I've continued to follow the exchanges in this thread with interest, leaning more towards Steve's line of argument. (Incidentally, it's quite amusing to note the number of former school teachers coming out of the woodwork, given the accusation of the original post.)

One thing I would add is that there's no reason why broadside hacks shouldn't be considered part of 'the people': they would have lived a fairly precarious existence themselves, at a distance from the 'serious' literary world. What Jim seems to share with Cecil Sharp's ideology is a desire to dissociate folk music from interaction with the publishing industry of towns/cities, lest it be somehow contaminated. Ironically, this position is similar to traditional 'aristocratic' attitudes to literature, i.e. the thought that a song is cheapened if it is suggested that it may have been written with commercial sale in mind.

While conceding that songs with printed origins were doubtlessly modified by oral transmission (this is particularly conspicuous in the transatlantic mutations of Appalachian songs), it seems equally insulting to rural singers to suggest that they were not aware of/did not pick up material emanating from the towns, given the trading traffic throughout Britain from the 17th C. onwards.