"Genuine folk at least has a provenance and some sort of pedigree.
I've always believed that the best way to plan your future is to understand your past - that goes for music as much as anything else."
often but not always, for example some football songs[ which fall under the 1954 defintion of folk song], are genuine folk, but they often are not very good, for example the wheel barrow song[ sung by notts county fans , it has a provenance , [on top of old smokey], but it[ the wheelbarrow song] is a genuine folk song but a crap one., football crowd songs are folk songs, but do not have folk a pedigree or folkprovenace [youll never walk alone]         
talking a bout arrogance, MacColl was someone who came into that category, excellent song writer and performer that he was, an example of his arrogance was the occasion that he stopped Lisa Turner in mid song to remind her publicly of the singers club, song policy, the correct thing was to have had a quiet word privately.