"sorry, there is no right or wrong way of singing anything,"
The 'right' and 'wrong' way to sing a song is dictated, not by the individual singer, but the song itself - does it work as what it is purported to be.
If Peter Pears sings the ballad 'The Lyke Wake Dirge' (as he did), his manner of singing it makes it something else entirely, a piece of operatically styled singing. Composers like Grainger, Vaughan Williams, Butterworth, Bartok, Kodaly... all used folk songs and music in their compositions. In doing so, they turned them into something else. This is not a value judgement, just a simple fact.
Those of us involved in folk song as a specific genre make our judgement on how those songs reach our ears and brain; whether they still retain their original function as folk songs or whether they have been given a new function.
The old argument - if a Beethoven quartet is performed on guitar, drums saxaphone and synthesizer - is it still a piece of classical music or has it become something else?
Hi Mary - haven't missed your question - will get back to it later.
Jim Carroll