Nick Dow wrote: I'm still digesting Robert's post.

Feel free to ask questions. It was big, I know, and written in haste. Lots of things I might have clarified had I thought of it.

For example, Gummere's "communal composition" isn't a method of songwriting; it's a Mad Lib.

It's worth noting that Gummere was the first generation after Child. His Old English ballads was from 1894. So, like Child himself, he had a lot less access to ballad scholarship than we do today. He hadn't seen Cecil Sharp's collecting, for instance, that showed that some ballads were still sung... and quite a few were not.