Joan wrote -
"On the song collectors' website there were Gypsy singers singing Adele"

... and there's also everything from I've Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts to Your Cheating Heart but around 95% of the songs are - without getting into the old arguments - what enthnomusicologists would describe as 'folk songs' and I would reckon that is a very high proportion indeed, including some that I had never heard and some - like Willy O'Connor - Lord Courtown that I consider to be exquisite and worthy of comparison with the best field recordings.

When I recorded Jane & Cameron Turriff, they sung superb versions of Mill'O Tifty's Annie and The Golden Vanity but also I Belong To Glasgow and Jimmy Rogers' songs.
When I recorded Scan Tester, he played some step dance tunes that he had learned from his brother before the First World War but also Puppet on a String.
To record and report everything that a traditional singer or musician sings or plays is honest and to imply - as some of the early collectors implied - that the tradition existed in a separate enclosed bubble is a deception.

Brian Matthew, the Sussex song collector, always said that it was always how and not what the old singers and musicians delivered that was important - that what they brought to more modern material told us a great deal about their style... about how they managed to make it their own that was important. Certainly Scan gave Puppet... the feeling of a functional dance tune.