Steve - I have never at any time suggested that Buchan didn't doctor songs - as did virtually all of his contemporaries.
I see no evidence that he was doing anything that his contemporaries weren't - the 'ethics' of what they were doing was not an issue - yet you single him out as 'dishonest' - that to me appears unfair.
You say you have information that solves the Buchan 'enigma' - if you produce it, it will no longer be the enigma that it is at present.
We really did get off on the wrong foot in all this.
Questioning your "ninety percent plus" claim on the print/oral origins of our folksongs, instead of producing proof of your definitive statements, you accused me of being a naive romantic
When I pressed my case, instead of producing proof, you gave me character references - how many people agreed with you and respected your theory (which is what it is).
When I pinned you down by asking you to show how you could prove oral texts hadn't existed before printed ones, you were unable to and you patted me the head with "I will have to watch what I say in future" or some such dismissiveness.
One of my main interests in folksongs is in the important role that had within the communities that gave us them to us.
To that end, we've spent over 40 years talking to singers from communities where the singing traditions were still alive or, at least, within the living memories of the people we talked to, and getting their slant on the subject - a much neglected part of collecting.
The conclusion we reached over that time was that rural working man and woman was an instinctive song-maker, well capable of having made our folksongs without the aid of a bunch of hacks whose overall output was, on the whole unsingable
We found that Irish communities made hundreds of local songs, some of which we recorded, but many, many more we missed because they had been forgotten and were only told about.
You shrugged this off as 'old people scribbling poetry in their retirement', or ' the English agricultural worker was far too busy feeding his family to make songs', or 'there is no comparison between what happened in rural England and Ireland'   
We actually spent time with a singer who had his father's traditional songs printed and sold them around the fairs and markets of rural Ireland in the '40s and described the process of his having done so - he told us it was common practice among Travellers - I see no reason not to belive that this has always happened and that this is how our folk songs and ballads songs got into the hands of the hacks.
I see no reason why most of our folk repertoire didn't originate in the communities and were plundered and adapted to be sold.
The fact is, I don't know, nor does anybody, and to suggest that anyone has definitive answers is to prevent the subject being discussed.      
We really have done the work Steve, we are not the naive romantics you once suggested.
We may well have things arse-about-face with our concl;usions, but they are conclusions arrived at by a lot of hard work and I won't be fobbed off by non-existent definitives that nobody has the right to claim - none of us have definitive answers to these questings - Buchan, song origins..... and if anybody claims they have they will cease being discussed
Sorry about the rant - breakfast awaits
Jim Carroll