"According to the academics, with a known author, the song has no chance of being "folk", let alone "traditional"."

Oh, George!! I would have thought you would know better than that. It's perfectly possible for a song to have a known author AND to be folk/traditional. The classic example (as I have stated many, many, many, many, many times on this board) is 'The Famous Flower of Serving Men' known to have been published by Laurence Price in 1656 ('A Book of British Ballads' by Roy Palmer, Llanerch Reprint, 1998). The source of the song is IRRELEVANT (how many more times!!!!) - it's the PROCESS that the song has been through that is important. That's why some punk dirge cannot be accepted to be a folk song until it's been selected by 'the community' and changed by them. A key question (to which I do not have an answer) is do the relevant communities still exist? I'm interested in the answer to this question, by the way - but don't expect me to be too impressed by guesses.