I'm beginning to wonder if we're all reading the same book.

Roud spends some time discussing the difficulty of defining 'folk song', and repeatedly refers to the imprecision of the term. He is also clear that for the purposes of the book it is "the process through which songs pass, in the brains and voices of ordinary people, which stamps them as 'folk'. Therefore, songs which the common people have adopted as their own, regardless of origin, constitute in some way their collective voice, and are 'folk songs'"

To me, this doesn't appear to be a particularly contentious or unusual interpretation and it reflects the 1954 definition. The difficulty with defining folk is not so much the broad concept but around the margins, and especially in pinning it down in the case of individual songs.

He also explains why he doesn't give song texts - lack of space. The book is already a bit of a brick at more than 700 pages, and to include texts would make it unwieldy or require another volume. He points out that texts (and tunes) are readily available online and provides the references to seek them out. Where it is necessary to quote a text to demonstrate a particular point he does so.

The final chapters spend some time discussing what individual singers thought about their songs, and their own accounts of how they came by them - from other singers, from printed sources, and in the 20th century from gramophone records. It also describes how songs were made in the community, both by individuals and by committee, although he makes the point that these often didn't survive for long, being too topical and too local. He also records that folk singers provided broadsheet printers with many songs.

The book can probably be criticised on a number of grounds - it would be remarkable if that were not the case. It is perhaps fair to say that it doesn't really explore how this process of adoption makes these songs special in themselves, or whether this idea is really only wishful thinking on the part of modern enthusiasts. However that isn't the aim of the book, which is to explore the social history of popular song which provided the environment in which this took place, and to show that 'folk song' didn't exist in cultural isolation but was part of, and drew on, a wider musical landscape.