"I think it is very begrudging to point out examples of early collectors and publishers of songs published material with false claims about its provenance because they were ?publishers? of songs they thought worth singing, not"
What were those "false claims" ?
As yet, nobody has dared put those accusations into the context of the songs that were published
It was in no way dishonest to adapt songs in order to 'improve' them before it even drealised that these songs had a social importance
Rightly or wrongly, they improved songs they thought were interesting but flawed and they made improvements they believed would be beneficial to their appreciation - there is nothing dishonest about that - unwise as it may now seem
People here are strong advocates of the broadsides
It seems fairly obvious to be (and has always been believed by many) that the broadside hacks took many existing folk songs and re-wrote them to be sold to suit the earlier tastes of urban audiences
I don' believe that to have been 'dishonest' despite the fact that the hacks tore the hearts out of the songs and made them virtually unsingable (try working your way though Ashton, or Hindley, or Holloway and Black to find singable songs sometime)

As for "selling" their songs - have you ever looked at the prices of some of the specialist folk song books like Roud and Atkinson's one on Street Literature
There's nothin reprehensible about that - it just puts them out of reach of many of us
Of course books were sold, but very few writers made fortunes on their writings#
If I put out a collection of Irish Traveller songs, as I would dearly like to, I would have to finance it myself or (if I am very lucky) get a grant from the Irish Arts Council

"but all I remember of it is that it was extremely readable and interesting."
It is indeed, as are several other of his books
His and his wife' Eleanor Long's 'Banks of Mulroy Bay is a superb study of how one historical incident, is a superb study of how one historical incident, the assassination of one of Ireland's landlords, gave rise to the making of dozens of songs in the area it the events took place
Wilgus's work with Irish Traveller John Reilly (of'The Maid and the Palmer' fame) is freely available on line for listening

Wilgus and the like are not Panaceas - the study of folk song and ballads is a life-long learning curve of reading as much as you can manage (gluggers and all) and in the end, making up your on mind - nobody has all (or even very many of) the answers
If it's any help, our archive has a large collection of digitised books which I have been selecting from and passing around on PCloud to people I believe will use it responsibly
The same with our record collection, which runs into many hundreds of digitised and now largely unobtainable discs
All you need do is say what you are interested in and let me have an e-ail address
I still find a discussion on folk song without a close examination of the songs themselves pretty much pissing in the wind
With that in mind, I would highly recommend the 10 volume 'Folk Songs of Britain' series' or better still, MaColl's 10 programme series 'The Song Carriers' for a brilliant analysis of the songs collected by the BBC in the '50s - and there's much more (there's even a full set of the BBC project for anybody who wants it)
Jim Carroll