"Jim - and as I said last time, the process you describe exactly accounts for what I mean by creative masters - "
But they don't - not in our experience anyway.
Tommy Armstrong's song are not a bad example of songs that didn't go into the tradition but stayed within the pages of books unaltered until they were ressurected by the revival.
One of the features of songs written by identifiable authors is that 'the folk' tend to treat them with a deference that leaves them as they were first composed - the act of writing them down and in particular, publishing them, sets them is stone.
There are several examples around here of poems written by local poet, Thomas Hayes around the beginning of the 20th century, which are fairly widely sung throughout the county, all in exactly the same form as they were written (1 version of one of these includes a verse that other local singers considered superfluous and left out, but that is all).
This is what makes James Hogg's mother's statement to Scott so correct "They were made for singin' and no for prentin', and noo they'll never be sung mair."
If there were a body of skilled songmakers turning out enough songs to supply either the British or Irish repertoires, we never came across any evidence whatever, neither did you from the sound of it.
Jim Carroll