What do the songs tell us about the people? Well, let's start with what Gerould said. Harker, as it happens, uses a passage that I had noted down when reading Gerould for myself. This is Gerould's view of 'the folk' based on his reading of the songs:

there is frequently displayed an insensitiveness to suffering that appals nerves more finely drawn, an impassivity in the face of life's worst outrages that reveals the equilibrium of a childlike and healthy race. Vices and virtues, in so far as they motivate ballad stories, are the vices and virtues of rather primitive folk; the strong sensations that animate them are what would be needed to move their simple hearts.

For me, it's the 'equilibrium of a childlike and healthy race' that cries out to be unpicked here.

Further, the whole thing seems to be an example of Jack a Nory. This terms comes from a nursery song I learned as a child (not doubt as a result of some mediator packaging it up in a book for sale to conscientious parents):

I'll tell you the story
Of Jack a Nory,
And now my story's begun;
I'll tell you another
Of Jack and his brother,
And now my story is done

It was later used as the title of a BBC TV children's story programme.

I'm also a bit confused: are we supposed to regard the mediators with reverence as giants upon whose shoulders we tread, or as fools trying to catch fog in a bottle?