> but he should have known better.

Well, he certainly should have been more skeptical - though scholars of his generation often tended to be more easy-going than today.

Wishful thinking is powerful. It's easy to be fooled by something you very much want to believe in. I can imagine Davis doubting that any sort of lowlife would fake a Child ballad and palm it off on an academic - for no obvious reason at all.

Remember when one of the most distinguished British authorities on Nazi Germany pronounced the "Hitler Diaries" authentic - in spite of the fact that for fifty years there had never been a suggestion that Hitler had kept personal diaries?

One thought that persuaded him - not entirely unreasonably: "Who, I asked myself, would forge sixty volumes when six would have served his purpose?"