Ethical disposition. Collecting what was there to collect. Not making things up to further one's status. If you don't believe this person was this kind of person, why would follow him?

I am very comfortable putting my confidence in Campbell. He was not exactly a leading figure in the Child ballad collecting endeavor. He was more a person who recorded the Highlanders in the period when Britain was subduing them, after the Jacobite defeat when their culture was under siege- retribution for rebellion against the Hanoverian regime.