There are some interesting points here. Speaking from my own experience, many of the songs I write have, in some repect, undergone a "folk process" before they were created - by which I mean that they are stories with tunes and are based on local legends or things that have been told to me.

To illustrate what I mean: I wrote a song based on a converation I had over 40 years ago with an old Yorkshire Wolds farmer about his early days working on his father's farm with heavy horses, and the transition to using a tractor. Parts of this almost exactly mirrored my grandfather's experience of being taken out of school at the age of 12 to work the land. The bloke who told me this story also loved to sing "We're all jolly fellows who follow the plough" so I incorporated that into the song.

You can listen to a rendition of it here (with thanks to Pete for the video):

Jack and Jill

As a postscript, we sang this song a few months ago in a pub up in the Wolds (appropriately called The Chestnut Horse)in the next village to where my grandfather's family had lived and, after we'd finished, a huge elderly man who had been sitting in front of us turned round with tears running down his face and told us that the experience was exactly what had happened to him on his father's farm. His reaction was one of the most rewarding things that has happened in my musical life.