understand the tenet that seems to underlie many of your posts on this topic, Jim: that revival and contemporary singers somehow 'possess' traditional songs.

This is just not possible in law, and I don't think I know of any singer who even tries.

We use and develop tredational song, and we earn money on our recordings and arrangements (but only from others if our arrangements are copied very very closely), but we don't and can't posses the song itself - any more than Walter could - and we can't stop anyone else using it, and never could (and never would).

As I said above, the only way to do this is to claim you wrote a traditional song yourself. This may have happened in times gone by but it's very rare now.

Doing as Kennedy did and restricting access to a collection so that he could gain revenue from it is not at all the same thing as trying to possess or own the songs therein.

If the songs are available they are de facto published. As soon as someone buys a CD or reads the book, they can use those songs freely, (and attribute accordingly, one hopes), and they did and do. All the collector owns is the recording of that collected version of the song, not the song itself - which was, is, and always will be in public ownership.

If a collector is happy to (and can afford to) make his collection free to all then so much the better and all praise to him or her, but that won't affect the ownership of the songs either.

Tom