A lot of English traditional music is guesswork anyway, so it's very difficult for people to be vehemently opposed to experimenting with it.
I mainly play traditional music, which by definition is music that you've heard someone else doing.
If someone doesn't hate what you're doing - you're not doing very well.
Traditional folk music is about survival of the fittest song just like evolution is about survival of the fittest organism and generally the more times a song has been passed down the generations the more brilliant and concise it becomes as every link in that chain can add something good or remove something unnecessary.
