MacColl was first an actor and did what many actors do, adopt a stage name. As for the phoney accent, he learned songs from his mother, who was scots, and he probably sang them as she did. Somebody please correct me if I am wrong. Singing songs that come from other places is always difficult because the rhymes don't always work if you sing them in your own dialect.

MacCall used a number of voices, on 'To the begging I will go', collected from Beckett (?) Whitehead in Lancashire, he uses a Lancashire accent and it does sound odd after the strong scots accent but he was very early in the field of revival folk singers.

MacColl had a number of faults but singing and songwriting were not amongst them.