"How many "travellers" had a piano ?"
Lucy Stewart did

"JUST CHECKED - SEE THEY'RE DOING A TOUR "
A joke aimed at a friend who obviously took it as such Vic
"Would it be possible to interpret this as an insult?"
You're welcome to if it turns you on Vic - only here to please
Regarding your earlier post, of course some of the old singers used instruments - it's debatable whether they improved their songs by doing so, but that's another argument
My point was that, overwhelmingly British and Irish traditional singing is unaccompanied
Davie Stewart was largely a street performer, as was Maggie Barry, Jane Turriff, as far as I know, did it because she liked to -in my opinion, her playing makes Tiftie's Annie, (my favourite ballad) unlistenable, but that's me.
There's no rule to say you can't do anything to the songs, just as there's no law to prevent me from saying what I think of what you do
I believe that the fact that our tradition is largely an unaccompanied one has a reason
Our songs are largely narrative and and unless you are a very fine musician capable of accompanying a song rather than intruding on it or drowning it, accompaniment is unnecessary to the performance and can even detract from it
I have long stopped listening to wannabe Segovias whose accompaniments left to time to have a pee and grab a pint while they strutted their stuff on their guitars before proceeding with the next verse
Once again - that's me and that's not what I want out of a song

I have a recording of a talk given by Peggy Seeger back in 1969 - she opened with one of the wisest pieces of advice I've heard, "The first thing you ask yourself when deciding whether to accompany a song is, is it necessary - if it isn't, don'y"
She went on to say, "If your audience is listening to your playing then there's a good chance you're destroying your song"
That's always worked for me
When I lived in Manchester I sang everything accompanied - luckily I had a mate who was happy to do that for me and we worked together quite sympathetically
I moved to London and he moved there shortly after and we continued to work together, though much less
I moved to Ireland twenty years ago with a repertoire of around 300 songs, half of the accompanied - I thought I'd have to abandon a large slice of them
I can now sing them all through unaccompanied and make them work for me.
I believe there are very few songs in the British and Irish tradition than benefit from an accompaniment
JIm