I'm in complete agreement, Jon.

We would need to see Niles field notes to come to any conclusion on them. But if, as you imply, he was actually manufacturing rare ballads otherwise not known in America presumably then these would not be in his notebooks.

'Hustvet(sic) cites Grundtvic(sic) as being instrumental in changing Child's mind'.

You only have to glance at the headnotes I've pointed out to you in Child to note that this is absolutely untrue. Child paid Grundtvig handsomely for supplying Child with a suggested scheme for publishing the ballads, and for some of the information on foreign variants. Child occasionally fell silent on Buchan's efforts, but this was more probably for other reasons as Grundtvig had died by then anyway.