There is a big different between natural developments and deliberate rewites, of course. But the latter does happen - possibly more than people realise. I think you'll find people like Pete Coe, Brian Peters, Martin Carthy - all the great interpreters routinely rework traditional songs quite radically at times to make them hold water - because the natural erosion process tends to produce leaks, and eventually they need repairing. I certainly do.

This is because many trad songs are story songs. And in story-telling, which is of course an art form in its own right, there some basic rules about never loosing the audience, keeping every footfall bang on track however tortuous the route, from Once Upon a Time to Happily Ever After.

Most folk songs tend to have at least one foot in the story camp, and RR is no exception - except that it also has a foot in the blank verse/ dare I say it sniggersnogger camp ! Well, it's a relationship song after all! (Ducks behind sofa).

Personally, I like to sing with conviction, and with clear images in my mind which I hope to beam at the audience by telepathy, to try to help them enter the world I'm describing. This is hard with RR, because I really don't know what the heck PK is on about half the time - though in the other half I'm in total empathy.

WLD, I agree about "'I gave her gifts of the mind." It, along with the "Angel woos" line can make the singer seem like a pretty unpleasant fellow. But my point is that it is the TUNE which does this, not the words. The tune makes this line seem like a key issue in the song - which it wasn't on the page. In a spoken poem, (Kavanagh's natural territory even if he did, as some have suggested, have a tune in mind on this occasion), lines like that are not presented portentiously, and therefore do not become pretentious. The listener is in a different space, a different mind-set, so takes in the words at a different level. It's all about weight.

Specifically, tha word 'mind' is a huge problem. Why? Because the tune requires that it be held for three beats, with, moreover, a rise of one tone on the last - and with a key change beneath it. Yet it's a single sylllable word, which can work well over two beats, but sounds horrible stretched over three with a lift at the end. (There are ways of getting round this, of course, but a songwriter would never have gone there in the first place).

The tune here puts unfair emphasis on what was a supposed to be subtle and understated idea, (like the Such and Such line) so comes over all wrong.

Tom