If, as you just said "all music is traditional music by default", would you include Strangers in the Night, referred to by many as a ballad, certainly in the English language, and a folk song if performed in one of your 'folk contexts' according to you, in your fulsome praise of ballads?

You seem to be having some difficulty getting your head around this, old man. Paint fumes in confined spaces perhaps? Strangers in the Night is not what I'd include in any catalogue of Traditional English Speaking Folk Songs because whilst it is, indeed, born of a tradition, it is born out of a very different tradition than that which gave us such evergreen classics as Tiftie's Annie et al. However, SINT can be sung as a Folk Song in a Designated Folk Context, and has more meaning to the Folk of 14-9-09 than MOTA. Like the word Folk, the word ballad also carries various levels of meaning.

Whilst we might agree that SINT and MOTA are very different types of song stylistically, problems might arise with either of us accounting for why they are different. To me they are different as an old handmade farm cart, circa 1820, is from a motorcar, circa 1965. They are the products of very different cultures, very different technologies, very different traditions indeed, whereby one is wrought uniquely, the other determined by considerations of mass production. Both are the result of the same human creative and engineering genius; both will be someone's pride and joy; both will bring tears to someone's eyes.