I've written for the journals in my time, but am more an author and storyteller. Journos take the public temperature, then print the popular perception disguised as the truth, with bits of more or less fact woven through. They are also bone lazy, and copy from each other and earlier articles without ever checking the real facts.In this case, they 'think' Burns composed all he wrote down. So do many others. As indicated above he himself was more scrupulous than his followers and reporters, but at the behest of a publisher he set Auld Lang Syne to another tune than he heard the now first verse sung to. The same thing happened to Scots Wha Hae, which was not attached to his preferred tune (a tune which was known as Robert The Bruce's March in France in the 15th C by the way) till after his death. Burns even rewrote SWH to a differing line structure to please, one supposes, his publisher! Traditional has now supplanted 'folk' a the word for songs and tunes we know, love, use and feel a common ownership over. Like Happy Birthday To You, writen I understand in the USA in the 1920s, and possibly still in copyright.