"The point I was making was that there is a difference between them voluntarily (if perhaps naively)"
Why naively, for god's sake? The songs were freely given to them, and they placed no monetary value on them whatever; nor were they in any way possessive about them. A certain degree of pride when they heard them sung by somebody else, yes, but no more than that.
As Walter Pardon said when he heard of two folkie superstars squabbling over which of them would record one of his songs; "They're not my songs, they're everybody's". The ones you mentioned that were paid, received remuneration for their labour, time and inconvenience - they weren't selling their music (even the ones that composed).
The fact that (a tiny few) collectors marketed the recordings deliberately to make money was down to their predatory nature alone.
One of the great sea-changes in the revival (a fairly recent one, in my experience) is this deadening possessiveness. I honestly cannot remember it being a feature even up to twenty years ago - strange, and very sad!!! If it had been around when the revival kicked off half a century ago we wouldn't have had a pit to hiss in - and wouldn't be communicating with each other now.
I have never encountered the slightest difficulty in passing on our recordings to whoever we wished to - we took, and were given the songs totally on trust, on the understanding that they wouldn't die out, and passing them on was an essential part of that - that was the only 'binding contract' as far as we, and the singers were concerned.
I think the legal position is (never had the occasion to consult it fully) that the collectors own the recordings they made, but we have always treated them as the property of the singers.
Some time in the late seventies we were recording a singer named Martin Howley, here in Clare. We arrived here to learn that he was ill, so we drove up to see him.
We were chatting and he asked, "Do you have your tape recorder with you?"
Pat protested that we had heard he was ill and had come to see how he was and spend a little time with him.
His reply still brings a lump to the throat; "I'm a poor man; I have nothing to leave but my songs; I want you to have them".
He gave us another ten songs and died of cancer of the eye later that year.
Naive country-man or what?
Martin Reidy, an old bachelor living on his own not far from where we now live, said to us once, "I'm pleased that you started taking down my songs. I was so worried that they would die along with me that I started to try and teach them to Topsy" (his mongrel dog).
Jim Carroll