"Their names don't come down to us because of various factors".
What are those factors; it's an important 'factor' to this discussion?
"But we can be sure they had names, just as the brickies, chippies, plasters etc. who built my house had names."
Which totally ignores the FACT that the original composer (or composers - enough examples available of songs being made by a number of people) is irrelevant to whether or not the song is 'folk' or 'traditional'.
It is neither the content nor the style, but rather the process which makes it those things. Without that, it remains simply a composed song, attributed or anonymous. The anonymity of a song is, I'm convinced, due entirely to the fact that it has passed through so many mouths in the process of becoming part of a tradition.
As for there being a school of anonymous 'master' composers; early texts of many of the songs and ballads show no signs of mastery whatsoever. Collections such as Percy's Reliques, The Bagford Ballads, publications of The Ballad Society, even Child; and later collections like The Universal Songster, are crammed full of songs which, when they were first written, were verbose, overlong, clumsy - in fact unsingable. It was only when they were taken up by the 'folk' and subjected to the oral tradition that they earned the description of 'masterful' - as Macoll put it "like stones shaped by the motion of the sea".
Evelyn K Well's 'The Ballad Tree' has an interesting chapter on 'Ballad Imitations' - it's worth comparing the texts she gives with the real thing.
"Nannying Interference Police."
Sorry, agree with Charlie 100% - some of us obviously feel extremely strongly about this subject and a few of us have stepped over the line in our enthusiasm - me included. Apologies to all.
Jim Carroll