The "folk process" can greatly improve a song. Sometimes. But it can also render a really marvelous song into a piece of tripe.

A good example is Child #26. The Three Ravens. A classic ballad with a strong coloration of the kind of medieval poetry from which it sprang, here sung to lute accompaniment (I think), by countertenor Andreas Scholl. CLICKY #1. The performance is not to everyone's taste, I'm sure, but it illustrates the "medieval minstrel ballad" nature of the song as it was often sung way back.

I've run across two "folk processed" American versions. Here's one, CLICKY #2. Suitably singable for a bunch of Boy Scouts all singing around a campfire, but it hardly gives a clue as to the quality of poetry from which it initially sprang centuries ago. Yes, it, too, is considered as a version of Child #26. A "degenerated" version.

And another version, which I ran across in Richard Chase's American Folk Tales and Songs:

The Two Ravens
(traditional, The Three Ravens, Child #26)
pentatonic – melody, "Ye Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon."

There were two ravens who sat on a tree,
And they were black as they could be;
And one of them, I heard him say,
"Oh, where shall we go to dine today?
Shall we go down to the salt, salt sea,
Or shall we go dine by the greenwood tree?
Shall we go down to the salt, salt sea,
Or shall we go dine by the greenwood tree?"

"As I walked down on the white sea sand,
I saw a fair ship sailing near at hand.
I waved my wings, I bent my beak;
That ship she sank, I heard a shriek.
Oh, there lie sailors, one, two, and three;
Oh, shall we go dine by the wild salt sea?"
    (repeat last two lines, as in verse 1)

"Come, I shall show you a far better sight;
A lonesome glen, and a new-slain knight;
His blood yet on the grass is hot,
His sword half-drawn, his shafts unshot.
And no one knows that he lies there
But his hound and his hawk and his lady fair.
    (repeat)

"His hound is to the hunting gone,
His hawk to fetch the wild fowl home,
His lady's away to another mate.
Oh, we shall make our feasting sweet!
Our dinner is sure, our feasting is free,
Oh, come and we'll dine by the greenwood tree!
   (repeat)

"Oh, you shall tear at his naked white thighs,
And I'll peck out his fair blue eyes.
You pull a lock of his fine yellow hair
To thicken your nest where it grows bare.
The golden down on his young chin
Will do to rest my young ones in."
   (repeat)

Oh, cold and bare his bed will be
When white winter storms sing in the tree.
His head's on turf, at his feet a stone.
He'll sleep nor hear young maidens mourne.
O'er his white bones the birds will fly,
The wild deer run, the foxes cry.
   (repeat)

"This extraordinarily good text came to me through Mrs. Willard Brooks, now of Washington, D. C.. She could not remember where she learned it. Artus Moser collected it on Gashes Creek, Hickory Nut Gap, near Asheville, North Carolina, and Annabel Morris Buchanan has found it in Virginia." From American Folk Tales and Songs, compiled by Richard Chase (Signet Key Book, The New American Library, 1956).

This version tells a somewhat bleaker story than the better known and much earlier Thomas Ravenscroft one that Andreas Scholl sings. But although time and geography have changed it considerably¸ the "folk processed" text is certainly of a quality right up there with the earlier Ravenscroft version.

But the other one, "Billie Magee Magaw," the folk process has managed to lose the human elements and convert the song into a piece of doggerel about two crows and a dead horse.

No, the folk process does NOT always improve a song.

Don Firth