I know this is heresy, and that I'll probably get a lot of stick for this, but I don't actually *like* those big, long, classic ballads.

I prefer folk songs that are anecdotal. I don't like "story songs" so much as little vignettes. Those big long ballads tend to have less ambiguity - they are more prosaic and narrative based. (When I say less ambiguity, I mean they have less ambiguity of language - less "poetry" in them. They do, of course, have plenty of other types of ambiguity – moral ambiguity etc).

Whereas I prefer songs that are perhaps even inconsequential. I like nonsense songs; I like all those hotchpotch, Frankensteinian folksongs that verge on nonsense that are so prevalent in the US tradition (much less to in the UK tradition) where the verses bear little if any relation to each other (eg Cumberland Gap, Old Joe Clark, Boil that Cabbage Down).

Or alternatively, British songs that are models of poetic concision, such as '6 Dukes went a Fishing' or 'the Grey Cock'.

I tend to want to take verses out of songs, and I generally do. Then again, I've been an editor for 10 years now; it's engrained.