"It's all around you, you just don't like what it produces,"
Some is, but no longer for the same reason
Most songs are made to be sold and the little (c) would prevent them from passing into the tradition, even if there was one to include them
That not only restricts their performance but also largely fixed the texts
The thing that distinguished songs is that they were largely anonymous, therefore ownerless - anybody could put their own personal stamp on them
They became historical documents chronicling their time
Today, the fol songs fall within the scope of the Public Domain, but even this is changing with performers copyrighting "arrangements" all folk songs are "arrangements" by their very nature.
"No-one in this discussion seems to be throwing it out."
Attributing 90% plus of our folk songs to a commercial industry does just that
It becomes worse when similar claims are made of folk dance and folk tales
This makes "ordinary" people passive recipients (customers even) rather than creators of their culture

You need to produe more than earliest published dates to back up your claim - you have admitted that you are unable to prove there were no earlier versions
You once offered to produce a list of those who agreed with you - bet it's nowhere near as long as my list of a century + worth of researchers who believed that the folk made their songs
We need to move on from claims and discuss the logic of their creation
You might start with explaining how so many bad songmakers made so many good songs - why they did and how they, as outsiders, managed to do so with such accuracy and obvious insider knowledge
Hardly from a desk in Seven Dials
Jim