"reads like something out of a Two Ronnies sketch, or the worst form of cultural paternalism imaginable."
Not to me it doesn't - taking into consideration when it was written and by whom, it remains a personal observation by somebody who was there.
It is the easiest thing in the world to take the piss out of the pioneers from a position of smug hindsight (and from the comfort of your folkie greenhouse - again). Sharp got many things wrong, but unless you can show how that was making it all up, his point stands as an indication of what he found - unless you can prove otherwise.
Pandering to the media's rejection of our folk cultures by comparing Sharp's observations to 'The Two Ronnies' and the 'Rambling Sid Rumpo' representation is as much a rejection of those cultures as that of the establishment as far as I'm concerned.
I've thought a great deal about your "tradition is an invention of the collectors" statement - your failure to qualify it in any way is a little like waiting for the other shoe to fall.
Jim Carroll