I think whether or not someone was paid is part of the social history, part of understanding the genesis of the songs.

I don't see that present day judgements of taste or artistic merit are much help because they are ephemeral.

Sharp and his contemporaries filtered out the bawdy element, but that was alive and well amongst 'ordinary people' during WW2 and afterwards. Indeed, activities of the sort recounted in those songs seem to have been acceptable in Hollywood until recently.

I guess most collectors of the 'First Revival' wouldn't have got too worked up about hunting songs and neither did many of people of the 1950s an 1960s. Taset has moved on and voices in this discussion seem to want them classified (airbrushed?) out of folk song.