Thanks Steve for the comments on my "something that most people could remember and join in with".

One thing I was pondering was collection bias making it difficult to test ideas about the style of the text and the tunes.

However, I am coming to realise that the 'folk song' that is the subject of this discussion, to a large extent of the Roud's book, and the interest of collectors referred to here is only a subset of what the folk sang and what was revived in the last 50 years.

The 'argument' here is about narrative verse sung mainly by (and collected from) solo singers.

It's not about things like wassailing, the singing of local carols, work songs, chorus songs sung in the pub or the bawdy songs of the working men and women.

The disagreements here are mainly about a subset of the genre which tends to attract people's romantic sensibilities.