There's an old performer's trick, to put a sting in the tale. Or tail. It would depend on a clear "hit" on the end of each verse building to a climax in the last verse - when it changes.

The folk tradition is of people making songs their own, the copyright law the opposite, and you not infrequently find busk books using the former to avoid the latter. As performers we're in a cleft stick, hating it when it's done to us but reliant on the language of music, which is kind of the accumulation of everything copyrighted that's ever been done by anyone else. Generally it's courteous to discuss it with the writer, if he's still around.