Mike:
"What Ewan & Peggy got paid was not my question:"
Sorry, was attempting to point out that Ewan and (I should have written Joan Litlewood, Peggy was not involved) Joan were employed by the BBC when Scarborough Fair was collected.
I have no idea whether the Beeb paid Mark Anderson for his song or for his time.
Ewan's use of the song on The Long Harvest:
Again, I don't know if they paid Mark Anderson's heirs (he would almost certainly have been long dead as he was described as "a retired lead miner at the time of the recording) for the use of the song, but I doubt it; as far as I know it was never the practice of revival singers to pay their sources for the use of traditional songs; they are, I believe, in the public domain and belong to no-one (or "everybody", as Walter Pardon put it). It is, as far as I know, not even necessary to inform the source singer that you intend to use his or her songs - the song we recorded from Mary Delaney, "What Will We Do" has been recorded at least half-a-dozen times without either us, the collectors, or Mary being paid, or even informed that it was going to be used and that is the way it should be as far as I am concerned. Walter certainly never received payment for any of his songs, though he was both amused and irritated at the same time on hearing of the squabble between two revival 'stars' over who should have the right to record one of his songs.
A quick shufti through our copies of The Singing Island, Scotland Sings, Folk Songs and Ballads of Scotland - all collections of songs compiled by MacColl and Seeger, shows that while the collection as a published work was copyrighted, the individual songs are not and are treated as being in the public domain. I know that this is what Ewan advocated, and as far as I knew, adhered to.
Kennedy, as far as I know, did the opposite: he claimed ownership on every item he (and others on the BBC project) collected and demanded payment for their use; Vic's story verfies this to be the case.
People in the know are free to correct me but Karl Dallas embarked on a series of ten very worthwhile themed songbooks, starting with 'Songs of Toil' and 'Songs of War', but was forced to abandon them after these two when Kennedy demanded payment for some of the items.
I have no idea of the legality of his claims, but I know some people paid up out of ignorance or just to avoid hassle.
I believe he got many of his singers to sign the songs over to him via a written 'contract'
I assume his rationale was that each version could be described as 'an arrangement'. If this is the case then the law of public domain cannot be applied to any folk song. The "arrangement" practice has always been a grey area for me anyway".
When MacColl, Seeger and Parker were recording for the Radio Ballads I believe they made a 'verbal' contract for the use of the recordings only . These were recorded on tape at the end of sessions - I have one somewhere here with Sam Larner.   
Derek- quickly:
The collecting project as far as I know was for a BBC programme called The Ballad Hunters, produced by Olive Shaply from songs recorded by Ewan and Joan (have the date somewhere I think).
I know it happened because, while Ewan seldom referred to it, I heard Joan talking about it once.
They recorded songs from Mark Anderson and Beckett Whitehead, among others, the most memorable for me being Scarborough Fair and Four Loom Weaver (which I suspect, Ewan heavily arranged), also Fourpence a Day. Ewan later ressurected 'Drinking' and ''T Owd Chap Cam' O'er the Bank' (an extremely bawdy version of Seven Nights Drunk).
Sorry - much more to say on song ownership which interests me deeply, but the bloody sun is shinging here and the acre of grass and weeds which we euphamistically refer to as a garden calls.
Maybe people are interested enough to continue this later.
Jim Carroll