"You are overstating."
I most certainly am not Steve - and you know it
Where are your references to the possibilities that these songs might have come from the people who sang them or those who were an essential part of the narrative of the songs
I spent a Few hours last night struggling though a pile of published collections of broadsideses and nineteenth century songs - Hendersons Street Ballads, Lovatt Frazer, Hindley's 'Curiosities' Ashton, the 2 volum Holloway and Black, Chilton's 'Victorian Folk Songs - I reluctantle spent an hor plodding through the interminable 3 volume, 'Universal Songster'.....
I took down your recommended Senelic's 'Tavern Singing in London' and scanned through the lists.
hardly a singable song among the lot of them.
You have removed the possibility that the people who experienced first hand many of the events described in our folk songs - press-ganging, transportation and imprisonment for trying to feed their families , social misalliance, sea and land warfare.... and replaced them with the composers of this unsingable dross
Jim Carroll