Ok, I found the real problem, I had in fact tried matching the default
template and it made no difference, the version I had bounced up to the list
just happened to have replaced the default match with a more specific one in
an (ill advised) attempt to narrow down the problem.

The real problem was the selection of the parameter value:

    <xsl:apply-templates select="document(concat($varname,'.xml'))"
mode="list">
        <xsl:with-param name="sel">
            <xsl:value-of
select="xalan:nodeset($query-criteria)/*[local-name()=$varname]"/>
        </xsl:with-param>
    </xsl:apply-templates> 

This is picking up the local-name of root node of the document I've just
processed, what I really needed was the local-name of the original node
where this processing is being done.  Moving the assignment of the parameter
outside of this hierarchy and using a variable to pass it does the trick.  

No way anyone could have picked that up from what I posted, but thanks for
everyone's help

Peter Hunsberger

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