I don't think the folk who learned folk by ear really cared about the song's history, if they liked it. Most of the old people I knew just sang songs they liked, many of which were folk songs, many of which were not.

Besides, someone, somewhere, had to write the original version of the folk song. They didn't appear like mist out of a bog. Some Elizabethan or Georgian Steve Goodman was behind them.

(That's not to say that there isn't a great value in finding the ur-version, or Q-version, whatever you may call it, usually to clear up corruptions and nonsense in the lyrics of versions passed down from singer to singer. In two hundred years time someone might be trying to find the original version of a Steve Goodman song.)

Look at Finnegan's Wake, discussed here on another thread. How old can that be? Old enough for James Joyce to know of it but I'd be surprised if it is older than the nineteenth century.

I didn't know that comments here could be censored. How many people possess this power, and what criteria are used to determine what should or should not be exposed to view? We should have a TOS, like AOL does, for guidance. Does this mean no more threads on naughty children's songs? And what if someone posted the non-PC version of Congo River? Censorship is always a slippery slope. I'd rather risk being offended.