Anonymity is not a defining factor, just generally common to the songs we call folk.
They are 'of the people' however they started out, they became accepted as 'Norfolk' or 'Clare' or 'Lincolnshire' or 'Traveller'...... which is what we were told by the people who gave them to us.
Edward, Lord Randall and The Outlandish Knight were all "Travellers songs" according to the singers we got them from. Two of the most popular ballads in this area are Lord Lovell and The Suffolk Miracle (known as The Holland Handkerchief around here) - both of them, according to the singers, Clare songs.
It is these claims and the adaptation and absorption into the culture that makes them of the folk. Most of them have never passed through an 'author unknown' stage - they have survived only in the mouths of the folk, where they almost certainly originated.
We know, from a few accounts we have, that some of them were a group effort - one such being a Travellers song concerning a matchmaking which was made by a group of guests on the morning of a wedding. Within eight years of the event we got five distinct versions of the song and not one singer could give us the name of the makers.
Again you have failed to answer my question - if they were the work of master craftsmen, why is it that you can't provide the name of one of them?
MacColl's description at the end of 'The Song Carriers' is the one that rings the truest for me:
"Well, there they are, the songs of our people. Some of them have been centuries in the making, some of them undoubtedly were born on the broadside presses. Some have the marvellous perfection of stones shaped by the sea's movement. Others are as brash as a cup-final crowd. They were made by professional bards and by unknown poets at the plough-stilts and the handloom. They are tender, harsh,, passionate, ironical, simple, profound.... as varied, indeed, as the landscape of this island."
No, they are not the result of "mass amateur imitations", rather the compositions and re-makings of 'ordinary' people down the centuries; it is the familiarity with the subject matter that makes this 'self-evident'.
Jim Carroll