I agree that there's a subjective reaction to song which we can't, and indeed shouldn't try to quantify, but we can still do some objective analysis on the lyrics and tune.

And the subjective usually follows the objective, because story song writing is a craft just as much as an art. If you get the construction right the audience will respond - ask any scriptwriter.

There are some basic rules, or shapes, which are universal throughout all story media, and I think it's safe to say that the people who wrote the original versions of the great traditional songs knew what they were doing around these techniques. And we can also look out for things like economic use of language, good similes, creative metaphors, neat rhymes - specially internal rhymes, deliberate assonance and alliterations - because again it's clear that writers from long before Shakespeare knew all about this too, and used these devices to advantage.

Of course it's not easy to decide which section from the many versions we know today are original, but it doesn't take much to work out which versions of a song hold water and which don't.

People do respond emotionally to tunes, and often to an occasion too - so will often bond with the first version of a song they hear. But they can still step back and look at the lyrics objectively and see if the story is well told or not.

This is a bit of an academic pursuit probably only of interest to writers like me, but if you feel about story songs the way I do - where you hate to see even one syllable wasted - then it's inevitable that some versions of old songs will seem somewhat tired and careworn. It's no accident that great interpreters like Martin Carthy and Pete Coe and Chris Foster often take sections from different versions, and also rewrite whole sections - to build a working model: A song that will actually cut ice the way the original writer intended.

I often wonder what the makers actually wrote - and what they'd say now if they could hear their songs today, with half the verses replaced by floaters, key poetic passages upturned and all the torque flopped out of the story.

I know, anal or what - but that's MY passion, you see? My empathy reaches back through time to writers like me. It's only natural really when you think about it

Tom