To pass off all that creativity (maybe not 'collective' but surely 'sequential') as the work of a an elite class of bygone songwriters is to rob the working class singers you so admire of their due credit.

Please read what I said back there, Brian. I'm not talking of an elite class, any more than a blacksmith, farrier, cooper, carpenter or joiner could be said to have belonged to an elite class. I see the singers themselves as being the time-served working class masters, they are makers & transformers of these songs; a cultural tradition of highly skilled song-making - just as the brickies who built my house were highly skilled, likewise the carpenters and cabinet makers who made the furniture I often drool over in museum of wonders that is The Preston Antiques Centre. No doubt they have their modern counterparts, but I don't see much evidence of it in this day and age; likewise in the craft of folksong-writing - there are exceptions, as I've noted, but the rule, it would seem, as with flat-pack furniture, is nothing to be proud of; certainly when compared with the poetic genius embodied in Traditional Song and Balladry*. So the credit goes to the supremely gifted individuals who were the working-class song-makers of yore - people like Tommy Armstrong etc. - to the carriers, and the singers. Of course, there are lesser talents at work, and random mutations, and any amount of more rustic treen floating around which is just as beguiling.

* Personal taste, of course, but as a Hoary Old Traddy allow me my prejudices. I am now 48; a year older than Peter Bellamy was when he died. This is humbling, and strange - especially I'm still amongst the youngest in Folk Clubs, Festivals and Singarounds! A Queer Do and no mistake...