Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?

Subject: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: theleveller
Date: 18 May 10 - 05:03 AM

What's your opinion on changing, adapting or rewriting traditional songs?

There are already numerous versions of Raggle Taggle Gypsies, Seven Yellow Gypsies etc. and I've tried to find a version that was set in Yorkshire that might fit in with the long history of "Egyptians" and travellers in the county. Having failed to do so, I decided to adapt the song and called it The Scarborough Gypsies and, at the same time, add a suitable ending to round the story off.

I'm certainly not going to try to pass this off as a traditional version, but is it sacrilege or just another chapter in the history of a fine song?

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 May 10 - 05:05 AM

There is no rule book, luckily. Do what you like. There is the folk process that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 18 May 10 - 05:12 AM

It's always been done, consciously or subconsciously, and if it ever stops the tradition will die. If the rewrite is good it will live on, and if not it will fade away. It won't destroy the original. Go for it!

On the sbuject of The Seven Yellow Gypsies, I wonder if the The Gypsy's Wedding Day could be considered a possible prequel to it ('Once I was a gypsy girl, but now a squire's bride').

Valmai (Lewes)

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 May 10 - 05:17 AM

THat is the folk process. GO for it.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 May 10 - 05:38 AM

'Tisn't the tradition IMO, but nothing wrong with it.
Jim Caroll

The Hippies and the Beatniks, O
Miles Wooton.

Rather late last night, Mr. Jones came home
On the 8.45 from Victoria-O.
He was rich and fat, with a big bowler hat,
And he hated the hippies and the beatniks, O.

Well, he put his key in his mock-Tudor door,
and he called to his wife, "Well, I'm home, dear-O;
The train was late and I had to wait,
It must be the hippies and the beatniks-O".

But no answer came as he stepped inside,
But his daughter came to meet him-O.
"O, mummy's not here - she's gone, I fear,
Away with the hippies and the beatniks-O".

"Go fill up the tank in the 4-litre Jag,
For the Mini is not so speedy-O,
And I will drive till I find her alive,
Or dead, with the hippies and the beatniks".

Well, he drove north and he drove south,
Up the motorways and the byways - O;
Till he came soon to a hippie commune
And there he espied Mrs. Jones, O.

"What makes you leave your house and your car,
The washing machine and the telly-O;
Your children three, (not to mention me)
To go with the hippies and the beatniks-O ?".

"What care I for my house and my car,
The washing machine and the telly-O.
The children three - for now I am free
To go with the hippies and the beatniks-O".

"And as for you, well, the day I rue,
That ever we got married-O.
I'll grow my hair and I'll travel anywhere,
Along with the hippies and the beatniks - O".

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 18 May 10 - 06:10 AM

Why do you think there are so many variations of Traditional songs ?
People have been adapting/rewriting old songs for ever !

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 18 May 10 - 06:19 AM

Folk processes withing folk process!

Geoff Higginbottom does a very similar version to the one Jom noted but it is 'The hippies and the hairies-O'. Contains the line 'Prepare for me the MGB-GT, the Rover is not so speedy-O'. I think it may have come from Fred Wedlock who probably got it from Miles Wooton.

Just out of interest :-)

DeG

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: IanC
Date: 18 May 10 - 06:22 AM

There's also the Sid Kipper version "Raggle Taggle Travellers".

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 18 May 10 - 07:47 AM

'He put his key in his mock-Tudor door' was a show-stopping line when Miles sang it. I would rate it alongside 'So - with the tears still streaming down her pullover -' in the monologue The Wedding That Wasn't, and the poet Barker's immortal 'Sex with a concertina is rarely accomplished discreetly.'

Parody is a special class of adaptation; it doesn't usually move the song on or lead to further growth. Some parodies come to displace the original: Tom Brown has pointed out that 'I'm a Mortal Unlucky Old Chap' was collected from a great many English country singers, but the song it parodied ('I'm a Happy-Go-Lucky Old Chap', about an improbably cheerful farmer) didn't survive. The spoof opera The Dragon of Wantley apparently killed Handel opera stone dead for a generation.

The Sussex source singer Gordon Hall used to extend and parody his traditional songs: listen to his version of The Constant Lovers, which has a magnificently raucous happy ending, or his versions of To Be A Farmer's Boy or The Farmer's Toast:

'I have lawns, I have bowers,
Jacuzzis and showers,
Two yachts and a villa in Parma;
I have videos and tellys,
Wax jacket, green wellies,
Sod you, I'm all right, says the farmer.'

Valmai (Lewes)

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 May 10 - 07:54 AM

I thought it was the Daimler that was not so speedy as the MGB.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 May 10 - 08:53 AM

"The hippies and the hairies-O'"
This was adapted from Miles Wooton's version by Donal Maguire.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 May 10 - 08:56 AM

In Ireland, Leo Maguire's popped up The Whistling Gypsy was so popular it more or less killed the traditional version over here.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:50 AM

Gee, and below the salt is that thread on fusion....

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Fi
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:52 AM

Show me an original version of any song.......

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Flashmeister
Date: 18 May 10 - 10:27 AM

I think that in order for songs to evolve and be pertinent to the singer/musician performing them then a certain amount of tweaking is ok - I do it as do lots of folkies I know.
It'd be very boring if we all sang the same song by rote - I've had a session before where someone did 7 yellow gypsiesm then another did Raggle Taggle and before long it bacame the running joke of the night with the likes of Gypsy Davey and others cropping up too!

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 18 May 10 - 11:28 AM

I think that the reason we sing trad songs is to communicate ideas and give musical pleasure. If a feature of a song interferes, I throw that feature out. It may be a word nobody knows or a note nobody can play, so out it goes.

Thus 'ilka bird' becomes 'ev'ry bird', etc

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 18 May 10 - 11:43 AM

Nothing wrong with old English - it was used throughout The Mysteries as adapted by Tony Harrison, to great effect.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 18 May 10 - 11:49 AM

Dialect is fine as long as it sounds natural !

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 18 May 10 - 01:05 PM

For what it is worth.

I know and know of traditional singers who would not dream of changing anything.

I am not one of them.

Russ (Permanent GUEST)

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST,Gabriel Hound
Date: 18 May 10 - 01:24 PM

Walter Pardon always maintained that his songs were proper folk songs because they were exactly as written on the old broadsheets and not mucked about with and changed - although listening to old Walter he did have his own distinctive style of singing so I suppose he unconsciously changed them anyway to his own internalised version. Old pre 'revival' singers often had views about folksong and tradition at odds with some of the views many people have today.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 18 May 10 - 02:02 PM

Roger Watson started "updating" folk song lyrics such as Lovely Joan in which the milk white steed is changed to XR3 - to make it more relevant for today's youngsters. I'm not convinced! Ashley Hutchings was rather more subtle.

So...take heed and hither hie

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 May 10 - 02:49 PM

"Walter Pardon always maintained that his songs were proper folk songs because they were exactly as written on the old broadsheets and not mucked about with and changed"
Sorry Gabe, he didn't; he never saw a broadside in his life and learned all his songs aurally from family members.
He started to write his family's songs out in 1948 by piecing them together from surviving family members, and he memorised the tunes on his melodeon. When he started to sing at folk clubs, he took a number of songs he only had in fragmentary form and filled in missing verses from printed versions.
One of his best songs IMO, Down By The Dark Arches, was rebuilt from 2 and a half verses he got from his uncle, the rest came from a printed text. Similarly, he only had two verses of The Parson and The Clerk, again from his Uncle, the rest he filled in from Phil Tanner's version (from a book he found on our shelves).
He was very specific about what he believed to be folk songs, but this had more to do with the general poetry and the tunes rather than the accuracy of text.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Bert
Date: 18 May 10 - 03:01 PM

It's fine, go for it.

You all remember the Mudcat Radio episode where Max played different versions of Stagolee.

Sheesh, even I sang a version.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 18 May 10 - 03:41 PM

Jim

You're assuming that Walton Pardon meant he'd learnt the songs from old broadsheets. I seem to remember hearing (from Tim Laycock) that the songs were handed down orally, but so faithfully that the wording was still the same when compared with old broadsheets.

Kitty

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 18 May 10 - 03:42 PM

Walter Pardon as described by Gabriel, that is!

Kitty

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 May 10 - 04:50 PM

Kitty,
Walter actually assembled his repertoire after the main singers of the family had died by going to his mother and his aunts.
As I said, he didn't place a great deal of value on accuracy and was happy to collate texts if he didn't have full ones.
He regarded the stories of the songs far more important than the 'accuracy' of the text.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST,^&*
Date: 18 May 10 - 05:08 PM

It's back to the distinction between "preserving" and "keeping alive". It is at least arguable that when a traditional song ceases to adapt or be adapted, it ceases to be traditional. Adaptation is no guarantee of survival, - but it's absence guarantees death.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: oldhippie
Date: 18 May 10 - 05:20 PM

It's OK. Dropkick Murphys won an award for their adaption of "Amazing Grace". The arrangement, not the lyrics. A lot of purists don't care for it, but that's to be expected.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 18 May 10 - 06:54 PM

Jim - it might have been the Suffolk woodshed boys rather than Walter Pardon that I remembered Tim Laycock was talking about,

Kitty

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 18 May 10 - 07:07 PM

I have to say that many 'updated' folk song texts seem a bit 'crass' to me. Something that interests me about folk songs is that they can be both old and timeless. What I like about them is the sense of seeing another, older culture's 'take' on common human experiences. I'm sorry, but 'bolting on' bang-up-to-the-minute, contemporary concerns sets my teeth on edge - as does fitting double-glazing to a Tudor mansion or performing Shakespeare's plays in contemporary dress.

Speaking personally, I'm not just interested in texts and tunes but also in background and context. I find myself feeling very resentful when performers, who can't imagine anything but the world that they inhabit now, insist on substituting their own, rather narrow, temporarily constrained attitudes for the old songs that I want to hear for their own sake (I have enough imagination to be able to see the relevance of such songs to the modern world, thank you very much!).

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 18 May 10 - 08:31 PM

Leveller-

Do what you feel compelled to do and if it is "an improvement" your version may survive for a generation or so. More likely it will be ignored beyond your immediate circle of friends.

But that's what many folk artists do, rather than repeating what has been done before verbatim.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Janie
Date: 18 May 10 - 10:14 PM

My 16 year old has completely eschewed trad music (I like your voice mom, I just can't stand the songs you sing or listen to!) In the past year, however, he has discovered 'Celtic Punk.'

Lo and behold, he is starting to ask me if certain songs are traditional. Maybe Celtic Punk will be to him what PPM and the KT were to me.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: mg
Date: 18 May 10 - 10:22 PM

I am of the try to preserve it as you found it belief system. Of course, there is room for all sorts of people..some preserve, and some modify..although I think rarely with good results..at least to my ear.

What drives me crazy is when they change the men to women and back and forth it goes, each time getting worse I think.

And someone said the below:
It's back to the distinction between "preserving" and "keeping alive". It is at least arguable that when a traditional song ceases to adapt or be adapted, it ceases to be traditional. Adaptation is no guarantee of survival, - but it's absence guarantees death.

I totally disagree. A traditional song can stay quite traditional without being intentionally altered. And I think it goes not happen to be so that absence of adaptation guarantees death.

I know of people who think they can improve on things. I usually cringe but I am fairly polite in person. But I am inwardly thinking what did they do that for?

As for parodies...that is not really adapting a song. It is usually more of a joke..cute the first time but painful the 15th...

It does not matter a bit to me if I have no idea what a davit tackle is or what a doffing mistress does...and I don't need to take the town I loved so well and make it into Kelso or Bellingham (WA, USA) to localize it..and let's make Kelso a pulp mill and Bellingham a cement mill rather than a shirt factory....and I don't need to make the shoals of herring into schools of salmon although I have never seen a herring in my life and am surrounded by salmon on three sides...

So that is my contribution. mg

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: *#1 PEASANT*
Date: 18 May 10 - 10:24 PM

Adaptation which is the result of the operation of the many folk processes over time works. It is very slow often subtle and the finished product still sounds 2/3 or more trad.

These days under cover of adaptation artists are creating music that literally buldozes the original, over night and the finished product may have a few lines of lyrics that are the same but is generally fuzed beyond recognition.

It is ok when it is subtle and understanding and sacrilege when it is over done, over night and takes the song into a different genre.

These days adaptation is not so much part of the folk processes but part instead of the money making and marketing processes

Conrad

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST,Carollizc
Date: 18 May 10 - 11:20 PM

My dad used to do that, in a song about a fox, the book lyrics read
"Old Mother Flipper=flopper" but Dad found that too awkward, especially when getting an audience of kids to sing along, so the old lady became "Old Mother Jones". We all sing it that way now. Of course, our kids look at us funny when they do, then go on to listen to whomever the flavour is this week.

Go ahead and change the lyrics, the tune too, if the new lyrics don't fit. Some day, someone's dad will send them looking for "the right words" to it, meaning yours. My dad sent me for the right words to a version of Barbara Allen he'd learnt from a gypsy boy before the War.
Carol

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST
Date: 18 May 10 - 11:26 PM

I think that osme adaptation is sometimes necessary. If you look at "The Rigs of the Time", it becomes a litany of mid-Victorian moaning about price increases. However, in Martin Carthy's hands, it becomes a tool for expressing, and even inciting, anger - something the song was meant to do in the first place. If we cling slavishly to the old lyrics, it not only becomes stale but irrelevant. Updating it renews that relevance.

Carol

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 19 May 10 - 12:16 AM

The folk process is something like wearing old socks--you throw it up against a wall, and what sticks, is folk.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST,^&*
Date: 19 May 10 - 02:35 AM

mg

It's back to the distinction between "preserving" and "keeping alive". It is at least arguable that when a traditional song ceases to adapt or be adapted, it ceases to be traditional. Adaptation is no guarantee of survival, - but it's absence guarantees death.

I totally disagree. A traditional song can stay quite traditional without being intentionally altered

We're not really disagreeing all that much, mg. When I talk of the song "adapting" (as against "being adapted") I mean unintentional alteration!

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 May 10 - 03:25 AM

"These days under cover of adaptation artists are creating music that literally buldozes the original, over night"
I think I agree with this.
I see nothing 'wrong' with re-making old songs such as 'Hippies and the Beatniks/Hairies' - a bit of fun really. I certainly see nothing 'wrong' with creating brand new songs using old forms and styles; these can fit comfortably into a singing evening next to the earlier ones, though I wouldn't in a thousand years count them as being, nor ever likely to become traditional - not since we lost the process which made them such. Change is not tradition, which is much more than adapting a song to incorporate new trends or poetic fashions.
But as happy as I am to sing and listen to newly-composed songs, I find myself always falling back on the old ones: for their stories and characterisations, for their beautiful and oh-so-subtle poetry, for their use of language, accent, commonplaces and similies, and, as Shimrod says, for the important place they occupy in our history and culture.
As an atheist, I occasionally read bits of The Bible - for the beautiful use of language, for the stories, and sometimes for annotating and referencing songs and stories in our own collection. I am always struck by how superior the old King James translation is to the modern re-write. The new one maybe more concise, but 'Lost in Translation' just about sums it up for me.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 May 10 - 06:12 AM

OK, I think it's time to release this version of Raggle Taggle Gypsies into the wild. I wrote this in collusion with my daughter, who was then a student with hippy proclivities, in the mid-1990s. The "Spice Girls" reference dates it a bit, and can be replaced with whatever seems appropriate at the time (or just use "boy band"). Other social details are also showing their age a bit, which only proves that topical versions like this have a limited shelf-life.

I give you my word that we hadn't heard any other parodies at the time - this story just begs to be updated. The final two lines were supplied by my daughter, in deference to Planxty's version ("I'd rather have a kiss from the yellow gypsy's lips..").

THE RAGGLE TAGGLE HIPPIES

Three hippies stood at the garden gate,
With hair down past their shoulders-o
The schoolgirl sat in her bedroom late,
Her heart it melted away as snow.

She plucked off her new school shoes,
All made of scuffproof leather-o,
She ran to the street in her combat boots,
And off with the new age travellers-o.

It was late that night when her Dad came home,
Inquiring for his daughter-o,
Her sister cried, with her head in her hands,
"She's gone with the new age travellers-o."

"O fetch me the keys of the Mercedes,
The Skoda's not so speedy-o,
That I may go and fetch her home
From the convoy of new age travellers-o."

So he set out on the M25,
And got held up in the contraflow,
But at last he came to a festival field,
Full of vans and tents and travellers-o.

And there were the hippies spread all around,
Smoking and drumming and juggling-o,
And there was his daughter lying on the ground,
In the arms of a new age traveller-o.

"What makes you leave your stripped pine bed,
With the duvet plumped up ready-o,
Your Laura Ashley furnishings,
Your Spice Girls posters and your teddy-o?"

"Oh what care I for my stripped pine bed,
My duvet or my teddy-o?
Tonight I will sleep out under the stars,
With a vanload of new age travellers-o."

"What makes you leave your private school,
Where they'll turn you into a lady-o,
Your boyfriend with his well-paid job,
Your CD player and your radio?"

"Oh what care I for my private school,
I know this may sound funny-o,
But I'd rather have a joint from the hairy hippy's lips,
Than all your gifts or money-o".

Marje

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Marje
Date: 19 May 10 - 06:15 AM

Oops, that Guest was me. For some reason I had trouble loading the post, and then I found my cookie had crumbled into cyberspace. All sorted now, I think.

Marje

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST,Ian Hendrie
Date: 19 May 10 - 11:22 AM

Some time ago I bought the following CD :

STREET CRIES: ASHLEY HUTCHINGS & VARIOUS ARTISTS TSCD535

whose publicity blurb states :

An outstanding new album conceived and produced by one of the most significant creators in the folk music field. Traditional music has always changed and adapted to fit and respond to the society that it reflects. Ashley Hutchings has re-written a dozen traditional songs and set them in the present day - don't be alarmed, the experiment has worked beautifully and the results may well pass into tradition themselves.

I have to say that I absolutely hate this recording and the chances of any of these tracks surviving long into the future is nil. Others may disagree.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: theleveller
Date: 19 May 10 - 11:39 AM

Thanks for the advice, folks. I've done my adaptation - just really relocating it rather than updating it and certainly not a spoof. Now we'll have to learn it!

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 May 10 - 02:33 PM

Jim:
As an atheist, I occasionally read bits of The Bible - for the beautiful use of language, for the stories, and sometimes for annotating and referencing songs and stories in our own collection. I am always struck by how superior the old King James translation is to the modern re-write. The new one maybe more concise, but 'Lost in Translation' just about sums it up for me.

Yeah, both a history teacher and an English teacher in my high schools told us to read Song Of Solomon as a lesson in how to write a love song. It doesn't have the same beauty in the NIV. Bleagh. Just as I would never alter something as lovely as "Dark Eyed Sailor". I'd likely run screaming from the room if anyone ever did.

I'm just not against making songs relevant. I agree with some others here that such relevance is short-lived, but I like *some* of it. And yes, parodies are cute, once. Altering a song for location is something that's always been done, as has altering for an audience. Look at the tales of Robin Hood, and King Arthur, or even Dick Turpin. My dad played at being Dick Turpin, then was shocked as an adult to find that his hero was simply a sheep rustler and all around villain. Things take on lives of their own, once people get hold of them. They should, or they don't deserve to last. (Take that, Justin Bieber!)

Carol

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 May 10 - 03:03 PM

Carol,
Whether we like them or not, folk songs are part of outr culture and our history - they are relevant for what they are. I happen to like them as they were passed on to us, but it doesn't mean we can't change them - just personal preference.
It doesn't mean we can't have both - nobody would dream of scrapping Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet because Sondheim and Berstein came up with a more modern (relevant) version (I hope).
Folk songs have proved their worth by lasting as long as they have.
Ji Carroll

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST,Goose Gander
Date: 19 May 10 - 03:12 PM

My opinion: if you're not adapting a trad song, it's just a cover. The question should be, are you doing it tastefully? Are you making it you own while keeping close enough to the spirit of earlier variants?

Re: the Bible, I once saw a bumper sticker that read, "If it ain't King James, it ain't the Bible." I didn't understand what that meant until I read one of those awful, 'modern' translations.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 May 10 - 03:27 PM

cant you go away and write your own songs and leave the traditional songs alone,is nothing of any value any more.

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST,Goose Gander
Date: 19 May 10 - 03:34 PM

The Good Soldier has reminded us that by adapting a traditional song, you are destroying all value in the world. To whom should I go for absolution?

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 May 10 - 04:16 PM

"My opinion: if you're not adapting a trad song, it's just a cover."
Nonsense, there is a difference between adaptation and interpretation.
Shakespeare can easily be adapted, but it doesn't have to be in order to be relevant; it stands on its own merits (with or without Leonard de Capricio).
Our folk songs have evolved - MacColl's comparison of stones being worn away by the constant action of running water always works for me.
A couple of friends of mine have made their names by turning Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear (and even Ben Hur) into songs - magnificently hilarius, but no longer Shakespeare or Lew Wallace; enjoyable but different.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Adapting trad songs - OK or sacrilege?
From: GUEST,Goose Gander
Date: 19 May 10 - 04:32 PM

I suppose it's a matter of definitions, but I would say that a subtle interpretation is still an adaption. What I mean is that there's no reason to attempt a slavish recreation of your source.