well this is the trouble with English folk music....

perhaps the singer was duplicating the cracked tones of a weathered shantyman in a high wind rounding the Cape, the anguish of a displaced 18th century farmer who had suffered grievously in the land enclosures, perhaps he was trying to do a Peter Bellamy perhaps he was singing a modal progression - known only to martin Carthy.......perhaps he was just crap, you're never really sure.

Best thing is to keep schtum. Perhaps they're singing real folk music and you're not (and Jim Carrol isn't there to clarify the position)....its all a bit of a bugger.