"How about urban people who left school at 15 "joined the ranks of the unemployed ... found intermittent work in a number of jobs and also made money as a street singer (Wikipedia)" but became skilled poets and talked to the people who had done those things ?"
There is not a shred of evidence that any of them did this
Steve Gardham has pointed out that some of them might have been born in rural areas, but most lived within reach of their work
Is it so unlikely that people actually created songs based on what was happening around them (as early researchers believed) that it is necessary to invent "what ifs" such as this?
It seems to me that peaple here seem to want working people not to have made their own songs
Jim Carroll