"An vital part of understanding the significance of our folksongs is understanding where they came from and who gave them to us"


But on the basis that nobody knows where they came from, better to say that. Otherwise you are just acting as an ideologically-inspired mediator or starry-eyed fantasist.

All this stuff about I like Shakespeare and therefore I can make aesthetic judgments about whether a song was written by the labouring classes or put together by a hack and I judge that this is in the former category isn't really a crowd puller but that is what a lot of it amounts for (with the exception of MacColl, who is, put simply, God).