If a reader is interested in the songs people actually sang, and the social praxis of singing (as Jack Campin succinctly put it) they don't neccessarily want yet another assembled assessment of all the work. Roud has clearly read all the previous work and acknowledges that it has helped him; we can read it ourselves if we want to. He has given us an assembled assessment of the 'raw material' that he has been able to source.

It is not an academic treatise. It is his book, giving us examples of his sources and setting out his thoughts.

If it were to have a subtitle more acceptable to those who claim owenership of the term 'Folk Song' what should it be?