"So they made a living by distributing something that people wanted? "
Commerce isn't as democratic as that - they produced something they wanted people to want
Everybody is still shuffling around the idea that these songs were made by the people who felt the need to make songs as a reaction to what was going on around them and - unless anybody can show otherwise were well capable of doing so
That has now been established as having happened in Ireland and was common among agricultural workers in Scotland
Were the English so unimaginative and talentless as to have to pay somebody to do the job for them?
It seems that if somebody writes a big book everybody feels the need to bow down to it
JIm Carroll