I think that there were some people who were determined that a song of the people like Waltzing Matilda had to be traditional, and they just couldn't bring themselves to believe that a Sydney solicitor-cum-journalist could have written it.

They therefore grabbed every tiny little scrap of information that might have indicated a traditional origin, and flogged it to death.

Unfortunately for them, the evidence in favour of Paterson seems to outweigh that in favour of oral tradition.