I know lyrics are changed and become almost impossible to "correct" (ref: "by the gasworks wall" instead of "by the gasworks croft" in "Dirty Old Towm") but some are just plain wrong and *should* be corrected.

The number of corrections to lyrics of Ewan MacColl' "Joy of Living" that I've submitted to lyrics/ tabs sites over the last couple of years is quite large.

Usually it's the names of the mountains that are wrong..."Glyder Fach" and "Suilven" are often changed to phrases/ names with no connection to mountains and which are pure goblledegook within the song, while "Cul Beag, Scafell" if often rendered as "cold big Scafell". And I've seen "Eagerly savour each new day and the taste of its mouth" given as all sorts of completely nonsensical phrases.

To suggest that these mistakes shouldn't be corected as it's "part of the folk process" is a little odd to me.

At the same time, I know that the version of "Banks of the Sweet Primroses" that I sing has slightly different words to other versions that I've heard ( I sing "three long steps" but have heard "three short steps" several times, and I sing "She said stand off..." while others sing "stand off, stand off...", etc) but this I regard as normal and acceptable "morphing" in that it doesn't change the sense of the song.

OTOH, when I first learned Bob Kenward's "Man of Kent" I used the Stuart Pendrill version, where Bob's "sea cliffs of Dover" are replaced with "white cliffs of Dover" and "willow and weather" is eplaced by "willow on leather". Once Bob explained to me that he'd *deliberately* not used those phrases as he'd thought they were too cliched I changed my version immediately.