I think the best thing to do with any song is to first talk it through as if you verse telling it in narrative verse - that tends to sort out the phrasing and the breathing - the older singers tended to sing the punctuation - micro-gap for comma, slightly larger for semi-colon... etc
Can'st say I've heard it in Scotland, but the older sean nós singers talked about "telling a song" rather than singing it
I've been organizing some of our old recordings and have recently ben working on Sam Larner's recordings made for 'Singing the Fishing' and noticed again how he constantly moves from singing to speaking with nor perceivable gap   
We recorded 70-odd year old Tom Lenihan from Clare singing 'Willie Reilly and his Collen Bawn' and when he finished we asked him to tell us the story in his own words - he grinned and said "I just have"
This area was once a rich song/story area - I once sang MacColl's Tenant Farmer a a local singing session standing at the bar and when I reached the verse about turning the farmer out and selling off his belongings an old farmer next to me roared in my ear "the bastard" - I nearly vaulted the bar
The words really were the thing for the old crowd
We recorded two elderly brothers on The Burren - they gave us about fifteen songs between them eight of them were to the same tune - after the seventh rendition of one tune he old man turned to us and said "doesn't that song have a great air?" completely unaware that it had been sung half a dozen times before

I seem to remember your having quite a strong voice Annie - I hope you have overcome your difficulties
One of the problems some women have is, I believe, a self imposed one - the head voice which, I was once told, "sounds feminine"
It's fine if you can master it, but it causes two main problems - 1. The gear change when rising up and down the scale and are forced to move from head to chest to produce the sound
2. It takes a hell of a lot of air to produce and so makes long lines difficult

Sorry - I really din't mean to bang on but I don't get much chance to air my thoughts nowadays

If anybody is interested I will be happy to dig out some of the old singing and vowel exercises and post them on PCloud
Off to numb my mind with THE SKY BOX Dick - Black KKlansman awaits
Thanks for all these ideas
Jim