Jim,
I echo completely Michael's remarks. As a secondary school teacher for 40 years myself from a poor working-class background I can't myself conceive anyone making such disparaging remarks.

I am categorically not denying the ability of anyone to be creative.

HOWEVER I still stand by remarks. Ballads and songs of the English-speaking world of the canon we have been discussing have very little overlap with the tales. Yes they have many characteristics in common and I can think of one or two examples where crossover has occurred (Duncan's Hind Horn for instance, the transference of Isabella into Bruton Town) but these are very few and far between.

I am not avoiding your remarks on bothy ballads. As you well know I'm sure this is a very special case, and I know a lot about it because in my own ancestral home similar conditiones occurred in a smaller area. (My ancestors were ploughmen on a remotish chalk upland. The main reason why bothy ballads occurred and are almost exclusive to the NE is because young men were thrown together in the bothy with little money and little opportunity for other forms of amusement, under quite oppressive conditions. This threw up the bothy ballads which are songs which tell of the conditions and poke fun at the landowners and farmers. We have one bothy ballad on the Wolds where my ancestors ploughed 'Mutton Pie' and we have recorded many variants of it. Jim Eldon, mentioned above somewhere, sings a version and there is a version on the Yorkshire Garland website.

Okay we are coming to a point where we cannot agree, therefore I am offering this challenge. You select say half a dozen songs from the general English-speaking cannon, i.e., songs found in England, Scotland, Ireland, North America, or any 3 of these, and I will do my best to convince you where these songs very likely originated.

Someone also expressed the point why lawyers etc can't be part of the 'people'. Also broadside hacks, Music Hall artistes, why not? Fair arguments. Where do we draw a line? If we go down this road we eventually get back to the old chestnut about horses singing. My original point was simply that the vast majority of what we call folk music was ORIGINALLY produced for commercial reasons.