"amused when members take L&M's Child Ballads as serious versions."
As far as I understand it, both of them never hid the fact that they re-worked and collated ballad texts, as have most revival singers I have met (that's what they both were).
The problem with Bert is that he was regarded as a serious folk song scholar, (even though he was sometimes 'economical with the truth' regarding his scholarship), I was never aware that MacColl was regarded in the same way.
MacColl's major contribution was in evolving a system of voice production and applied it to the singing of folk songs, which, alas, has never been examined outside of the confines of the Critics Group.
As far as sea songs are concerned, did either of them make misleading pronouncements on the shanties they sang or did they do what all of the revivalists do way back then, and just sing them, wherever they got them and whatever they did to them?
I seem to remember (could check if I need to) that all the sea albums they did came with extremely sparse notes.
Jim Carroll