In my list of Scots ballad collectors above remove James Maidment. He had a good eye for old popular style songs and ballads, (like Charles Kilpatrick Sharp and David Laing) but wasn't an actual collector, and is probably best called a literary antiquarian. Francis James Child doesn't seem to have mentioned anywhere that he ever heard a ballad sung, so he's really a literary antiquarian, too.

Other countries folkmusic I knwo nothing about. It was noted the Queen Elizabth's secretary, Robert Cecil, read published broadside ballads, because he said that that was a good way to keep informed of the concerns of the populace. i.e., the way the political winds would soon be blowing.