No, Jim, it is you who is missing the point. Most of what you say at 03.56 is absolutely correct, but very little of this material features in the corpus of material collected and published by the likes of Sharp in the early years of the last century, which you are well aware is the corpus that is and was under discussion. I have made this clear on numerous occasions. I fully agree with your 'overlooked repertoire' but unfortunately very little of this material until recently featured in the accepted national corpus of folk songs.

I still deny your 'insider knowledge' except for a few of the sea songs, and my understanding of this is that during the late 18th and early 19thc most males were abroad fighting or at sea. When the wars ended they were unemployed and the few who were literate enough could have found employment as hacks.

Why do you keep going on about 'fooling' people? I'm not sure where this is leading.