"Did any of the collectors publishers of folk as per the definition you apply take any thing from their work?"
Not sure I understand your question Tim; if you mean amatures like us, certainly not; though we did make sure we had full agreement from the singers before we did anything with the recordings other than archive them.
Personally, we were in a position were we could not afford to be seen making money from what we did so, again with the agreement of the singers, we signed over all royalties to organisations such as The Irish Traditional Archive in Dublin so that they were ploughed back into the music. I'm pretty sure other collectors, such as Mike Yates adopted a similar attitude.
There have been accusations that some collectors made a considerable sum by selling (and copyrighting) their recodings - I only know for certain of one case where this happened.
Jim Carroll