You're now changing my 95% into 100%, Jim.
I have never said the rural population played no part in their creation. They certainly played a massive part in their re-creation. and function. Yes, it cetainly does place them on the same level as any pop songs churned out by today's music industry. They were the equivalent of POP songs when they hit the streets, and those that came out of the theatres and pleasure gardens and glee clubs and cellars in the towns were also pop songs. They only became folk songs when the folk started singing them. My belief is that the working rural population, decimated by the migration into towns and cities, hadn't the time, nor the inclination to write their own songs. And if they had they would have been swamped by the masses of popular material coming out of the urban areas. The widespread songs about rural life are generally sentimentalised, idealised pieces about shepherdesses, milkmaids, etc, that bear no relation to the reality of conditions, which were one step up from slavery.