" By dialectic I meant the idea a la Monty Python that history is the history of class struggle"
I'm well aware of the political version of the term ie 'Dialectical Materialism', but I wondered how it applied to Bert's approach.
Bert and Ewan both believed passionately that fok song was 'The Music of the People' - not "for the people" as many would have it nowadays, but the old and pretty wel universally adopted definition, "by the people"
Child called his ballads 'Popular', not because they reached number one in some nineteenth century hit parade, but because they were 'of the people'
There has been an ongoing as to whether the 'common people' were capable of making the ballads (these would be the same 'common people' who queued to get a seat in the premier performance of Hamlet), but I think Motherwell dealt quite well with that in his 'Minstrelsy' preface, where he warns against tampering with the oral versions.
For me, MacColl's summing up of the traditional repertoire and its origins was thet he gve at the end of the (still unsurpassed) 'Song Carriers series:

"Well, there they are, the songs of our people. Some of them have been centuries in the making, some of them undoubtedly were born on the broadside presses. Some have the marvellous perfection of stones shaped by the sea's movement. Others are as brash as a cup-final crowd. They were made by professional bards and by unknown poets at the plough-stilts and the handloom. They are tender, harsh,, passionate, ironical, simple, profound.... as varied, indeed, as the landscape of this island.
We are indebted to the Harry Coxes and Phil Tanners, to Colm Keane and Maggie MacDonagh, to Belle Stewart and Jessie Murray and to all the sweet and raucous unknown singers who have helped to carry our people's songs across the centuries."

" It was just about still in existence "
I wasn't suggesting that the song was contemporary to the Hospital
These institutions tend to lend their name to similar ones that follow them
WE still talk about people 'ending up in the workhouse", though they disappeared nearly a century ago (before my time)
I grew up with 'Lock Hospital', Grub Street and Carey Street', still popular long after the original institutions disappeared.
Folk memory is a wonderful thing
Jim Carroll