You seem to be referring to the big ballads in your last statement.
Nope - I'm referring to our finely crafted traditional songs
As our knowledge of the oral tradition onLy dates as far as the beginning of the twentieth century - anything before that is a guess and way out of the reach of definitive statements
A "broadside hack" was a derogatory term for a bad poet – not a reference to the language of the time
Jim Carroll