"Jim I think that you are being very parochial."
How - aren't we talking about British and Irish songs
I know perfectly well what happens in other countries - we have hundreds of hours of the stuff - but it ain't what we did
When I talk about "our singers" I'm taking about us British and Irish
I know the repertoires inside out, I've been listening to the stuff since I was in my early twenties

I have extremely wide interests - in all traditional musics
I was even lucky enough to be introduced to and record one of Zoltan Kodaly's singers in Hungary - she sang us a Hungarian version of 'The Cruel Mother' (unaccompanied, as it happens)

There is nothing wrong with accompaniment any more than there is decoration, but it has to serve the narrative, and not the other way around as it has become on the folk scene
The plage of 'Electric Folk turned or songs and ballads into impenetrable soup - you could go down for a pee and a pint during some of the over-indulgent guitar breaks

Dick
In an unguarded moment Dylan admitted that his poetry was meaningless gibberish - doesn't stop some of his Zimmermanite follows from worhiping at his feet
Jim