Just to round off this Mikeen MacCarthy/McCarthy stuff ( mentioned several times in this thread, JC spells his name in these two ways in one single thread so not sure which if either is correct) it seems his father was not non-literate, and in fact wrote down songs for him, one of these was 'The Blind Beggar', some of the 'best sellers' were not traditional songs but popular ones. In the same post stating that the father wrote the songs down Travellers are described as a non literate group. That detail seems to me worth considering in terms of mediation within the world of writing about folklore.

So much for intelligent informed debate.