" ... sadly anonymous if only because the collectors had a particular point to prove regarding the communal nature of The Tradition."

No, no, no!! "Sadly anonymous" because the names of the authors weren't written down! You are surely not suggesting that we should 'demonise' the collectors because of this? In most cases the anonymous nature of the songs was outside of the collectors' control.

Or are you suggesting that Baring Gould, C. Sharp. RVW, P. Grainger et. al. were able (via some mystic process) to divine the authors of the songs but neglected to pass this information on? Are their 'secret notebooks', containing these data, stashed in some archive somewhere just waiting to be stumbled on?