Margaret - I agree. Although it settles the argument against my original assertion, having looked at the book Wit Restored in its entirety I think that is exactly what Mennish and Smith are trying to do. There's numerous 'merry England' ballads in the book referred to as the 'old ballad of. . .'

There is some recent work on how Royalists tried to re-create a vision of 'Olde Merrie England' as part of the propaganda effort against the Republican and Protectorate regimes (in 1658 very few in Charles II's close circle believed that he would be restored only 2 years later) - and Wit and Drollery books (which were publicly burned by the authorities who knew they were anything other than innocent books of ballads) were part of this effort. It would be interesting to go through them all because lots of folk material survives because of them.