Can I just make my point again before this goes away
It's not a matter what I or anybody else likes - I don't like all folk songs by any means
i love ballads, but don't get me started on
'Maid freed from the gallows'

When Lomax and later the BBC went ou in the fifties they didn't carry a check list to tell them what to record and what to reject - they knew what they were looking for and that;s what they brought back
When Topi set up way beck when they knew what folk song was and that's what they issued

When Greig put together his massive collection he knew what he was after and that's what he wrote down

Carpenter - Child - Sharp - Motherwell, Peter Hall, Hamish Henderson..... from the pioneers to the moppers-up = all had an understanding of what folk songs was - many wrote about it
Now we are told that by and large, they were romantics who got it wrong - Child apparently didn't know his folk arse to his formal poetry elbow
Any art form that relies on rejecting former knowledge experience and opinions to make room for new ones can have no future - learning and understanding has to be a continuum otherwise the subjects that we apprentice ourselves to can never have a solid identity

That's me on that one
Jim