Jim, we've been through all of this before and you have deliberately misunderstood my comments exactly the same way numerous times. I have plenty of evidence as you well know, some of it mentioned above, that working people were often very creative, by way of song writing. It just so happens that the vast majority of them for one reason or another didn't get their songs into print and therefore they weren't spread abroad like the urban ballads. John Clare is an excellent example. Apart from his poetry and writing down the trad songs he came across he also rewrote quite a few songs in Burns' fashion, but none of them were ever collected in oral tradition. We are sometimes lucky to find them in old manuscripts but unfortunately very few made it into oral tradition to be collected and published.

>>>>don't believe a word of it<<<< Your prerogative, Jim.

'origins' as you well know have no bearing whatsoever on the oral tradition.