"I don't remember anyone saying or declaring 'the people were INCAPABLE of making ballads'"
It's been part of ballad scholarship for as long as I can remember Steve epitomised in Phillips Barry's not to Lake of Col Finn
I think I put up the bothy ballas as an example of workers making their own songs - doesn't matter anyway -- it's a perfect example of the creative abilities of the rural classes.
Jim Carroll

"Popular tradition, however, does not mean popular origin. In the case of our ballad, the underlying folklore is Irish de facto, but not de-jure: the ballad is of Oriental and literary origin, and has sunk to the level of the folk which has the keeping of folklore. To put it in a single phrase, memory not invention is the function of the folk". [our italics]                                                                                                                                                               
Note by Phillips Barry to 'Lake of Col Finn', in the Helen Hartness Flanders collection, New Green Mountain Songster, Yale University Press, 1939