"So Broadside writers were not People or Of The Folk........."
Not in the sense we are talking about here
Our songs are rurally set, lagely dealing with rural situations and occupations
Broadside hacks were based firmly in large cities - Roud makes a point of using the London writings of Charles Hindley for his information and descriptions
"That makes all writers of Crime or Spy Novels Criminals or Murderers or even Spies..."
The best of our Spy (in particular) novels like Le Carre and Deighton spent a great deal of time researching the background of their subjects in order to bring them the authenticity they did
Workers working under the pressure the hacks were would have had neither the time, inclination or resources to do that
Is it a coincidence that our folk songs exhibited the same authenticity while the broadsides, Dibden, et al more often that not gave us pastiches of country life and an 'Oirish'-type approach to country dialect and vernacular?
Not to me
Take time to wade through the broadside collections, as I did recently and you'll be facing writers who were writing out of their depth.
Jim Carroll