Jim. Your comment that "I have given you my idea of what a folk song is" works as a statement. No issue with that. But then I and others give our idea of what a folk song is and you say we are wrong.

It's that second bit that winds people up. Especially when you invoke your study as some sort of proof. You cannot prove subjective titles either way.

I accept that Walter Pardon was folk, that Tom Brown was folk , even when he unashamedly sang a song I gave him and told Jim Lloyd on the BBC (or was it Colin Irwin in a newspaper piece? memory going..) he learned it at his mother's knee. I accept that Ewan MacColl did collect some songs that Child or Sharpe hadn't noticed.

But that is part of folk, not the definition of it. There is a part of folk that means musical entertainment you can enjoy for the noise it makes, not the provenance of the words and tune. Music that can be and is enjoyed by a far wider audience.

Still folk.