Got the message Bert; You don't like Dickens, you don't like anything with more than two verses, you don't like folk song!
"The fact is that most 'folk songs' were collected over a relatively brief period of our history."
Two or three centuries, do you mean?
Guest Pete hit the nail on the head and Don was spot on in his response; Pepys was writing about Barbara Allen as being 'that old Scotch song' in the mid-1600s; name one modern song that you think could last a tiny fraction of that time with or without the aid of recording equipment - yours or anybodys.
"In that thread many posters jumped on the waggon to criticize songwriters."
So far, you are the only one to criticize a whole genre of songs; everybody else was just trying to define them.
"Nowadays our listening habits have evolved and our needs are for shorter songs."
Your listening habits and your needs maybe; some of us have no problem with a song which lasts up to ten minutes (usually the maximum for a ballad); and this afternoon I will sit down and listen to a radio play which will last for an hour and a half with no problem at all.
Don't put your own inabilities onto the rest of us.
Jim Carroll