@ Jag, I think I can see what you mean, when you say Harker was trying to outline the development of a music genre. I think you are trying once again to dispel this false idea that the book is about people 'faking' songs which they pass off as coming from the folk (though some people plainly did call 'folk' material which in many senses was anything but).

However, I don't think Harker's focus is on a 'music genre'. To begin with, he isn't much concerned with the music side of things; this is not a musicological analysis. He is interested in ideas and concepts, in the different ways people through time have thought about and written about what people in England and Scotland were doing with music.

More generally, demanding simplistic definitions of complex concepts and then jumping up and down gleefully pointing fingers at people who don't comply with such demands or agree that they are sensible, implying via 'innit' that the demand is so obviously reasonable that only a thicko does not understand it is, put simply, not very clever. IMHO.