"have any research evidence or factual reinforcement for the statement that town and city dwellers bring little skill to their verses? "
We are not talking about Urban dwellers Vic, we are talking about specific tradesmen who are (as you said yourself) working under high pressure to earn a living
Their output of poetry shows their limited skills as most of it is unsingable (as distinct from our folk songs, that fit the mouth like custom-made false teeth) and display signs of a knowledge of working practices and equipment, conditions experienced by rural politics like the seizure of land, the effects of mechanisation on rural occupations, or experience of conditions at sea or in the army or in the rural industries.
No group of desk-bound poets working in the conditions they were forced to could ever produce a body of songs covering those situations the way our makes of folk songs did, in my opinion
It is still as simple as it ever was - if working people were capable of making folk songs they probably did
Nobody has suggested (yet) that they weren't
Any offers?
Jim Carroll