Doesn't sound like an opinion to me, Jim - once again you're browbeating a very tired old revival myth, no doubt hungover from the various effectations & pretensions of the critics group. Thankfully, I'm way too young for any o' that; I'm post-revival & even post-folk and as such think the revival approach to ballad is okay as far as it goes (or went) but it's not for me as a singer. Ballads, however, are for me as a singer, as is traditional song as whole, just I don't believe in right and wrong ways of doing it, much less of policing it with the sort of authority advocated by your erstwhile mentors who were barely qualified anyway. For one thing, I just do what I do - I would never dare tell anyone they are wrong for singing them in a particular way, much less advocate the myth that there is a right way or wrong way of approaching them. If ballads survived in traveller communities, theb all well and good; but we all like a good story, that's by dint of our humanity & not some inverted racial stereotyping or cultural blood purity which the folk revival has been hung up about since its inception. I find different approaches fascinating; the stuff of life indeed, whereas your ill-informed dementoring runs contrary to the very nature of music, let alone balladry.