Tune playing historically has been an activity that cuts across the class barrier. This is quite an interesting point to consider, and has popped up occasionally in this thread. I could make a lot of points on this topic, but I'll confine myself to, and got paid. He was roundly ticked off by his dad(also a fiddler) for this: the Hardy family(according to dad) were a cut above that. This is quite interesting, as we see instantly that the fiddling(playing the same tunes) was an acitivity that crossed effortlessly over the class divide. It was not the fiddling that was a problem to the dad, it was the fiddling for money.
THis division still exists, between the hobbyist musicians and the professionals. In some cases this has inverted in the last two hundred years, so in general now the professional musician is awarded higher status than the amateur. But by no means always. These points need consdering when you are discussing the class of people that kept the music alive(or made it in the first place).