Folk music is the "peoples' music" and that includes all "classes" of people.
However, once those well intentioned collectors (who were in the main middle or upper class) began saving it for future generations the process of "intellectualising" it began. Working class singers more than likely took their songs at face value and sang them simply because they and their listeners enjoyed them and were familiar with them.
Folk music and song unfortunately became an "industry" once the collectors began archiving the material and housing it in institutions like Cecil Sharp House where it came under the domain of those very same middle and upper class intellectuals.
Today the keepers of the flame, if you like, are predominantly middle class who don't sing the songs for enjoyment after a hard days work but do it for a living which would probably totally bemuse the originators of the songs.
The intellectual snobbery that the original poster experienced is probably a by-product of the economic monster that the folk indutry has become. The middle classes are still debating what it all means while the working classes have moved on.