Do you still really believe this stuff?.......
Absolutely Steve - for the reasons I have given - vernacular, familiarity.. etc, also, how the songs sit within the tradition, and the proprietorial attitude adopted by the singers towards their songs.

Jim,
I'm not questioning the 'ownership' of the songs by the people who we recorded them from. I am simply referring to their origins. Like you I spent years collecting in the field in the 60s and 70s. I then got so interested in the songs, and my natural curiosity led me to wonder where they came from and how they evolved. This then led me into lengthy research into broadsides, art music and the Music Hall. It eventually became obvious to me that the vast majority (by no means all) of the songs we recorded, in England at least, were the product of commercial interests such as broadside hacks/printers, and the pop scene of any given period. For example all of those hunting songs not about a specific day's hunting, songs with varying amounts of description of the weather and the countryside 'When Spring comes in tra la', Colins, Phoebes, etc were products of the pleasure gardens of the late 18thc and various theatrical productions. Even a substantial number of the, highly worshipped in some quarters, Child Ballads originated on broadsides. Many actually got no further than broadsides (Robin Hood ballads for instance)

As for the differentiation argument. In my experience most of the singers I recorded did not differentiate between different genres of song. I put this down largely to the fact that very few of them were actual 'performers' or had been employed to sing at any point in their lives. However the famous traditional singer, Arthur Howard, had at least 4 separate repertoires which had little overlap and he used each repertoire separately depending on some of his very different audiences, folk clubs, old people's homes, hunt suppers, etc.