"no thanks; I shall continue to sing it and the rest of my e-trad repertoire either unaccompanied or by doubling the melody on keyboards, after, nearly always,"
Your choice of course, but you need to bear in mind that it was a children's song to be sung, or even chanted, in the Liverpool streets
You are free to do with it what you will
I always like to compare it with the versions of 'Bonny Light Horseman', and he children's 'Broken Heated I Wander' - one story, two entirely difrerent approaches
I know from personal experience that 'Johnny Todd' can be used as an exercise and still be enjoyed as a serious song - the last, somewhat disgruntled moral' verse gives it enough of an edge to lift it above the usuasal lament
English music may be all about the tune, but the songs have to be mainly about the words - theer are too many of them to be ignored, and their essence is in the stories they carry
As so many of them in the later days of the tradition were learned from print, it is not possible to claim any song was intended to be sug to a specific tune - the singers simple snatched an existing tune to fit the words
Many may have been anble to read the words but hardly any could read music, even if it had been available

"So, what definition of folk song do you agree with then, Jim?"
I don't need a "definition" Dave; I, like you, were you of the mind to, culd take any of the collections that have appeared over the last century and a half and the 'definition' would be staring at you in the face in the song
The secret lise in the two names out songs are recognised by. "folk" and "traditional" - two sides of the same coin.
"Folk" refers to the social group that probably made them, identified with them, and took ownership of them as being 'local' or Norfolk' or 'family' songs
"Traditional" refers to the way they were manipulated and adapted to suit the particular singers and their communities - the journey they take from their original composer(s) through their existence
The origins of these songs are unprovable and usually untraceable further back then the earliest printed versions, but even that doesn't guarantee that that's where they started
I'll be talking next week about the Ballad, 'Get Up and Bar the Door' - I have no doubt that some bushy-tailed academic can give you an earliest published date, but in fact, the story dated back as far as ancient Egypt and is told about tomb robbers eating stolen figs and arguing which of them should close the tomb door in case they are found out
That story lasted as traditional right into the 1970s and I would be surprised if it hadn't appeared regularly as a story and a song in the intervening years - it certainly turned up in "Ancient India" according to one anthology
Now that's what I call folk
That is why it is nonsense to claim that 'folk' can't be defined - the definition lies in the journey each song takes and the process it undergoes
Jim



Jim