"find me a BRITISH version of 'The Coast of Peru'"
If you don't know you damn well should that English language sea songs, because of the nature of the work and their transmission, were international, the only ones that could be identified as belonging to any specific nation were ones that were in 'German' and 'French' and 'Russian', and even these were suspect suspect if that particular nation had ever had a nation - read your Hugill.
"I gave some examples myself."
Then you should know better than to make stupid claims like "the English were too busy earning a living to write songs" - or was this somebody else?.
I have been pointing out that working people have always made songs and you have been putting it down to "a few talented (retired) individuals in order to justify your claim.
"...undermined nothing of the oral tradition and am insulted by your suggestion."
You undermine everything about the oral tradition starting with that it was created by the equivalent of today's boy bands (I'm pretty sure you acknowledged that this was your view, but it doesn't matter - you have constantly insisted that the English rural workers bought their songs rather than made them themselves - amounts to the same thing).
When somebody questioned you about versions you claimed they were largely created on the presses too, leaving the people to have purchased their culture. This also removes any value in the songs as part of our oral history.
You talk about me being out-of-date yet you are busy chipping away at the idea of a creative English working class culture, having admitted that the Irish and Scots are a creative people.
By the way - I have never included the Welsh in these discussions because I have no knowledge whatever of that culture even they were near neighbours to my native Liverpool for 25 years of my life - out of my depth there.
Chimney sweeps
Of course you have denied it - you've described the idea of boys going up chimneys as "fiction"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimney_sweep
More later
Jim Carroll