"starting out as 'popular music'"
Hmmmm?
"The Cooper of Norfolk "
No traditional versions listed by Roud
"The Constant Farmer's Son, George Brown"
Obviously a derivation of Bruton Town which shares its plot with one of Boccaccio's "Nights" and a Veronese broadside of 1629, indicating it has been around a long, long time
"Blind Beggar"
The length of the totally unsingable (50-odd verse) early version compered to the beautifully streamlined shorter traditional one indicates that the former well might have been a very-overindulged composition based on she latter
It is somewhat inconceivable that a traditional singer would plough through an ungainly epic and select a few verses in the middle, especially as a major source of this sonh was the still non-literate Travelling community
"The demon Lover"
The authorship of none of the ballads has been established definitely
The amount of pious moralising and actual folklore in this ballad suggests that it may have been expanded from a traditional composition and turned into a sermon on marital fidelity
Jim Carroll