One more reference about "recitation":

THE THREE RAVENS
a version from E. Peacock, Lincolnshire, "whose father, born in 1793, heard it as a boy at harvest suppers and sheep-shearings, and took down a copy from the recitation of Harry Richard, a laborer, who could not read and had leart it 'from his fore-elders.'
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And here are the references to ballads actually being sung from the 18th century survey (other than Herd, Percy, and Mrs. Brown):

CHILD MAURICE—B
Motherwell's MS., p. 255; Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 282. From the singing of Widow McCormick, Paisley, January 19, 1825. Learned by her of an old woman in Dumbarton: Motherwell's Note Book, fol. 4.

CHILD MAURICE—C
Motherwell's MS., p. 510, from the singing of Mrs Storie, wife of William Storie, laborer, Lochwinnoch. A song of Mrs Storie's grandmother. [See Child's end notes for this ballad]

LAMKIN—F
a. Notes and Queries, Second Series, II, 324, as sung by a nurse nearly a century ago [1856] in Northumberland. b. Notes and Queries, Fourth Series, II, p. 281, from Northamptonshire, communicated by Mr B. H. Cowper.

THE GYPSY LADDIE—K
a. From Mrs Helena Titus Brown of New York. b. From Miss Emma A. Clinch of New York. Derived, 1820, or a little later, a directly, b indirectly, from the singing of Miss Phœbe Wood, Huntington, Long Island, and perhaps learned from English soldiers there stationed during the Revolutionary war.

BESSY BELL AND MARY GRAY
Sharpe's Ballad Book, 1823, p. 62. b. Lyle's Ancient Ballads and Songs, 1827, p. 160, "collated from the singing of two aged persons, one of them a native of Perthshire." c. Scott's Minstrelsy, 1833, I, 45, two stanzas.

CHARLIE MAC PHERSON—A
Harris MS., fol. 23 b; from Mrs Harris's singing.

THE TWA SISTERS
Anna Seward to Walter Scott - a version of "Binnorie" "I first heard sung, with farcial grimace, in my infancy [born 1747], ..."

YOUNG BEICHAN
from Mrs Christiana Greenwood, London, to Scott, 1806, "as heard by her in her youth at Longnewton, near Jedburgh, "where most of the old women could sing it."

JOHN THOMSON AND THE TURK—B
Leyden's Glossary to The Complaynt of Scotland, p. 371. ["Leyden (1801) says that he had "heard the whole song when very young."]?