Now this is definately thread-drift, but it may be important. While looking up something else, I stumbled across an article in which the author argued that printers William and Cluer Dicey marketed 'old ballads' to a lower middle-class and working class audience (that's probably not the right term, but nothing else comes to mind at the moment). The author was Dianne Dugan and she argued that the Diceys borrowed heavily from James Roberts' A Collection of Old Ballads. She insists:

"...the ballad revival was not confined to the 'sophisticated level'...but in fact flourished on the popular level as well.... The fact is, ordinary people...purchased ballads marketed explicitly for their historical and antiquarian value."
Dianne Dugan, "The Popular Marketing of 'Old Ballads': The Ballad Revival and Eighteenth-Century Antiquarianism Reconsidered," Vol. 21, No. 1 (Autumn, 1987), p. 72.

And while has nothing directly to do with the guitar in British-Irish-American folk music, it does offer an interesting perspective on past folk revivals and the role of commerce in middle- and working-class culture.