Bugger! Spent some time writing and editing a post, neglected to save it as text, and it vanished. Trying again, while I can remember some of what I said.

I have loved folk songs (in a moderately broad sense of the term, including songs by the likes of Tommy Armstrong, Sydney Carter and Cyril Tawney, but not as broad as the way that some people use it). However I have not studied broadsides and have no basis for putting my own figure on the proportion of the collected corpus that started life there (or in the theatre or pleasure gardens). As the Steves have studied broadsides extensively, I am inclined to accept their figure of 90-odd percent.

Most of the early collectors were well aware that most of the songs they were collecting had appeared on broadsides, but they didn't say much about ultimate origins, being more concerned with the forms in which they were finding the songs and especially with the tunes. (Child, of course, said a great deal about the stories but was apparently unaware of what was still being sung in his day.)

Very very many songs that were printed did not survive to be collected, if they were ever sung at all. An unknown number of songs made by the "folk" (i.e. anyone who wasn't in the business of writing songs commercially) likewise did not survive to be collected.

Jim believes that the 90-odd percent figure is far too high, seeing evidence in many of the songs that whoever made them knew what they were writing about (or singing about, if they were illiterate). Others find this less convincing.

Jim, what sort of figure would you put on it (for the classic collections, not for the songs that you were finding in Ireland)?

Anyone, how can we take this any further?