Cap'n:
"Establishment/multinational capatalists do not believe in sticking to the truth.,they use every means at their disposal to maintain their position."

Indeed so – the name 'Murdoch' springs to mind. But I like to be on the side of the good guys. Do we really need to claim that Tories eat babies in order to oppose them?

Malcolm Douglas:
Thank you for chapter and verse on "The Handweaver and the Factory Maid". Perhaps less of a confection than I was suggesting, but the omitted lines are significant nonetheless. I'm curious about Mr. Oliver of Widnes: were other songs collected from him, and was he ever recorded? Where did he find a tune for his broadside of "Handweaver"?

Les in Chorlton:
"Ewan collected To the Begging I will go from Beckett Whitehead in the 1950s or did he?"

Beckett Whitehead sang pretty much what is in the DT under "A-Beggin' I Will Go", which was collected by Seumus Ennis and published in "Folksongs of Britain and Ireland". It doesn't include anything about being "blind in Dukinfield", nor did he sing it to the modal tune that MacColl used. I'm not sure where those came from.

Les again:
"I think these have been added:
Bold Lovell, Jack Orion, Sovay and The Demon Lover...."

Yes, but, as Steve Gardham pointed out, an awful lot of performers have made their own collated, improved or otherwise meddled-with versions of Child Ballads in particular. I don't have any problem with 'Lovell' or 'Demon Lover' (I've just done my own take on the latter, inspired by - but different from - the Lloyd version).

Still, if you want another example of Child/Lloyd, what about 'Lucy Wan' - the one with that weird tune in the Lydian mode or whatever it was?

And I always rather assumed "Fourloom Weaver" (the tune, at least) was MacColl's work rather than Lloyds.