Look - I have shown over and over again that he Irish rural workers have produced many hundreds of songs describing their lives and aspirations, around here especially, but, as it transpires, throughout Ireland

Songs which never caught on elsewhere and which none of the Irish, even in the community where they originated, bothered remembering and passing on.

What is so different about the rural English or Scots workers that they had to go out and but descriptions rather than make songs up about them themselves?

Probably nothing. Their songs didn't catch on either. The better distribution of printed songs was what made them stick, as it did in Ireland.