"but your constant misquoting and gross exaggeration make this very difficult."
I've asked you to provide examples of this several times Steve
So far nothing has been offered
"I have always endeavoured to make clear exactly which corpus I was writing about. "
This is a prime example
Am I mistaken in believing what it was following my quoting MacColl's 'Song Carriers' summing up that you made you "starry eyed - and "for money" dismissive statement?
Your present claims adaptation followed.

Even that don't make real sense anyway - many of the songs collected in that period were made far earlier than the 19th century so I have presumed that your 90% + includes them
If it does, you are casting doubts on the idea that country people ever made songs to a significant degree

Back to the old truism I'm afraid - we don't know who made our folk songs for certain and until you can produce unchallengeable evidence that there were no oral versions of the printed songs we never will
Jim