By the way, Sminky, it is this paragraph I was referring to

For centuries, 99% (substitute your own percentage) of traditional music was sung/created wherever 'ordinary' people gathered. I'm struggling to understand where money played a part. Sure, there've been minstrels, ballad writers/sellers, publishers etc trying to eke out a living, but they were peripheral at best. Or am I missing something?

At which point, you accused me of "suffering from mythical romantic fantasies" and subsequently questioned my qualifications as a ballad scholar on the basis of finding a typographical error in one of my posts.

And no, the mistrels, troubadours, bards, skops, and minnesingers were not just peripheral. It is generally believed by many ballad scholars that they were quite probably the original sources of many traditional songs and ballads.

Don Firth