The folk process is the gradual change in the words and tune of a song as it is passed from one generation to the next.

'Bright Fine Gold' has had 12 changes and additions in its lyrics since 1862, and five changes to its tune.

'De Little Old Log Cabin,' a 1870s US "Black Minstrel" song, migrated west to Kansas to become 'The Little Old Sod Shanty' then to NZ as the 'Dugout in the True,' in Otago 'The Dying Shearer' in Canterbury, 'The Dying Bushman' in Taihape, several versions of 'Dugout in Matruh' in WW2, which British soldiers also adopted, and NZ soldiers made new versions in the 1970s Vietnam and 1990 Croatian wars, all sung to the original 1870 tune, and written by solitary men in tumbledown shelters.

Peter Cape's 'She'll Be Right Mate' has spawned twenty or more topical variant verses.

The Maori lyrics of 'Pokarekare' have remained remarkably consistent, apart from its rippling waters being placed variously at Hokianga/Waiau/Rotorua/Rangitoto, but it has had three tune changes and several title changes. There was a commercial America's Cup promotion and Mike Moroney's response, and there are also versions sung in Gaelic, Timorese, Korean and Norwegian.

A few variant lines have appeared in Farewell to the Gold, The Day the Pub Burnt Down and The Sands of the Nile (a WW2 parody of Mountains of Mourne)

'Now is the Hour' went through three tune changes and four changes in lyrics as it went from a piano piece to Maori to English between 1915 and 1935.

The patriotic 1918 song 'Come Where Duty Calls' was translated to the fund-raising 'Hoea Ra Te Waka Nei then the popular 1920s' 'Come O Maidens,' whose tune was borrowed for the schmaltzy 1950s song 'A Mother as Lovely as You.'

'Hoki Hoki Tonu Mai' had six grieving verses in WW1, but it now has a happy new tune and only two verses.

We sing about Cardrona's Gin and Raspberry mine, but in Australia they sing "While searching for cattle we first came this way, From Talbingo township took many long days, To cut through the scrub till we found a good claim, And we called it the Rum and Raspberry."

Conversely, Phil Garland's 'Banks of the Waikato' is adapted from the beautiful old Aussie song 'Banks of the Condamine,' adapted from the English 'Banks Of The Nile' "Oh hark! The drums do beat, my love, no longer can we stay. The bugle-horns are sounding clear, and we must march away."

And in England, 'Davy Lowston' has become marooned not in Fiordland but in South Georgia.

The money-making All Black Ka Mate haka has had many centuries of change. A philosophical proverb and a sea shanty were combined to thank a peacemaker. Then that was used to describe the climax and post-coital peace of a young couple after their wedding night fumblings following their arranged marriage, which was modified to express compassion for abuse victims. and finally to express the relief of a criminal after he hid to escape a posse.

The explicit and very private 1910 courting song 'He Puru Taitama' (I'm a young bullock) was 'borrowed' in the 1920s to make a jazz band recording that became a bawdy WW2 song, “E po e taitai, e po e tukituki” (All night wrestling, all night thrusting) that NZ soldiers appended to more restrained love songs like 'Lili Malene' or 'Pokarekare'.

And in the 1960s members of the Tararua Tramping Club were singing " "Nobody else could love you better than I, you'll be sorry by and by.
Hepuru tai tame e, O hepuru tai tame ono."

Then in the 1970s it escaped overseas as a children’s song 'Epo e Tai Tai e', with the meaning "I will be happy" (Indeed, you will be!) and is now taught to preschoolers worldwide, except in New Zealand Maori circles, where it has gathered a couple more debauched verses and has become an explicit a late night party song, along with other songs of similar innuendo.

Back in the 1980s Folk festivals, we had similar late-night bawdy songs like Martin Curtis's 'Farmer's Boy' teaching rams, bulls and cocks how to do their work, Arthur Toms' wonderful many-voiced version of 'The Chastity Belt', Chris Penman's 'My Husband Has No...,' Kath Tate with her Cabbage song, and I had my Eel song.

Are there any similar, more contemporary bawdy songs being sung in NZ folk circles these days, like these Kaikoura quake and Covid lockdown ones?