Guest: Lighter at Work
And the fact that so many trad songs were of broadside origin suggests the still more anti-romantic notion that a good many were undoubtedly written by the same few authors !

Or, contrarywise, it could just show that the publishers of Broadsides knew when they were on to a good thing. Publish songs which have no known author and it's nearly all profit, rather than paying the author.

I would hesitate to suggest that some publishers might even use that standard of schlock science fiction publishers, a 'House Name' used as a nom-de-plume for much unattributed writing.

Nigel