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.
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.
If someone doesn't hate what you're doing - you're not doing very well.