Let's bump this up the list again - if I can butt into what seems to have become a duologue.

Steve wrote:
"You must be aware of THE FACT that Child mercilessly and justifiably slates these (Peter Buchan's) versions"

I am indeed, and didn't need the shouty caps to remind me! I'd read some very rude remarks about Buchan by FJC in the notes to 'Young Hunting', though I hadn't read the rather devastating sally attached to Child 304. I respect your analysis of PBs ballads, and I must say that both his 'Demon Lover' and 'Young Hunting' are overlong and contain verses that are ripe for the chop by any self-respecting ballad singer. It does seem very suspicious that his ballad versions are always longer than anyone else's. Personally that wouldn't lead me to discount them entirely as a (flawed) record of oral tradition, though.

Steve wrote:
"My opinion on 'Most of the international corpus' being derived originally from commercially driven writing is based on many years' study and comparison of broadsides with oral versions, in multiple versions verse for verse, line for line... the earliest known variant is, in 95% of cases, the broadside or... other commercial publication."

Firstly, I agree that all of us have to accept that we will probably never know the precise history for certain, so we probably need to stop arguing the toss at some point. However, the fact that commercial publications represent the earliest known examples of 95% of the ballads (you are talking about ballads here?) isn't surprising considering that there was not, to my knowledge, any collecting at all going on in the field during the period we're talking about.

The few anecdotal examples I listed in my first post to this thread do confirm that ballad-singing was going on in the sixteenth century. In the case of Child 243, comparing broadside and collected versions "verse for verse, line for line" is precisely what I did - and the early broadside didn't fit the bill. I don't doubt your ideas about commercial publication regarding some of tha ballads and still more of the later songs - we just need to keep an open mind and take each case on its merits.