I know this is further deviation from the thread, but... I'd always assumed EB was pretty conversant with the works of those WW1 poets who tried to capture the horrors of what they were experiencing when he wrote those songs - and that his perspective was influenced by theirs. So they could be seen as a reframing of one particular set of contemporary accounts with the added dimension of 50 years or so worth of hindsight (including Australia's involvement in Vietnam).

I guess they'd pass muster as contemporary songs that nod in the direction of old folk songs of the English speaking world or whatever you want to call 'em. And I've always thought that Aussies were particularly good at a certain type of mawkishness.

Meanwhile, I doubt purists exist, partly because virtually anyone can find someone else to apply the label to in order to distance themselves from it. From the perspective of the outside world, I'd hazard a guess that even the most 'impure' folkie would seem pretty, um, quaint. And I reckon that even the most rigorous folkie also enjoys some other stuff too - the differences are purely about cataloguing rather than about the music itself, and I would suggest that it is up to each individual what they catalogue where, and indeed even whether to bother to catalogue. After all, folk has been a disputed term - amongst those to whom disputing it matters - for over fifty years. Then again, I'm not a music academic and I catalogue pretty randomly.