Dick,
Having had a long hard think about your original posting and having tried hard to work out what you are after, I think I detect 2 underlying currents of enquiry.
Both would depend on whether you are coming at this as a scholar, or as a performer/singer. As the latter it surely matters little where the ballad came from or what minds it has passed through.

BUT to a scholar who is wanting to study exclusively orally evolved material it matters a great deal. Much of the material in the Child ballads for instance has probably never passed through oral tradition. Some of it (e.g., most of the Robin Hood ballads) only appears to have existed in print for reading, and much of it has been so interfered with by poet/collectors it is almost impossible to tell what actually existed in oral tradition. For instance the texts published by the likes of Jamieson, Scott, Buchan, Percy and others are under heavy suspicion and some are known to have been fabricated.