Traditional singers tend to sing in speaking tones and pitch their singing voice around where they would speak. Listen to Sam Larner's 'Butter and Cheese and All' where he speaks the between the penultimate and the last line "and you know what they are, don't you?" - song and speech exactly in pitch - it's virtually impossible to spot the join.
Walter Pardon and Harry Cox both used their speaking voice when they sang - many of the singers we have interviewed have insisted that this is the way they got the songs to work for them.
I was once told by a music teacher friend that his profession found the natural, open-toned 'folk voice' "ugly" and "unnatural" and that they strove for "bel canto" (beautiful singing) - one of the reasons I've always mistrusted trained singing for folk song.
In the workshops I've been involved with we had voice exercises to discover your 'natural voice' and once you have found that you can (hopefully) take control of your voice and move it into any area you need to in order to handle the whole folk repertoire - narrative ballads, lyrical love songs, shanties...... whatever.
Jim Carroll